Friday, June 29, 2012

Urban planning ? SamSung Cell Phone Accessories ? Mobile Cases

HistoryAs an organized profession, urban planning has only existed for the last 60 years[citation needed]. However, most settlements and cities show forethought and conscious design in their layout and functioning.Agriculture and other techniques facilitated larger populations than the very small communities of the Paleolithic. It may have caused stronger, more coercive governments at the same time. The pre-Classical and Classical ages saw a number of cities laid out according to fixed plans, though many tended to develop organically.Designed cities were characteristic of the totalitarian Mesopotamian, Harrapan, and Egyptian civilizations of the third millennium BCE.Distinct characteristics of urban planning from remains of the cities of Harappa, Lothal and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley Civilization (in modern-day northwestern India and Pakistan) lead archeologists to conclude that they are the earliest examples of deliberately planned and managed cities. The streets of these early cities were often paved and laid out at right angles in a grid pattern, with a hierarchy of streets from major boulevards to residential alleys. Archaeological evidence suggests that many Harrapan houses were laid out to protect from noise and enhance residential privacy; also, they often had their own water wells for probably both sanitary and ritual purposes. These ancient cities were unique in that they often had drainage systems, seemingly tied to a well-developed ideal of urban sanitation.Ur, located near the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in modern day Iraq also had urban planning in later periods. The Greek Hippodamus (c. 407 BC) is widely considered the father of city planning in the West, for his design of Miletus; Alexander commissioned him to lay out his new city of Alexandria, the grandest example of idealized urban planning of the Mediterranean world, where regularity was aided in large part by its level site near a mouth of the Nile.The ancient Romans used a consolidated scheme for city planning, developed for military defense and civil convenience. The basic plan is a central forum with city services, surrounded by a compact rectilinear grid of streets and wrapped in a wall for defense. To reduce travel times, two diagonal streets cross the square grid corner-to-corner, passing through the central square. A river usually flowed through the city, to provide water, transport, and sewage disposal. Many European towns, such as Turin, still preserve the remains of these schemes. The Romans had a very logical way of designing their cities. They laid out the streets at right angles, in the form of a square grid. All the roads were equal in width and length, except for two. These two roads formed the center of the grid and intersected in the middle. One went East/West, the other North/South. They were slightly wider than the others. All roads were made of carefully fitted stones and smaller hard packed stones. Bridges were also constructed where needed. Each square marked by four roads was called an insula, the Roman equivalent of modern city blocks.Each insula was 80?yards (73?m) square, with the land within each insula divided. As the city developed, each insula would eventually be filled with buildings of various shapes and sizes and would be crisscrossed with back roads and alleys. Most insulae were given to the first settlers of a budding new Roman city, but each person had to pay to construct their own house.The city was surrounded by a wall to protect the city from invaders and other enemies, and to mark the city limits. Areas outside of the city limits were left open as farmland. At the end of each main road, there would be a large gateway with watchtowers. A portcullis covered the opening when the city was under siege, and additional watchtowers were constructed around the rest of the city wall. A water aqueduct was built outside of the city?s walls.The collapse of Roman civilization saw the end of their urban planning, among many other arts. Urban development in the Middle Ages, characteristically focused on a fortress, a fortified abbey, or a (sometimes abandoned) Roman nucleus, occurred ?like the annular rings of a tree? whether in an extended village or the center of a larger city. Since the new center was often on high, defensible ground, the city plan took on an organic character, following the irregularities of elevation contours like the shapes that result from agricultural terracing.The ideal centrally-planned urban space: Sposalizio by Raphael Sanzio, 1504The ideal of wide streets and orderly cities was not lost, however. A few medieval cities were admired for their wide thoroughfares and other orderly arrangements, but the juridical chaos of medieval cities (where the administration of streets was sometimes hereditary with various noble families), and the characteristic tenacity of medieval Europeans in legal matters, prevented frequent or large-scale urban planning until the Renaissance and the enormous strengthening of all central governments, from city-states to the kings of France, characteristic of that epoch.Florence was an early model of the new urban planning, which rearranged itself into a star-shaped layout adapted from the new star fort, designed to resist cannon fire. This model was widely imitated, reflecting the enormous cultural power of Florence in this age; ?