Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes

Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes

Author: Carl Steinitz

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781559632249

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Leading landscape architect and planner Carl Steinitz has developed an innovative GIS-based simulation modeling strategy that considers the demographic, economic, physical, and environmental processes of an area and projects the consequences to that area of various land-use planning and management decisions. The results of such projections, and the approach itself, are known as "alternative futures." Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes presents for the first time in book form a detailed case study of one alternative futures project—an analysis of development and conservation options for the Upper San Pedro River Basin in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. The area is internationally recognized for its high levels of biodiversity, and like many regions, it is facing increased pressures from nearby population centers, agriculture, and mining interests. Local officials and others planning for the future of the region are seeking to balance the needs of the natural environment with those of local human communities. The book describes how the research team, working with local stakeholders, developed a set of scenarios which encompassed public opinion on the major issues facing the area. They then simulated an array of possible patterns of land uses and assessed the resultant impacts on biodiversity and related environmental factors including vegetation, hydrology, and visual preference. The book gives a comprehensive overview of how the study was conducted, along with descriptions and analysis of the alternative futures that resulted. It includes more than 30 charts and graphs and more than 150 color figures. Scenario-based studies of alternative futures offer communities a powerful tool for making better-informed decisions today, which can help lead to an improved future. Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes presents an important look at this promising approach and how it works for planners, landscape architects, local officials, and anyone involved with making land use decisions on local and regional scales.


City Futures in the Age of a Changing Climate

City Futures in the Age of a Changing Climate

Author: Tony Fry

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-08-27

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1317659023

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This book goes beyond current ways that the impact of climate change upon the city are understood. In doing so it addresses climate in a variety of its connotations. It looks to the nomadic behaviour patterns of the past for lessons for today’s population unsettlement, and argues that as human survival will increasingly be linked directly to movement, the city can no longer be defined as a constrained space. The impacts of climate change must be understood as a combination of the actual and the expected, and have to be addressed both practically and culturally. City Futures in an Age of Changing Climate looks at how cities can adapt and respond to the unsustainable conditions they are now facing. The book considers possible post-urban futures, exposing a range of very different urban forms, and addresses the concept of fragmentation; the breaking up of any coherent economic or cultural nucleic urban spaces. Urban planners, designers, development practitioners, and anyone seeking to understand what the future is likely to look like for our cities, and how to prepare for it, will find this an essential read.


The Future of Business

The Future of Business

Author: Rohit Talwar

Publisher: Fast Future Publishing Ltd

Published: 2015-03-15

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 0993295819

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The Future of Business explores how the commercial world is being transformed by the complex interplay between social, economic and political shifts, disruptive ideas, bold strategies and breakthroughs in science and technology. Over 60 contributors from 21 countries explore how the business landscape will be reshaped by factors as diverse as the modification of the human brain and body, 3D printing, alternative energy sources, the reinvention of government, new business models, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and the potential emergence of the Star Trek economy.


Reshaping Change

Reshaping Change

Author: Patrick Dawson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-22

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1351264907

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This book views change as an ongoing process that should not be solidified or treated as a series of linear events. In drawing on data collected from over 40 years of research, it highlights the theoretical and practical value of using a processual perspective. Illustrative examples from a range of organizations including: Micro-X, General Motors, Pirelli Cables, BHP Billiton, Royal Dutch Shell, British Rail, British Aerospace, Hewlett Packard, Laubman and Pank and the CSIRO make the approach understandable and accessible to both researchers and practitioners. In a theoretical exploration of temporal context, sociomaterial relations and power-political processes the dynamics of changing organizations is brought to the fore and the implication for reshaping change examined. On the practice of engaging in longitudinal research, study design, data collection and processual analysis, as well as the write-up and dissemination of findings, are all considered. This is an innovative and highly practical research monograph that captures the truly complex processes of changing organizations and illustrates how these are best understood from a processual perspective.


Changing Planet, Changing Health

Changing Planet, Changing Health

Author: Paul R. Epstein

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-04-04

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0520269098

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"Spotlights the threats of global warming and offers a systems approach for possible treatments. Decades spent as a physician and public health scientist have allowed Dr. Epstein to examine and now comment on the dynamics of global politics, climate change, and global health. Together with journalist Dan Ferber, he expresses a fundamental need for communities (of all scales) and industries (of all kinds) to reach together for a low-carbon economy. They make their argument by combining personal accounts with accurate histories and industry case studies. What enfolds is a prescriptive narrative for repairing an ailing planet"--Provided by publisher.


Heritage Futures

Heritage Futures

Author: Rodney Harrison

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2020-07-28

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 1787356000

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Preservation of natural and cultural heritage is often said to be something that is done for the future, or on behalf of future generations, but the precise relationship of such practices to the future is rarely reflected upon. Heritage Futures draws on research undertaken over four years by an interdisciplinary, international team of 16 researchers and more than 25 partner organisations to explore the role of heritage and heritage-like practices in building future worlds. Engaging broad themes such as diversity, transformation, profusion and uncertainty, Heritage Futures aims to understand how a range of conservation and preservation practices across a number of countries assemble and resource different kinds of futures, and the possibilities that emerge from such collaborative research for alternative approaches to heritage in the Anthropocene. Case studies include the cryopreservation of endangered DNA in frozen zoos, nuclear waste management, seed biobanking, landscape rewilding, social history collecting, space messaging, endangered language documentation, built and natural heritage management, domestic keeping and discarding practices, and world heritage site management.


Driving Social Change

Driving Social Change

Author: Paul C. Light

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2010-11-17

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 047094014X

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Strategies for long-term social impact This important new book illustrates how to create the social breakthroughs needed to solve urgent global threats such as poverty, disease, and hunger. It then turns to three alternative, but complementary, paths to social breakthrough: social protecting, social exploring, and social advocacy, providing a detailed map of the journey from initial commitment to a world of justice and opportunity Examines the current condition of the social impact infrastructure Offers strategies for how to remedy the steady weakening of our social-impact infrastructure Provides tactics to build strong social organizations and networks Illustrates dynamic methods to respond to constant economic and social change Author Paul Light believes we should be less concerned about the tools of agitation (social entrepreneurship, social protecting, social exploring, and social advocacy) and more concerned about the disruption and replacement of the status quo. Timely in its urgency, this book describes the revolutionary social impact cycle, which provides a new approach for framing the debate about urgent threats.


The Future of Nursing

The Future of Nursing

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2011-02-08

Total Pages: 700

ISBN-13: 0309208955

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The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.


Anthropologies and Futures

Anthropologies and Futures

Author: Juan Francisco Salazar

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1000190145

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Anthropology has a critical, practical role to play in contemporary debates about futures. This game-changing new book presents new ways of conceptualising how to engage with a future-oriented research agenda, demonstrating how anthropologists can approach futures both theoretically and practically, and introducing a set of innovative research methods to tackle this field of research.Anthropology and Futures brings together a group of leading scholars from across the world, including Sarah Pink, Rayna Rapp, Faye Ginsburg and Paul Stoller. Firmly grounded in ethnographic fieldwork experience, the book’s fifteen chapters traverse ethnographies with people living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda, disability activists in the U.S., young Muslim women in Copenhagen, refugees in Milan, future-makers in Barcelona, planning and land futures in the UK, the design of workspaces in Melbourne, rewilding in the French Pyrenees, and speculative ethnographies among emerging communities in Antarctica. Taking a strong interdisciplinary approach, the authors respond to growing interest in the topic of futures in anthropology and beyond. This ground-breaking text is a call for more engaged, interventional and applied anthropologies. It is essential reading for students and researchers in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, design and research methods.