High Ground, Low Ground: Explorations in Topography and Neighbourliness in Coastal Dune Settlement

<p>The desire to live close to the ocean often brings about settlement that sprawls along the beachfront, parallel to the coastline. This settlement structure is problematic as it diminishes the importance of community while exposing beachfront housing to coastal hazards. The coastal dune settlements of Waikanae and Paraparaumu, where this research has been undertaken, exhibits this problematic settlement structure. Using these sites as a case study, the research seeks to re-examine the New Zealand coastal land settlement formation. It explores what could happen if the current coastal settlement pattern re-organised as a more social structure? The research is investigating an approach to settlement through re-examining the idea of neighbourhood by looking at its whole relation to the coastal dune topography, ecology, and wider landscape relations. However, not only does this research look at the social potentials of coastal settlement but how disaster planning can become a device to achieve this outcome. Essentially, it aligns itself with the attitude that flooding and coastal hazards should not just be looked at as an engineering problem but an opportunity to alter the way in which we settle coastlines in a way that builds community.</p>

High Ground, Low Ground: Explorations in Topography and Neighbourliness in Coastal Dune Settlement

<p>The desire to live close to the ocean often brings about settlement that sprawls along the beachfront, parallel to the coastline. This settlement structure is problematic as it diminishes the importance of community while exposing beachfront housing to coastal hazards. The coastal dune settlements of Waikanae and Paraparaumu, where this research has been undertaken, exhibits this problematic settlement structure. Using these sites as a case study, the research seeks to re-examine the New Zealand coastal land settlement formation. It explores what could happen if the current coastal settlement pattern re-organised as a more social structure? The research is investigating an approach to settlement through re-examining the idea of neighbourhood by looking at its whole relation to the coastal dune topography, ecology, and wider landscape relations. However, not only does this research look at the social potentials of coastal settlement but how disaster planning can become a device to achieve this outcome. Essentially, it aligns itself with the attitude that flooding and coastal hazards should not just be looked at as an engineering problem but an opportunity to alter the way in which we settle coastlines in a way that builds community.</p>

Budhi Ganga of Hastinapur: éclat of Ancient India

The old route of Ganges is known as Budhi Ganga, Burhganga or Boorh Ganga . Here the word Budhi might be denoted for the old bed of Ganges. In the regime of Nichakshu, the flood in the Ganges washed off the entire glory of the Kuru capital Hastinapur. It can only be imagined that how terrible the flood would be that the Ganges would have to change its flow. Afterward, Nichakshu shifted their capital from Hastinapur to Kaushambi (near Allahabad). The Timur invasion in India also shows the track of Budhi Ganga. In the time of Modern India, British Domination shows the route of Budhi Ganga in the Land settlement documents. The entire route of Budhi Ganga is crepuscular in Independent India. But in honor of the old bed of Ganges, even today a grand fair is organized on the land of Hastinapur on Kartik Purnima. In the present paper, we put the light on the old route of the Ganges from Saifpur Firozpur to Hastinapur. Keywords: Mahabharata, Ganga, Budhi Ganga, Hastinapur, Firozpur

Activities of Land Settlement Commissions in The South of Ukraine in the Years of Stolypin Agrarian Reform (1906 – 1917)

The article is devoted to one of the important aspects of the Stolypin agrarian reform – the practical activities of land settlement commissions in the field of land surveying in Southern Ukraine in 1906 – 1917. The personnel, tasks and functional responsibilities of members of land settlement commissions are clarified. The main types, volumes and results of land surveying works in the region are determined. It is proved that the practice of boundary works differed in the modernization of technical measures for the elimination of cross-strips, small strips, far-flung land, which led to improved field cultivation, increased agricultural yields and rising land prices. Special attention is paid to land management in the Bulgarian colonies of the region.

Land Revenue Settlements: The Magnitudes of Economic Development in the State of Bahawalpur (1866–1947)

With the advent of the British in India, the colonial institutions were introduced throughout the country. In the Bahawalpur State, the Agency government stimulated the fiscal patterns of British India particularly its settlement policy, which brought amelioration in the native revenue system. This paper traces the historical process of land settlement for revenue generation and their impact over the agrarian economy of the State. These settlements became the major contributing factor towards the economic advancement. The different phases of settlement of land, along with the extent of government demand are established in this research. The third phase of land settlement resulted by the beginning of weir control water system, brought some revolutionary changes in the land pattern and revenue structure therefore, it has been particularly focused in this paper. The data for this study is mainly based on unpublished archival documents and unpublished assessment reports.

The Ghosts at the Feast: Contested Land, Settlement, and Identity in the Jordanian BāDīya

This article considers how enactions of hospitality, everyday politics and livelihoods in the largely sedentarised, but still discursively Bedouin villages south-east of Amman continue to be shaped by long, contested and intersecting processes of land settlement, sedentarisation and state encompassment. I combine a specific ethnographic encounter (a village feast and the anxious, tense talk about land that occurred at it) with a reading of history to show how ideas of settlement remain crucial, though contested, for understanding the positionality of former nomadic pastoralists in Jordan. I focus on how Jordan's Bādīya – its arid and sparsely-populated eastern steppe – has been conceived of as a socially, politically and legally different, but encompassed, part of the nation-state. This discourse, I argue, has precedents in deep history and classical Arabic thought, but has taken on a particular form in the postcolonial and developmental state of Jordan.