[t]he Renaissance was hypnotized by one city type which for a century and a half from Filarete to Scamozzi was impressed upon utopian schemes: this is the star-shaped city?. Radial streets extend outward from a defined center of military, communal or spiritual power.Only in ideal cities did a centrally-planned structure stand at the heart, as in Raphael?s Sposalizio of 1504 (illustration); as built, the unique example of a rationally-planned quattrocento new city center, that of Vigevano, 1493-95, resembles a closed space instead, surrounded by arcading.Filarete?s ideal city, building on hints in Leone Battista Alberti?s De re aedificatoria, was named ?Sforzinda? in compliment to his patron; its twelve-pointed shape, circumscribable by a ?perfect? Pythagorean figure, the circle, takes no heed of its undulating terrain in Filarete?s manuscript. And, all this occurred in the cities, but ordinarily not in the industrial suburbs characteristic of this era (see Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life), which remained disorderly and characterized by crowded conditions and organic growth.Following the 1695 bombardment of Brussels by French troops of King Louis XIV, in which a large part of the city center was destroyed, Governor Max Emanuel proposed using the reconstruction to completely change the layout and architectural style of the city. His plan was to transform the medieval city into a city of the new baroque style, especially modeled on Turin, with a logical street layout, with straight avenues offering long, uninterrupted views flanked by buildings of a uniform size. This plan was opposed by the residents and municipal authorities, who wanted a rapid reconstruction, had no resources for grandiose proposals, and resented what they considered the imposition of a new, foreign, architectural style. In the actual reconstruction, the general layout of the city was conserved, but it was not completely identical to that before the cataclysm. Despite the necessity of rapid reconstruction and the lack of financial means, authorities did take several measures to improve traffic flow, sanitation and the general aesthetics of the city. Many streets were made as wide as possible to improve traffic flow.In the 1990s, the University of Kentucky voted the Italian town of Todi as ideal city and ?most livable town in the world?, the place where man and nature, history and tradition come together to create a site of excellence. In Italy, other examples of ideal cities planned according to scientific methods, are: Urbino, Pienza, Ferrara, San Giovanni Valdarno, San Lorenzo Nuovo.Many cities in Central American civilizations also planned their cities, including sewage systems and running water. In Mexico, Tenochtitlan, was the capital of the Aztec empire, built on an island in Lake Texcoco in what is now the Federal District in central Mexico. At its height, Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world, with close to 250,000 inhabitants.[citation needed]Shibam in Yemen features over 500 tower houses, each one rising 5 to 11 storeys high, with each floor being an apartment occupied by a single family. The city has some of the tallest mudbrick houses in the world, with some of them being over 100 feet high (over 30 meters).In developed countries (Western Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia), planning and architecture can be said to have gone through various stages of general consensus in the last 200 years. Firstly, there was the industrialised city of the 19th century, where control of building was largely held by businesses and the wealthy elite. Around 1900, there began to be a movement for providing citizens, especially factory workers, with healthier environments. The concept of garden cities arose and several model towns were built, such as Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City, the world?s first garden cities, in Hertfordshire, UK. However, these were principally small scale in size, typically dealing with only a few thousand residents.It wasn?t until the 1920s that modernism began to surface. Based on the ideas of Le Corbusier and utilising new skyscraper building techniques, the modernist city stood for the elimination of disorder, congestion and the small scale, replacing them instead with preplanned and widely spaced freeways and tower blocks set within gardens. There were plans for large scale rebuilding of cities, such as the Plan Voisin (based on Le Corbusier?s Ville Contemporaine), which proposed clearing and rebuilding most of central Paris. No large-scale plans were implemented until after World War II however. