Se han ido formando políticas ambientales, con especial atención al papel correspondiente a la Unión Europea, en la que se ha llegado a una esencial función pública de protección al medio ambiente, que se sustenta en unos principios generales y unos derechos básicos. La política ambiental europea introdujo aire fresco, mecanismos renovadores, en las anquilosadas posturas sobre el medio ambiente de nuestras regulaciones tradicionales, obligando a actuar a las administraciones públicas españolas en términos más efectivos. El impacto del Derecho derivado europeo se dejó sentir en la regulación de todos los elementos ambientales: aguas, residuos, evaluación ambiental, costas, espacios naturales, delito ecológico… Todo esto nos hace confiar en que hay indicios de cambios profundos en la reacción del Derecho frente a la problemática ambiental.
Nothing provides as much material for comparative legal study as the great variety of rule-making that characterizes land law. Land law is perhaps the only legal area in which the leveling march of globalized uniformity has had to yield to the progressive development of local customary law. It is a rich and rewarding field for comparative law scholars, a field with a diverse past that resists classification and an equally unpredictable future. This engaging book presents fourteen stimulating essays, all originally presented at the 2001 Annual Colloquium of the International Association of Legal Science, held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, in October 2001. These essays, all by leading scholars in the field, deal with a broad array of significant issues, including such debates as the following: Public vs. private property: a meaningful distinction? How customary law defeats the purpose of state land law Land ownership: to pollute or not to pollute? There are also detailed discussion of the special land needs of small islands, private residential governments, regulatory takings, land transfer, mortgage law, securities in property transactions, housing, town planning, agricultural land use, and water and riparian rights. The scope is global, with attention to the great differences in terminology and even in basic legal concepts. The lasting contribution of this symposium lies in its exposure of the enormous intellectual wealth arising from the numerous different legal techniques used to solve land use problems. No lawyer or legal scholar, no matter how conversant with land law, will come away from this book without valuable new ideas.
In recent times what has become known as "the case of Medellín " has generated a growing interest in the international community. These urban transformation that Medellín has experimented have become a focus of attention and reference for experts in many fields, around the world. The book ́Medellin: Environment, Urbanism and Society ́, that now published the Center for Urban and Environmental Studies, Urbam, of EAFIT University is a testimony of the value given by our culture to the accomplishments of the city, to the idea of the public sphere and the growing relationship between the technical sphere and the political sphere, understood in the broad sense as a form of disciplinary knowledge and construction of civil society. This book brings together a knowledge of the city from multiple perspectives; knowledge that is, without any doubt, impressive for its extension and profoundity, as well as for its capacity to combine objective data with conceptual reflections about the scope and impact of the different perspectives concerning the theme of urban transformation and the different actors that have participated in such processes. The book weaves a broad net over the city, its history and development, adopting a multidisciplinary vision. I think that this will be the first step in creating a speech that might finally liberate itself from the strict disciplinary boundaries, building a trans-disciplinary perspective that can amplify the urban dimension of the city. This is the beginning of a profound and complex reflection that is, at the same time, a project of knowledge and an instrument of action and participation.
Cities of Tomorrow is a critical history of planning in theory and practice in the twentieth century, as well as of the social and economic problems and opportunities that gave rise to it. Trenchant, perceptive, global in coverage, this book is an unrivalled account of its crucial subject. The third edition of Cities of Tomorrow is comprehensively revised to take account of abundant new literature published since its original appearance, and to view the 1990s in historical perspective. This is the definitive edition, reviewing the development of the modern planning movement over the entire span of the twentieth century.
