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Globally, urban planners and decision makers are pursuing place-based initiatives to develop and enhance urban infrastructure to optimise city performance, competitiveness and sustainability credentials. New discourses associated with big data, Building Information Modelling, SMART cities, green and biophilic thinking inform research, policy and practice agendas to varying extents. However, these discourses remain relatively isolated as much city planning is still pursued within traditional sectoral silos hindering integration. This research explores new conceptual ground at the Smart – Natural City interface within a safe interdisciplinary opportunity space. Using the city of Birmingham UK as a case study, a methodology was developed championing co-design, integration and social learning to develop a conceptual framework to navigate the challenges and opportunities at the Smart-Natural city interface. An innovation workshop and supplementary interviews drew upon the insights and experiences of 25 experts leading to the identification of five key spaces for the conceptualisation and delivery at the Smart-Natural city interface. At the core is the space for connectivity; surrounded by spaces for visioning, place-making, citizen-led participatorylearning and monitoring.The framework provides a starting point for improved discussions, understandings and negotiations to cover all components of this particular interface. Our results show the importance of using all spaces within shared narratives; moving towards ‘silver-green’ and living infrastructure and developing data in response to identified priorities. Whilst the need for vision has dominated traditional urban planning discourses we have identified the need for improved connectivity as a prerequisite. The use of all 5 characteristics collectively takes forward the literature on socio-ecological-technological relationships and heralds significant potential to inform and improve city governance frameworks, including the benefits of a transferable deliberative and co-design method that generates ownership with a real stake in the outcomes.

The aim of this paper is to present the effectiveness of participatory information and communication technology (ICT) tools for urban planning, in particular, supporting bottom-up decision-making in urban management and governance.

This work begins with a presentation on the state of the art literature on the existing participatory approaches and their contribution to urban planning and the policymaking process. Furthermore, a case study, namely, the UrbanAPI project, is selected to identify new visualisation and simulation tools applied at different urban scales. These tools are applied in four different European cities – Vienna, Bologna, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Ruse – with the objective to identify the data needs for application development, commonalities in requirements of such participatory tools and their expected impact in policy and decision-making processes.

The case study presents three planning applications: three-dimensional Virtual Reality at neighbourhood scale, Public Motion Explorer at city-wide scale and Urban Growth Simulation at city-region scale. UrbanAPI applications indicate both active and passive participation secured by applying these tools at different urban scales and hence facilitate evidence-based urban planning decision-making. Structured engagement with the city administrations indicates commonalities in user needs and application requirements creating the potential for the development of generic features in these ICT tools which can be applied to many other cities throughout Europe.

This paper presents new ICT-enabled participatory urban planning tools at different urban scales to support collaborative decision-making and urban policy development. Various technologies are used for the development of these IT tools and applied to the real environment of four European cities.

February 28, 1968 Factory — Lighting — “Sufficient and suitable” — Effective lighting provided — Lighting not switched on — Whether breach of statutory duty — Roadway 30 feet wide — Whether “passage” or “gangway” — Factories Act, 1961 (9 & 10 Eliz.II, c.34), ss.5(1), 28(1).

It tends to be called the corner shop, mainly because it occupied a corner building for extra window space, but also due to the impetus given to the name by television series seeking to portray life as it used to be. The village grew from the land, a permanent stopping place for the wandering tribes of early Britain, the Saxons, Welsh, Angles; it furnished the needs of those forming it and eventually a village store or shop was one of those needs. Where the needs have remained unchanged, the village is much as it has always been, a historical portrait. The town grew out of the village, sometimes a conglomerate of several adjacent villages. In the days before cheap transport, the corner shop, in euphoric business terms, would be described as “a little gold mine”, able to hold its own against the first introduction of multiple chain stores, but after 1914 everything changed. Edwardian England was blasted out of existence by the holocaust of 1914–18, destroyed beyond all hope of recovery. The patterns of retail trading changed and have been continuously changing ever since. A highly developed system of cheap bus transport took village housewives and also those in the outlying parts of town into busy central shopping streets. The jaunt of the week for the village wife who saw little during the working days; the corner shop remained mainly for things they had “run out of”. Every village had its “uppety” madames however who affected disdain of the corner shop and its proprietors, preferring to swish their skirts in more fashionable emporia, basking in the obsequious reception by the proprietor and his equally servile staff.

The purpose of this paper is to inform businesses about the best practice in getting the most out of the government‐funded Knowledge Transfer Partnerships – a method of transferring university expertise to the benefit of business.

The paper describes how these Knowledge Transfer Partnerships work, the kind of projects that get funded, and the benefits that surveyed companies have experienced. It then gives three case studies of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships to illustrate how they work.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships significantly improve productivity and profitability in most businesses where the projects take place. They also cover a broad range of projects than simply technology transfer.

The paper is valuable to businesses, especially SMEs, who might be looking to undertake projects that involve some innovative or research element as it explains how to obtain significant government funding.

Historians have long understood that transforming people into property was the defining characteristic of Atlantic World slavery. This chapter examines litigation in British colonial Vice Admiralty Courts in order to show how English legal categories and procedures facilitated this process of dehumanization. In colonies where people were classified as chattel property, litigants transformed local Vice Admiralty Courts into slave courts by analogizing human beings to ships and cargo. Doing so made sound economic sense from their perspective; it gave colonists instant access to an early modern English legal system that was centered on procedures and categories. But for people of African descent, it had decidedly negative consequences. Indeed, when colonists treated slaves as property, they helped to create a world in which Africans were not just like things, they were things. Through the very act of categorization, they rendered factual what had been a mere supposition: that Africans were less than human.

This paper sets out to engage with current debate over local foods and the emergence of what has been called an alternative food economy and to examine the distribution of local food activity in the South West and West Midlands regions of England.

Databases on local food activity were constructed for each region from secondary sources. The data were mapped by means of choropleth mapping at postcode district level.

Although local food activity is flourishing in the South West and, to a lesser extent, the West Midlands, it is unevenly distributed. Concentrations occur in both regions. These may relate to a variety of factors, including: proximity to urban centres and particular trunk roads, landscape designations and the geography of farming types. The products that tend to predominate – horticulture, dairy, meat and poultry – can either be sold directly to consumers with little or no processing, or remain readily identifiable and defining ingredients after being processed.

The findings require testing through a larger‐scale survey using primary data. Many local food producers also supply conventional markets. Further research is required into their reasons for doing so and into whether the local food sector can become a significant alternative to conventional food supply chains.

The paper maps local food activity in England on a larger scale than attempted hitherto. It contributes to debate over the alternative food economy and provides a basis for further empirical research.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The UK government is providing part of the funding for university graduates to work in those businesses creating innovative, future‐focused products and services. Succinctly put, the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) initiative is about subsidizing top graduate talent to work on specialist projects for up to three years. The rationale is that it unlocks the expertise of the universities in the favour of business. It's a simple formula that can boast a number of early successes.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

A NEW metal finishing plant of advanced design has been installed by United and General Engineering (Victoria) Co. Ltd., at the David Brown subsidiary of Harrison, McGregor and Guest Ltd., of Leigh, Lancashire, where farm implements and sheet metal assemblies of David Brown tractors are made. Its installation has obviated a production bottleneck—existing paint plant facilities were inadequate for rising output—and has been designed to cope with increases in production up to 100%.