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, housing shortages caused by wartime destruction led many cities to subsidize housing blocks. Planners used the opportunity to implement the modernist ideal of towers surrounded by gardens. The most prominent example of an entire modernist city is Brasilia, constructed between 1956 and 1960 in Brazil. ReactionBy the late 1960s and early 1970s, many planners realized that modernism?s clean lines and lack of human scale also sapped vitality from the community. The symptoms were high crime rates and social problems.Modernism ended in the 1970s when the construction of the cheap, uniform tower blocks ended in most countries, such as Britain and France. Since then many have been demolished and replaced by more conventional housing. Rather than attempting to eliminate all disorder, planning now concentrates on individualism and diversity in society and the economy. This is the post-modernist era.Minimally-planned cities still exist. Houston is a large city (with a metropolitan population of 5.5 million) in a developed country, without a comprehensive zoning ordinance. Houston does, however, restrict development densities and mandate parking, even though specific land uses are not regulated. Also, private-sector developers in Houston use subdivision covenants and deed restrictions to effect land use restrictions resembling zoning laws. Houston voters have rejected comprehensive zoning ordinances three times since 1948. Even without traditional zoning, metropolitan Houston displays large-scale land use patterns resembling zoned regions comparable in age and fpopulation, such as Dallas. This suggests that nonregulatory factors such as urban infrastructure and financing, may be at least as important as zoning laws. Sustainable development and sustainabilitySustainable development and sustainability influence today?s urban planners. Some planners say that modern lifestyles use too many natural resources, polluting or destroying ecosystems, increasing social inequality overheating urban heat islands, and causing climate changes. Many urban planners therefore advocate sustainable cities.However, sustainable development is a recent, controversial concept. Wheeler, in his 1998 article, defines sustainable urban development to be ?development that improves the long-term social and ecological health of cities and towns.? He then sketches a ?sustainable? city?s features. These include compact, efficient land use, less automobile use yet with better access, efficient resource use, less pollution and waste, the restoration of natural systems, good housing and living environments, a healthy social ecology, a sustainable economy, community participation and involvement and preservation of local culture and wisdom.As they always have, urban planners try to implement widely accepted social policies and programs. Sustainability must be widely supported by society before planning can realistically modify actual institutions and regions. Real implementations are often complex compromises.Collaborative Strategic Goal Oriented Programming (CoSGOP) is a collaborative and communicative way of strategic programming, decision ? making implementation and monitoring oriented towards defined and specific goals. Furthermore it is to be based on sound analysis of available information, shall put emphasis on stake-holder participation, is expected to create awareness among actors, and shall be oriented towards the management of development processes. It was adopted like a theoretical model as a starting point for an analysis of redevelopment processes in large urban distressed areas in European Cities. ( see UDA?: Improving quality of life in Large Urban Distressed Areas project Research funded by the European Commission, EVK4-CT2002-00081).Background of CoSGOP?CoSGOP has been derived from goal oriented planning (Gesellschaft fr Technische Zusammenarbeit ? GTZ 1988). Goal oriented planning was originally oriented towards the elaboration and implementation of projects based on a logical framework approach which was useful for embedding specific project in a wider development frame and defining its major elements. This approach showed its weakness because its logical rules were strictly applied and the defined expert language did not encourage the actor participation. Considering this background, CoSGOP introduced a new approach characterised by:communication with the active involvement of the stakeholders and those who are to be affected by the programm;strategic planning based on the identification of strengths and weakness, opportunities and threats, as well as on scenario building and visioning; the definition of goals as the basis for action regarding the improvement process; long-term flexible programming of interventions by the different stakeholders.Element of CoSGOPCoSGOP is not a planning method but a process model. It provides a framework for communication and joint decision-making in a structured process characterised by feed-back loops and it facilitates a learning process of all the stakeholders involved. The essential elements of CoSGOP are:Analysis of stakeholders (This is oriented towards identifying stakeholders perception of problems and their interest and expectations);Analysis of problems and potentials (This analysis does not only include an overview over objective problems but also of problems and potentials as perceived by stakeholders);Development of goals, improvement priorities and alternatives (The definition of goals, objectives for development requires intensive communication and an active participation of the concerned stakeholders);Specification of an improvement programme and main activities (This programme is based on clear priorities defined with the stakeholders);Assessment of possible impacts of the improvement programme;Definition and detailed specification of key project and their implementation;Continuous monitoring