Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis: A Geographic Information System Application of Material Flow Analysis in Ireland

This study concerns the spatial allocation of material flows, with emphasis on construction material in the Irish housing sector. It addresses some of the key issues concerning anthropogenic impact on the environment through spatial temporal visualisation of the flow of materials, wastes and emissions at different spatial levels. This is presented in the form of a spatial model, Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis (SAMFA), which enables the simulation of construction material flows and associated energy use. SAMFA parallels the Island Limits project (EPA funded under 2004-SD-MS-22-M2), which aimed to create a material flow analysis of the Irish economy classified by industrial sector. SAMFA further develops this by attempting to establish the material flows at the subnational geographical scale that could be used in the development of local authority (LA) sustainability strategies and spatial planning frameworks by highlighting the cumulative environmental impacts of the development of the built environment. By drawing on the idea of planning support systems, SAMFA also aims to provide a cross-disciplinary, integrative medium for involving stakeholders in strategies for a sustainable built environment and, as such, would help illustrate the sustainability consequences of alternative The pilot run of the model in Kildare has shown that the model can be successfully calibrated and applied to develop alternative material flows and energy-use scenarios at the ED level. This has been demonstrated through the development of an integrated and a business-as-usual scenario, with the former integrating a range of potential material efficiency and energysaving policy options and the latter replicating conditions that best describe the current trend. Their comparison shows that the former is better than the latter in terms of both material and energy use. This report also identifies a number of potential areas of future research and areas of broader application. This includes improving the accuracy of the SAMFA model (e.g. by establishing actual life expectancy of buildings in the Irish context through field surveys) and the extension of the model to other Irish counties. This would establish SAMFA as a valuable predicting and monitoring tool that is capable of integrating national and local spatial planning objectives with actual environmental impacts. Furthermore, should the model prove successful at this level, it then has the potential to transfer the modelling approach to other areas of the built environment, such as commercial development and other key contributors of greenhouse emissions. The ultimate aim is to develop a meta-model for predicting the consequences of consumption patterns at the local scale. This therefore offers the possibility of creating critical links between socio technical systems with the most important challenge of all the limitations of the biophysical environment.

The rate of return on equity across industrial sectors on the British stock market, 1825-70

This article assesses the contribution of the various industrial sectors to the growth of the British equity market in the 1825–70 period. It also provides estimates of the rates of return on these industrial sectors in this period. The article then proceeds to examine whether differences in rates of return across the various sectors can be explained by risk or other financial factors. One of the main findings is that the relatively high rates of return in the banking, insurance, and miscellaneous sectors appear to be in some measure explained by the presence of extended liability and uncalled capital.

The Housing Triangulation: A discourse on Quality, Affordability and Lifestyles in India

Since 1991 with the advent of globalization and economic liberalisation, basic conceptual and discursive changes are taking place in housing sector in India. The new changes suggest how housing affordability, quality and lifestyles reality is shifting for various segments of the population. Such shift not only reflects structural patterns but also stimulates an ongoing transition process. The paper highlights a twin impetus that continue to shape the ongoing transition: expanding middle class and their wealth - a category with distinctive lifestyles, desires and habits and corresponding ‘market defining’ of affordable housing standards - to articulate function of housing as a conceptualization of social reality in modern India. The paper highlights the contradictions and paradoxes, and the manner in which the concept of affordability, quality and lifestyles are embedded in both discourse and practice in India. The housing ‘dream’ currently being packaged and fed through to the middle class population has an upper middle class bias and is set to alienate those at the lower end of the middle-and low-income population. In the context of growing agreement and inevitability of market provision of ‘affordable housing’, the unbridled ‘market-defining’ of housing quality and lifestyles must be checked.

Use of microtechnologies for intensifying industrial processes

The use of new technologies based on microstructured reactors in industrial processes, including the obtainment of hydrogen peroxide, the catalytic oxidation of ammonia, the utilization of rocket fuels, fine organic synthesis, polymerization, and phase transfer catalysis, were considered. The transition to microtechnologies considerably increases the performance of the process; at the same time, the product yield increases as compared with periodically operating reactors, which allows for a reduction of costs at the separation stage of the reaction mixture and the extraction of the reaction products.

An Introduction to the Special issue - Housing in Hard Times: Marginality, Inequality and Class, with Kim McKee

‘Housing in Hard Times’ was the theme of the Housing Studies Association annual conference in April 2011. The papers featured in this special issue are drawn from that conference. They examine the uneven impact of economic change on housing policy and related areas, with reference to conceptual ideas pertaining to urban marginality, inequality and class. Whilst the empirical focus of the papers is the UK, their intellectual contribution represents an attempt to ‘bring class back in’ to the housing studies literature and encourage more critical, theoretically informed scholarship.

Dubai revisited: is new planned housing sustainable?

Dubai, the second largest city of the United Arab Emirates, is a fast growing hub with increasing need for infrastructure, housing and public facilities. Dubai is trying to market itself as an attractive holiday destination, which saw the launching and building of large scale planned communities, some of which are located on reclaimed land along the city's coast line. This paper reviews Dubai\'s green building agenda by examining the scale and typologies of new and planned low carbon projects, and discusses the potential of renewable sources of energy that can reduce the country's dependence on fossil fuels and improve the country's long term sustainability. It assesses the potential of solar energy, wind power, and geo-thermal energy in Dubai and the UAE in general.

Contesting public accountability: A dialogical exploration of accountability and social housing

This paper analyses the interaction between neoliberal inspired reforms of public services and the mechanisms for achieving public accountability. Where once accountability was exercised through the ballot box, now in the neoliberal age managerial and market based forms of accountability predominate. The analysis identifies resistance from civil society campaigns to the neoliberal restructuring of public services which leads to public accountability (PA) becoming a contested arena. To develop this analysis a re-theorisation of PA, as a relationship where civil society seeks to control the state, is explored in the context of social housing in England over the past thirty years. Central to this analysis is a dialogical analysis of key documents from a social housing regulator and civil society campaign. The analysis shows that the current PA practices are an outcome of both reforms from the government and resistance from civil society (in the shape of tenants’ campaigns). The outcome of which is to tell the story of the changes in PA (and accountability) centring on an analysis of discourse. Thus, the paper moves towards answering the question – what has happened to PA during the neoliberal age?

The privatisation of council housing: Stock transfer and the struggle for accountable housing

A central element in the privatization of council housing has been the development of stock transfer policy. A variety of perspectives on this process have been explored including the impact on accountability relations; however, the tenants’ experience is almost completely absent from this literature. The paper develops a case study that draws on the experience of the tenants involved in a stock transfer. In the process stock transfers, and related accountability relations, are shown to be contested with tenant-led campaigns challenging this neoliberal inspired policy. The case study illustrates the power and financial resource asymmetries in transfer campaigns with a range of anti-democratic tactics employed by those pursuing the transfer. On the basis of a critique of neoliberalism, the stock transfer process is seen as an attack on the previous democratic control of council housing, which is replaced with ‘governance by experts and elites’ and private sector inspired corporate governance forms of accountability. Thus the paper seeks to answer two questions; how democratic is the transfer process and what are the long-term implications for democratic accountability in the social housing sector.