By Marlon Boarnet
Regional Science Association International
2013
The dominant view among transportation scholars is that transportation history flows from older to newer travel modes, with each mode being superior to and, for the most part, displacing the earlier modes. America, an early adopter of widespread automobility, was in this view a harbinger of trends that would follow elsewhere, and hence the US experience of passenger travel based almost completely on car travel was a signal of things to come. Yet this paper argues that interpreting from the US experience with the interstate highway era misses key points. The interstate system, and the planning that surrounded it, was developed during a brief period of time when transportation policy was centralized, standardized, and largely divorced from questions of local impacts and place‐based political pressures. That made the years immediately after the 1956 Interstate Highway Act unusual in the broader context of transportation planning. The US has recently witnessed a return of pre‐interstate urban transportation planning realities, and transportation in large US cities is now multi‐modal, contextualized by ties to land use and neighbourhoods, and fraught with the politics and incrementalism of the pre‐interstate era. Regional science research, grounded in the era of national highway construction, can adapt to the realities of modern urban transportation planning by focusing more on collaboration and financing in ill‐defined institutional settings, environmental externalities and non‐market impacts, and retrospective project evaluation.
By Francesca Boso, Felipe de Barros, A. Fiori, A. Bellin
Water Resources Research
2013
The spatial distribution of solute concentration in heterogeneous aquifers is extremely complex and variable over scales ranging from a few millimeters to kilometers. Obtaining a detailed spatial distribution of the concentration field is an elusive goal because of intrinsic technical limitations and budget constraints for site characterization. Therefore, local concentration predictions are highly uncertain and alternative measures of transport must be sought. In this paper, we propose to describe the spatial distribution of the concentrations of a nonreactive tracer plume by means of suitable spatial statistical transport measures, as an alternative to approaches relying only on the ensemble mean concentration. By assuming that the solute concentration is statistically distributed according to the Beta distribution model, we compare several models of concentration moments against numerical simulations and Cape Cod concentration data. These measures provide useful information which are: (i) representative of the overall transport process, (ii) less affected by uncertainty than the local probability density function and (iii) only marginally influenced by local features. The flexibility of the approach is shown by considering three different integral expressions for both the spatial mean and variance of concentration based on previous works. Aiming at a full statistical characterization, we illustrate how the Beta relative cumulative frequency distribution (obtained as a function of the spatial concentration) compares with the numerical cumulative frequencies. Our approach allows to estimate the probability of exceeding a given concentration threshold within the computational or observational domain, which could be used for sampling data campaigns, preliminary risk assessment and model refinement. Finally, our results highlight the importance of goal‐oriented model development.
By Felipe de Barros, D. Fernandez-Garcia, D. Bolster, X. Sanchez-Vila
Water Resources Research
2013
Aquifer remediation is a challenging problem with environmental, social, and economic implications. As a general rule, pumping proceeds until the concentration of the target substance within the pumped water lies below a prespecified value. In this paper we estimate the a priori potential failure of the endpoint of remediation due to a rebound of concentrations driven by back diffusion. In many cases, it has been observed that once pumping ceases, a rebound in the concentration at the well takes place. For this reason, administrative approaches are rather conservative, and pumping is forced to last much longer than initially expected. While a number of physical and chemical processes might account for the presence of rebounding, we focus here on diffusion from low water mobility into high mobility zones. In this work we look specifically at the concentration rebound when pumping is discontinued while accounting for multiple mass transfer processes occurring at different time scales and parametric uncertainty. We aim to develop a risk‐based optimal operation methodology that is capable of estimating the endpoint of remediation based on aquifer parameters characterizing the heterogeneous medium as well as pumping rate and initial size of the polluted area.
By Gale M. Sinatra, CarolAnne M. Kardash, Gita Taasoobshirazi, Doug Lombardi
Springer Science+Business Media
2011
This study examined the relationship among cognitive and motivational variables impacting college students’ willingness to take mitigative action to reduce the impacts of human-induced climate change. One hundred and forty college students were asked to read a persuasive text about human-induced climate change and were pre and post tested on their attitudes about climate change and their willingness to take action to mitigate its effects. Students showed statistically significant changes in their attitudes about climate change and their willingness to commit to take action. A path model demonstrated that openness to change and a willingness to think deeply about issues predicted both change in attitudes and expressed willingness to take action. This research demonstrates that a persuasive text has the potential to promote change around complex socio-scientific issues.
By Eric Heikkila
Planning Theory & Practice
2011
Human settlements have long been located on rivers, and the relationship of the place to the river functions as a deep reflection of its historical, cultural, and socio-economic traditions. This paper explores urban river revitalization in contemporary China, focusing particularly on ongoing efforts to clean up Foshan’s polluted Fenjiang River. The research shows that the traditional cultural status of the waterway, which is known as the “Mother River” of Foshan, plays a paradoxically pivotal role in the project to modernize it. Interacting in complex ways with domestic and international political concerns, and popular media and internet technologies, the cultural status of the river has helped to determine both the type of environmental movement that has emerged in its defence, and the community of interests that serves as a proxy for civil society in that movement. Ultimately, this paper argues that the unique configuration of institutions and actors engaged in the Fenjiang River restoration project are emblematic of a new type of “environmentalism with Chinese characteristics.”
By Daniel Tarantola, Andrew C. Byrnes, Michael Johnson, Lynn Kemp, Anthony B. Zwi, Sofia Gruskin
Australian Journal of Human Rights
2008
Human rights, health and development represent interdependent sets of values, aspirations and disciplines. Drawing on these domains, this paper offers a theoretical and practical framework for the analysis, application and assessment of health, justice and progress. It provides a simple conceptual framework illustrating the interdependence of these domains and highlights their key features and underlying principles. It then describes the reciprocal interactions between health, development and human rights and suggests how these linkages can be analysed and applied in practice. A Health, Development and Human Rights Impact Assessment (HDHR IA) approach is proposed to guide and monitor policies and programs towards maximising synergy.