of improvement activities, feed-back and adjustment of the programme (Monitoring and feed-back are key elements of learning process and for monitoring success and failure is relevant not only the technical and economic information but also the perception of the stakeholders).ApplicationCoSGOP has been applied in European cross-border policy programming, as well in local and regional development programming. Recently (2004), CoSGOP model has been applied in the LUDA Project and it was improved starting from analysis of European experience about urban regeneration projects.References Collaborative Planning in the United StatesCollaborative Planning in the US arose in response to the inadequacy of traditional public participation techniques to provide real opportunity for the public to make the decisions affecting their communities. Collaborative planning is a method designed to empower stakeholders by elevating them to the level of decision-makers through a process of direct engagement and dialogue between stakeholders and public agencies designed to solicit ideas, active involvement and participation in the community planning process. Active public involvement helps Planners create better outcomes by informing them of the public needs and preferences and by using the public local knowledge to inform projects. When properly administered collaboration can result in more meaningful participation and better, more creative outcomes to persistent problems than traditional participation methods can achieve. It enables planners to make decisions that reflect community needs and values; it fosters faith in the wisdom and utility of the resulting project, and the community is given a personal stake in its success.Experiences in Portland and Seattle have demonstrated that successful collaborative planning is dependent upon a number of interrelated factors: the process must be truly inclusive with all stakeholders and affected groups invited to the table; the community must have final decision-making authority; full government commitment ? of both financial and intellectual resources ? must be manifest; participants should be given clear objectives by the Planning staff who facilitate the process by providing guidance, consultancy, expert opinions and research; and facilitators should be trained in conflict resolution and community organization. Aspects of planning Urban aestheticsTowns and cities have been planned with aesthetics in mind. Here in Bath, England, 18th-century private sector development was designed to appear attractive.In developed countries, there has been a backlash against excessive human-made clutter in the visual environment, such as signposts, signs, and hoardings. Other issues that generate strong debate among urban designers are tensions between peripheral growth, housing density and new settlements. There are also debates about the mixing tenures and land uses, versus distinguishing geographic zones where different uses dominate. Regardless, all successful urban planning considers urban character, local identity, respects heritage, pedestrians, traffic, utilities and natural hazards.Planners can help manage the growth of cities, applying tools like zoning and growth management to manage the uses of land. Historically, many of the cities now thought the most beautiful are the result of dense, long lasting systems of prohibitions and guidance about building sizes, uses and features. These allowed substantial freedoms, yet enforce styles, safety, and often materials in practical ways. Many conventional planning techniques are being repackaged using the contemporary term smart growth.There are some cities that have been planned from conception, and while the results often don?t turn out quite as planned, evidence of the initial plan often remains. (See List of planned cities) SafetyThe medieval walled city of Carcassonne in France is built upon high ground to provide maximum protection from attackers.Historically within the Middle East, Europe and the rest of the Old World, settlements were located on higher ground (for defense) and close to fresh water sources[citation needed]. Cities have often grown onto coastal and flood plains at risk of floods and storm surges. Urban planners must consider these threats. If the dangers can be localised then the affected regions can be made into parkland or green belt, often with the added benefit of open space provision.Extreme weather, flood, or other emergencies can often be greatly mitigated with secure emergency evacuation routes and emergency operations centres. These are relatively inexpensive and unintrusive, and many consider them a reasonable precaution for any urban space. Many cities will also have planned, built safety features, such as levees, retaining walls, and shelters.In recent years, practitioners have also been expected to maximize the accessibility of an area to people with different abilities, practicing the notion of ?inclusive design,? to anticipate criminal behaviour and consequently to ?design-out crime? and to consider ?traffic calming? or ?pedestrianisation? as ways of making urban life more pleasant.Some city planners try to control criminality with structures designed from theories such as socio-architecture or environmental determinism. Refer to Foucault and the Encyclopedia of the Prison System for