Suchergebnisse

This paper explores city dweller aspirations for cities of the future in the context of global commitments to radically reduce carbon emissions by 2050; cities contribute the vast majority of these emissions and a growing bulk of theworld's population lives in cities. The particular challenge of creating a carbon reduced future in democratic countries is that the measures proposed must be acceptable to the electorate. Such acceptability is fostered if carbon reduced ways of living are also felt to bewellbeing maximising. Thus the objective of the paper is to explore what kinds of cities people aspire to live in, to ascertain whether these aspirations align with or undermine carbon reduced ways of living, as well as personal wellbeing. Using a novel free associative technique, city aspirations are found to cluster around seven themes, encompassing physical and social aspects. Physically, people aspire to a city with a range of services and facilities, green and blue spaces, efficient transport, beauty and good design. Socially, people aspire to a sense of community and a safe environment. An exploration of these themes reveals that only a minority of the participants' aspirations for cities relate to lowering carbon or environmental wellbeing. Far more consensual is emphasis on, and a particular vision of, aspirations that will bring personal wellbeing. Furthermore, city dweller aspirations align with evidence concerning factors that maximise personal wellbeing but, far less, with those that produce lowcarbonways of living. In order to shape a lower carbon future that city dwellers accept the potential convergence between environmental and personal wellbeing will need to be capitalised on: primarily aversion to pollution and enjoyment of communal green space.

WHEN BRIAN BERRY SERVED NOTICE IN 1969 THAT POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY HAD BECOME A 'MORIBUND BACKWATER', HE EXPRESSED SUCCINTLY WHAT MANY SENSED BUT NONE WOULD SAY IN PUBLIC. THERE IS NO SINGLE EXPLANATION FOR THE DEMISE OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY, BUT CENTRAL TO THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE WAS THE SIMPLE FACT THAT POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY CEASED TO BE POLITICAL. THE OLD POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY WAS A PRODUCT OF SPECIFIC POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS: ITS PRIMARY CONCERN WITH NATIONAL BOUNDARIES WAS NOT AN ABSTRACT INTEREST, BUT THE DIRECT OUTGROWTH OF EMPIRE BUILDING AND IMPERIAL CONQUEST. IN THE LATTER PART OF THE 19TH CENTURY, THE ACQUISITION OF COLONIAL TERRITORIES AND THE SETTING OF EXPANSIVE COLONIAL BOUNDARIES WAS ONE OF THE PRIMARY GOALS OF COMPETING NATIONAL POWERS IN EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE. IN THE 20TH CENTURY, THE FOCUS TURNED TOWARD IMPERIAL EXPANSION OF THE ADVANCED NATION STATES THEMSELVES, AND THIS LEAD, ALBEIT UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES, TO TWO WORLD WARS, AND A NUMBER OF SMALLER SKIRMISHES.

Safety engineering and legislation (IEC-61508, 61511 etc.) has been entrenched in many industries (O&G, process) for years. Although regulation has been progressed by Lloyd's Register, the Marine industry has been inherently slower to accept and adopt functional safety practices employing quantitative analysis. As in other industries, a review of legislation would usually be kick started by a large-scale accident. With an aim to reducing manning costs, marine vessels are now developed with increasing amounts of automation in their control systems. Incidents resulting from failures of these systems are becoming more frequent due to either poor safety considerations when designing the systems, or operators not understanding interactions with the automated systems. Preferably, before incidents increase in frequency or severity, engineered safety using inherent safety controls will become a more important factor in the Marine sector. Opposition to functional safety has primarily been due to cost and scheduling purposes. Businesses have to be profitable to survive, and Safety Engineering can be viewed as introducing programme delays and unnecessary costs. In reality, other safety related programmes have demonstrated the benefits of following safety related development programme. As in most instances of programme delay, poor initial requirements capture causes late changes to be incorporated to products, resulting in escalating delays and costs. If safety is engaged early in the product lifecycle, then programme delays and unnecessary safety risk can be reduced and managed effectively throughout the lifetime of the ship. In all projects, there can be conflicts between safety and security design, but early integration of safety will allow you to balance safe, secure and reliable operation, ultimately improving the quality of your end product. Major savings can be made by reducing maintenance on systems that have been proven to have lower integrity due to quantitative analysis and proof testing – provided it has ...