Planning for knowledge-based urban development : global perspectives

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to investigate the engineering of creative urban regions through knowledge-based urban development. In recent years city administrators realised the importance of engineering and orchestrating knowledge city formation through visioning and planning for economic, socio-cultural and physical development. For that purpose a new development paradigm of ‘‘knowledge-based urban development’’ is formed, and quickly finds implementation ground in many parts of the globe.----- Design/methodology/approach: The paper reviews the literature and examines global best practice experiences in order to determine how cities are engineering their creative urban regions so as to establish a base for knowledge city formation.----- Findings: The paper sheds light on the different development approaches for creative urban regions, and concludes with recommendations for urban administrations planning for knowledge-based development of creative urban regions.----- Originality/value: The paper provides invaluable insights and discussion on the vital role of planning for knowledge-based urban development of creative urban regions.

The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy : Global Perspectives

The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities for building effective cultural policy coalitions. The volume provides a comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the political process of urban cultural policy and urban development studies around the world. It will be of interest to students and researchers interested in urban planning, urban studies and cultural studies.

Global perspectives in the geography curriculum : reviewing the moral case for geography.

Se hace una critica al cambio de orientación dado a la enseñanza de la geografía desde 1990 en las escuelas del Reino Unido y de Estados Unidos por parte de los responsables de las políticas educativas. Así, al primar la perspectiva ética de estamateria sobre la investigación de conceptos, ideas y habilidades espaciales en los estudiantes, se socava el valor educativo de la geografía y la libertad de los jóvenes para dar forma al mundo en que viven.

Extratropical fronts in the lower troposphere-global perspectives obtained from two automated methods

In this study two commonly used automated methods to detect atmospheric fronts in the lower troposphere are compared in various synoptic situations. The first method is a thermal approach, relying on the gradient of equivalent potential temperature (TH), while the second method is based on temporal changes in the 10 m wind (WND). For a comprehensive objective comparison of the outputs of these methods of frontal identification, both schemes are firstly applied to an idealised strong baroclinic wave simulation in the absence of topography. Then, two case-studies (one in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and one in the Southern Hemisphere (SH)) were conducted to contrast fronts detected by the methods. Finally, we obtain global winter and summer frontal occurrence climatologies (derived from ERA-Interim for 1979–2012) and compare the structure of these. TH is able to identify cold and warm fronts in strong baroclinic cases that are in good agreement with manual analyses. WND is particularly suited for the detection of strongly elongated, meridionally oriented moving fronts, but has very limited ability to identify zonally oriented warm fronts. We note that the areas of the main TH frontal activity are shifted equatorwards compared to the WND patterns and are located upstream of regions of main WND front activity. The number of WND fronts in the NH shows more interseasonal variations than TH fronts, decreasing by more than 50% from winter to summer. In the SH there is a weaker seasonal variation of the number of observed WND fronts, however TH front activity reduces from summer (DJF) to winter (JJA). The main motivation is to give an overview of the performance of these methods, such that researchers can choose the appropriate one for their particular interest.

Fixing America's School Lunch Program: Local Issues, National Challenges, and Global Perspectives on Possible Solutions

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) has undergone profound changes since its establishment in the 1930s with a primary goal of feeding undernourished school children. Today, the program is under scrutiny for its negative impact on student health and environmental unsustainability. This project investigates the origins of the NSLP, the current status of the program, and opportunities for reform. In view of the program's deficiencies, much can be learned by studying other relevant models for school lunch, such as those used in Italy and France. While recognizing the political realities and budgetary constraints public schools currently confront, the Business Plan applies these lessons in its proposals for rethinking the school lunch program at one Denver public school.

Global perspectives in Korean intercountry adoption

Policy and social work practice currently lack a theoretical framework that adequately explains the emergence, diffusion, and continuance of the intercountry adoption (ICA) phenomenon. Using South Korea as a case study and the application of actor network theory to the ICA phenomenon, this paper introduces a theoretical approach that allows an examination of the complex interrelationships between the global and local influences of a country's engagement in ICA. This theoretical approach provides a different way of understanding the phenomenon, which, in turn, can better inform policies and practice that affect children and families across the globe.