more details. These theories say that an urban environment can influence individuals? obedience to social rules and level of power. The theories often say that psychological pressure develops in more densely developed, unadorned areas. This stress causes some crimes and some use of illegal drugs. The antidote is usually more individual space and better, more beautiful design in place of functionalism.Oscar Newman defensible space theory cites the modernist housing projects of the 1960s as an example of environmental determinism, where large blocks of flats are surrounded by shared and disassociated public areas, which are hard for residents to identify with. As those on lower incomes cannot hire others to maintain public space such as security guards or grounds keepers, and because no individual feels personally responsible, there was a general deterioration of public space leading to a sense of alienation and social disorder.Jane Jacobs is another notable environmental determinist and is associated with the ?eyes on the street? concept. By improving atural surveillance of shared land and facilities of nearby residents by literally increasing the number of people who can see it, and increasing the familiarity of residents, as a collective, residents can more easily detect undesirable or criminal behaviour. However, this is not a new concept. This was prevalent throughout the middle eastern world during the time of Mohamad. It was not only reflected in the general structure of the outside of the home but also the inside. (refer to various religious texts and archaeological sites)The ?broken-windows? theory argues that small indicators of neglect, such as broken windows and unkempt lawns, promote a feeling that an area is in a state of decay. Anticipating decay, people likewise fail to maintain their own properties. The theory suggests that abandonment causes crime, rather than crime causing abandonment.Some planning methods might help an elite group to control ordinary citizens. Haussmann?s renovation of Paris created a system of wide boulevards which prevented the construction of barricades in the streets and eased the movement of military troops. In Rome, the Fascists in the 1930s created ex novo many new suburbs in order to concentrate criminals and poorer classes away from the elegant town.Other social theories point out that in Britain and most countries since the 18th century, the transformation of societies from rural agriculture to industry caused a difficult adaptation to urban living. These theories emphasize that many planning policies ignore personal tensions, forcing individuals to live in a condition of perpetual extraneity to their cities. Many people therefore lack the comfort of feeling ?at home? when at home. Often these theorists seek a reconsideration of commonly used ?standards? that rationalize the outcomes of a free (relatively unregulated) market. SlumsMain article: SlumsThe rapid urbanization of the last century caused more slums in the major cities of the world, particularly in developing countries. Planning resources and strategies are needed to address the problems of slum development. Many planners are calling for slum improvement, particularly the Commonwealth Association of Planners. When urban planners work on slums, they must cope with racial and cultural differences to ensure that racial steering does not occur.Slum were often ?fixed? by clearance. However, more creative solutions are beginning to emerge such as Nairobi?s ?Camp of Fire? program, where established slum-dwellers promise to build proper houses, schools, and community centers without government money, in return for land on which they have been illegally squatting on for 30 years. The ?Camp of Fire? program is one of many similar projects initiated by Slum Dwellers International, which has programs in Africa, Asia, and South America. Urban decayMain article: Urban decayUrban decay is a process by which a city, or a part of a city, falls into a state of disrepair and neglect. It is characterized by depopulation, economic restructuring, property abandonment, high unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and desolate urban landscapes.During the 1970s and 1980s, urban decay was often associated with central areas of cities in North America and Europe. During this time, changes in global economies, demographics, transportation, and policies fostered urban decay. Many planners spoke of ?white flight? during this time. This pattern was different than the pattern of ?outlying slums? and ?suburban ghettos? found in many cities outside of North America and Western Europe, where central urban areas actually had higher real estate values.Starting in the 1990s, many of the central urban areas in North America have been experiencing a reversal of the urban decay, with rising real estate values, smarter development, demolition of obsolete social housing and a wider variety of housing choices. Reconstruction and renewalMain article: Urban RenewalThe overall area plan for the reconstruction of Kabul?s Old City area, the proposed Kabul ? City of Light Development.Areas devastated by war or invasion challenge urban planners. Resources are scarce. The existing population has needs. Buildings, roads, services and basic infrastructure like power, water and sewerage are often damaged, but with