Regional and Urban Economics and Economic Development
Regional and Urban Economics and Economic Development

Author: Mary E. Edwards

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-25

Total Pages: 741

ISBN-13: 1351551671

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Thorough and authoritative, Regional and Urban Economics and Economic Development: Theory and Methods provides students with a sound approach to analyzing the economic progress of a region or urban area. The textbook is divided into four sections for ease of reference. The first section, Market Areas and Firm Location Analysis introduces spatial economics and location theory, while the next section, Regional Growth and Development analyzes regional growth and development models and policy. Introducing the foundations of urban economics, Urban Land Use and Urban Form examines land rent, land use patterns, and the effects of attempts to control land uses. The final section, Urban Problems and Policy, investigates local public finance and introduces the policy analysis involved in countering urban problems. Addressing these topics from the perspectives of how they affect the population at large and how they become established within public policy, Regional and Urban Economics and Economic Development: Theory and Methods provides students with an essential foundation not only to understand but also to contemplate the dynamics of varying economic factors as they relate to an area's growth.

The New Urban Infrastructure
The New Urban Infrastructure

Author: Jurgen Schmandt

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1990-07-24

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13:

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Traditionally, city governments have played an active role in the administration of public works that were necessary to the economic survival of the community. However, a major element of the new urban infrastructure, advanced telecommunications networks, are developing in such a way that the municipal role in its development is minimal. This book presents new information on the rapidly changing configuration of urban telecommunications. The editors examine important planning data illustrating how major metro areas are dealing with new opportunities in telecommumication. They describe the interplay among current stakeholders in this area: public utility commissions, city planners and service providers, state governments, telecommunications users (especially large businesses), and consumer groups. The book provides case studies of major U.S. cities, one Canadian city, a metropolitan area on the U.S.-Mexican border, as well as smaller cities that have positioned themselves for international economic trade whereby telecommunications will play a major role. The contributors find that cities need to be more involved in understanding how telecommunications systems are changing and in planning how they can best exploit new opportunities afforded by these systems. They contend that while telecommunication may not cause economic development, it seems to be a necessary condition for it. The book offers clear illustrations of the extent to which business users depend on communications. The ability of business and government to bypass the local carrier has important implications for the public network and for cities in their use of telecommunication.

Transhumanism
Transhumanism

Author: Andrew Pilsch

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1452954887

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Transhumanism posits that humanity is on the verge of rapid evolutionary change as a result of emerging technologies and increased global consciousness. However, this insight is dismissed as a naive and controversial reframing of posthumanist thought, having also been vilified as “the most dangerous idea in the world” by Francis Fukuyama. In this book, Andrew Pilsch counters these critiques, arguing instead that transhumanism’s utopian rhetoric actively imagines radical new futures for the species and its habitat. Pilsch situates contemporary transhumanism within the longer history of a rhetorical mode he calls “evolutionary futurism” that unifies diverse texts, philosophies, and theories of science and technology that anticipate a radical explosion in humanity’s cognitive, physical, and cultural potentialities. By conceptualizing transhumanism as a rhetoric, as opposed to an obscure group of fringe figures, he explores the intersection of three major paradigms shaping contemporary Western intellectual life: cybernetics, evolutionary biology, and spiritualism. In analyzing this collision, his work traces the belief in a digital, evolutionary, and collective future through a broad range of texts written by theologians and mystics, biologists and computer scientists, political philosophers and economic thinkers, conceptual artists and Golden Age science fiction writers. Unearthing the long history of evolutionary futurism, Pilsch concludes, allows us to more clearly see the novel contributions that transhumanism offers for escaping our current geopolitical bind by inspiring radical utopian thought.

The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Author: John Perkins

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2016-02-09

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1626566755

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Featuring 15 explosive new chapters, this new edition of the New York Times bestseller brings the story of Economic Hit Men up-to-date and, chillingly, home to the U.S.―but it also gives us hope and the tools to fight back. The previous edition of this now-classic book revealed the existence and subversive manipulations of "economic hit men. John Perkins wrote that they are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. In Perkins's case the tool was debt-convincing strategically important countries to borrow huge amounts of money for enormous, development projects that served the very rich while driving the country deeper into poverty and debt. And once indebted, these countries could be controlled. In this latest edition, Perkins provides revealing new details about how he and others did their work. But more importantly, in an explosive new section he describes how the EHM tools are being used around the world more widely than ever-even in the U. S. itself. The cancer has metastasized, yet most people still aren't aware of it. Fear and debt drive the EHM system. We are hammered with messages that terrify us into believing that we must pay any price, assume any debt, to stop the enemies who, we are told, lurk at our doorsteps. The EHM system-employing false economics, bribes, surveillance, deception, debt, coups, assassinations, unbridled military power-has become the dominant system of economics, government, and society today. It has created what Perkins calls a Death Economy. But Perkins offers hope: he concludes with dozens of specific, concrete suggestions for actions all of us can take to wrest control of our world away from the economic hit men, and help give birth to a Life Economy.