salvageable parts. Historic, religious or social centers also need to be preserved and re-integrated into the new city plan. A prime example of this is the capital city of Kabul, Afghanistan, which, after decades of civil war and occupation, has regions of rubble and desolation. Despite this, the indigenous population continues to live in the area, constructing makeshift homes and shops out of salvaged materials. Any reconstruction plan, such as Hisham Ashkouri?s City of Light Development, needs to be sensitive to the needs of this community and its existing culture and businesses.Urban Reconstruction Development plans must also work with government agencies as well as private interests to develop workable designs. TransportMain article: Transportation planningVery densely built-up areas require high capacity urban transit, and urban planners must consider these factors in long term plans(Canary Wharf tube station).Although an important factor, there is a complex relationship between urban densities and car use.Transport within urbanized areas presents unique problems. The density of an urban environment increases traffic, which can harm businesses and increase pollution unless properly managed. Parking space for private vehicles requires the construction of large parking garages in high density areas. This space could often be more valuable for other development.Good planning uses transit oriented development, which attempts to place higher densities of jobs or residents near high-volume transportation. For example, some cities permit commerce and multi-story apartment buildings only within one block of train stations and multilane boulevards, and accept single-family dwellings and parks farther away.Floor area ratio is often used to measure density. This is the floor area of buildings divided by the land area. Ratios below 1.5 are low density. Ratios above five very high density. Most exurbs are below two, while most city centres are well above five. Walk-up apartments with basement garages can easily achieve a density of three. Skyscrapers easily achieve densities of thirty or more.City authorities may try to encourage higher densities to reduce per-capita infrastructure costs. In the UK, recent years have seen a concerted effort to increase the density of residential development in order to better achieve sustainable development. Increasing development density has the advantage of making mass transport systems, district heating and other community facilities (schools, health centres, etc) more viable. However critics of this approach dub the densification of development as ?town cramming? and claim that it lowers quality of life and restricts market-led choice.[citation needed]Problems can often occur at residential densities between about two and five. These densities can cause traffic jams for automobiles, yet are too low to be commercially served by trains or light rail systems. The conventional solution is to use buses, but these and light rail systems may fail where automobiles and excess road network capacity are both available, achieving less than 2% ridership.The Lewis-Mogridge Position claims that increasing road space is not an effective way of relieving traffic jams as latent or induced demand invariably emerges to restore a socially-tolerable level of congestion. SuburbanizationMain article: SuburbanizationLow (auto-oriented) density suburban development near Colorado Springs, Colorado, United StatesIn some countries, declining satisfaction with the urban environment is held to blame for continuing migration to smaller towns and rural areas (so-called urban exodus). Successful urban planning supported Regional planning can bring benefits to a much larger hinterland or city region and help to reduce both congestion along transport routes and the wastage of energy implied by excessive commuting. Environmental factorsMain article: Environmental planningEnvironmental protection and conservation are of utmost importance to many planning systems across the world. Not only are the specific effects of development to be mitigated, but attempts are made to minimize the overall effect of development on the local and global environment. This is commonly done through the assessment of Sustainable urban infrastructure. In Europe this process is known as a Sustainability Appraisal.In most advanced urban or village planning models, local context is critical. In many, gardening and other outdoor activities assumes a central role in the daily life of citizens. Environmental planners focus now on smaller and larger systems of resource extraction and consumption, energy production, and waste disposal. A practice known as Arcology seeks to unify the fields of ecology and architecture, using principles of landscape architecture to achieve a harmonious environment for all living things. On a small scale, the eco-village theory has become popular, as it emphasizes a traditional 100-140 person scale for communities[citation needed].An urban planner can use a number of quantitative tools to forecast impacts of development on the environmental, including roadway air dispersion models to predict air quality impacts of urban highways and roadway noise models to predict noise pollution effects of urban highways. As early as the 1960s, noise pollution was addressed in the design of urban highways as well as noise barriers. The Phase I Environmental Site Assessment can be an important tool to the urban planner by identifying early in the planning process any geographic areas or parcels which have toxic constraints. Light and soundThe urban canyon effect is a colloquial, non-scientific term referring to street space bordered by very high buildings. This type of environment may shade the sidewalk level from direct sunlight during most daylight hours. While an oft-decried phenomenon, it is rare except in very dense, hyper-tall urban environments, such as those found in Lower and Midtown Manhattan, Chicago?s Loop and Kowloon in Hong Kong.In urban planning, sound is usually measured as a source of pollution. Another perspective on urban sounds is developed in Soundscape studies emphasising that sound aesthetics involves more than noise abatement and decibel measurements. Hedfors coined ?Sonotope? as a useful concept in urban planning to relate typical sounds to a specific place.Light pollution has become a problem in urban residential areas, not only as it relates to its effects on the night sky, but as some lighting is so intrusive as to cause conflict in the residential areas and paradoxically intense improperly installed security lighting may pose a danger to the public, producing excessive glare. The development of the full cutoff fixture, properly installed, has reduced this problem considerably. ProcessBlight may sometimes cause communities to consider redeveloping and urban planning.Before the 1950s the profession of urban planning did not exist. Planning focused on top-down processes by which the urban planner created the plans. The planner would know architecture, surveying, or engineering, bringing to the town planning process ideals based around these disciplines. They typically worked for national or local governments.Changes to the planning process Strategic Urban Planning over past decades have witnessed the metamorphosis of the role of the urban planner in the planning process. More citizens calling for democratic planning & development processes have played a huge role in allowing the public to make important decisions as part of the planning process. Community organizers and social workers are now very involved in planning from the grassroots level. The term advocacy planning was coined by Paul Davidoff in his influential 1965 paper, ?Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning? which acknowledged the political nature of planning and urged planners to acknowledge that their actions are not value-neutral and encouraged minority and under represented voices to be part of planning decisions.Ozawa and Seltzer (1999)advocate a communicative planning model in education to teach planners to work within the social and political context of the planning process. In their paper ?Taking Our Bearings: Mapping a Relationship among Planning Practice, Theory, and Education,? the authors demonstrate the importance of educating planners beyond the rational planning model in which planners make supposedly value-neutral recommendations based on science and reason . Through a survey of employers, it was found that the most highly rated skills in entry-level professional hiring are communication-based. The results suggest this view of planning as a communicative discourse as a possible bridge between theory and practice, and indicate that the education of planners needs to incorporate synthesis and communication across the curriculum.Developers have also played huge roles in development, particularly by planning projects. Many recent developments were results of large and small-scale developers who purchased land, designed the district and constructed the development from scratch. The Melbourne Docklands, for example, was largely an initiative pushed by private developers to redevelop the waterfront into a high-end residential and commercial district.Recent theories of urban planning, espoused, for example by Salingaros see the city as a adaptive system that grows according to process similar to those of plants. They say that urban planning should thus take its cues from such natural processes. See alsoIndex of urban planning articlesIndex of urban studies articlesList of planned citiesList of urban plannersList of urban theorists Notes^ Grogan, Paul, Proscio, Tony, Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival, 2000. ISBN 0-8133-3952-9^ a b Davreu, Robert (1978). ?Cities of Mystery: The Lost Empire of the Indus Valley?. The World Last Mysteries. (second edition). Sydney: Readers Digest. pp. 121-129. ISBN 0-909486-61-1.^ Kipfer, Barbara Ann (2000). Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology. (Illustrated edition). New York: Springer. p. 229. ISBN 306461587.^ Jacob Eapen (1997), Indus River Valley Civilization^ Vitrivius (1914). The Ten Books on Architecture, Bk I. Harvard University Press.?^ Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (1941) 1962, in reference to an air view (fig.8) of the medieval Italian town of Bagnocavallo. Giedion?s source was Luigi Piccinati, ?Urbanistica Medioevale? in Urbanistica deal Antichit ad Oggi (Florence 1943).^ Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (1941) 1962 p 43.^ The undulating terrace of housing makes its appearance surprisingly late: Giedion?s example is Lansdown Crescent, Bath, 1794; Giedion 1962, fig. 83^ a b Old Walled City of Shibam, UNESCO^ Helfritz, Hans (April 1937), ?Land without shade?, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 24 (2): 20116?^ Shipman, J. G. T. (June 1984), ?The Hadhramaut?, Asian Affairs 15 (2): 15462?^ Hall, Peter et al. Sociable Cities; the legacy of Ebeneezer Howard, 1998, ISBN 0-471-98504-X, John Wiley & Sons, New York.^ a b Smith Morris et al. British Town Planning and Urban Design, 1997, ISBN 0-582-23496-4, Longman, Singapore.^ a b c Wheeler Stephen. ?Planning Sustainable and Livable Cities?, 1998, ISBN 0-415-27173-8, Routledge, New York.^ Oregon Ballot Measures 37 (2004) and 49 (2007)^ [Gesellschaft fr Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)Zopp An introduction to the Method. Eschborn. Germany (1988)]^ B.Muller, S.Curwell, J. Turner: Model for the improvement of LUDA development of collaborative strategic goal oriented programming in Urbanistica Dossier n.74 INU Edizioni Italia (2205)^ Luda Project^ Innes, Judith and Booher, David, ublic Participation in Planning: New Strategies for the 21st Century, Working Paper 2000-2007, University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3r34r38h. ,^ Shandas, Vivek and Messer, Barry, ostering Green Communities Through Civic Engagement, Community-Based Environmental Stewardship in the Portland Area, JAPA, Autumn 2008, Vol. 74, No 4, p. 408.^ Sirianni, Carmen, eighborhood Planning as Collaborative Democratic Design, The Case of Seattle, JAPA, Autumn 2007, Vol. 73, No 4, p. 373.^ New Zealand Herald: Tensions spill over in billboard row^ Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, Towns Buildings, Construction^ George L. Kelling, Catherine M. Coles, Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order And Reducing Crime In Our Communities^ Reinventing planning: A new governance paradigm for managing Human settlements, Commonwealth Association of Planners^ The Christian Science Monitor: Kenyans buy into slum plan, 26 May 2004^ Urban Sores: On the Interaction Between Segregation, Urban Decay, and Deprived Neighbourhoods By Hans Skifter Andersen. ISBN 0-7546-3305-5. 2003.^ Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States by Kenneth T Jackson (1987)^ Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn^ Transportation Efficient Land Use- Municipal Services and Research Center of Washington, Accessed 09nov09, says that each 40% increase in density reduces trips by 20-30%.^ C. Michael Hogan, Analysis of highway noise, Journal of Water, Air, and Soil Pollution, Volume 2, Number 3, Biomedical and Life Sciences and Earth and Environmental Science Issue, pages 387-392, September, 1973, Springer Verlag, Netherlands ISSN 0049-6979^ 2003 Site Soundscapes ? Landscape Architecture in the Light of Sound ? Per Hedfors (ISBN 91-576-6425-0) ? book & CD-Rom^ Forester John. ?Planning in the Face of Conflict?, 1987, ISBN 0-415-27173-8, Routledge, New York.^ http://www.plannersnetwork.org/publications/2007_spring/angotti.htm^ Ozawa, C.P., Seltzer, E.P.(1999). ?Taking our bearings: Mapping a relationship among planning practice, theory and education?. Journal of Planning Education and Research. 18: 257-266. ReferencesAtmospheric Environment Volume 35, Issue 10, April 2001, Pages 1717-1727. ?Traffic pollution in a downtown site of Buenos Aires City?Garvin, Alexander (2002). The American City: What Works and What Doesn?t. New York: McGraw Hill. ISBN 0-07-137367-5.? (A standard text for many college and graduate courses in city planning in America)Hoch, Charles, Linda C. Dalton and Frank S. So, editors (2000). The Practice of Local Government Planning, Intl City County Management Assn; 3rd edition. ISBN 0-87326-171-2 (The ?Green Book?)T. R. Oke (1982). ?The energetic basis of the urban heat island?. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 108: 124.Matheos Santamouris (2006). Environmental Design of Urban Buildings: An Integrated Approach.Tunnard, Christopher and Boris Pushkarev (1963). Man-Made America: Chaos or Control?: An Inquiry into Selected Problems of Design in the Urbanized Landscape, New Haven: Yale University Press. (This book won the National Book Award, strictly America; a time capsule of photography and design approach.)Wheeler, Stephen (1998). ?Planning Sustainable and Livable Cities?, Routledge; 3rd edition. Further readingUrban Planning, 1794-1918: An International Anthology of Articles, Conference Papers, and Reports, Selected, Edited, and Provided with Headnotes by John W. Reps, Professor Emeritus, Cornell University.City Planning According to Artistic Principles, Camillo Sitte, 1889Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, Ebenezer Howard, 1898The Improvement of Towns and Cities, Charles Mulford Robinson, 1901Town Planning in practice, Raymond Unwyn, 1909The Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor, 1911Cities in Evolution, Patrick Geddes, 1915The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch, 1960The Concise Townscape, Gordon Cullen, 1961The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs, 1961The City in History, Lewis Mumford, 1961The City is the Frontier, Charles Abrams, Harper & Row Publishing, New York, 1965.A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, 1977What Do Planners Do?: Power, Politics, and Persuasion, Charles Hoch, American Planning Association, 1994. ISBN 978-0-918286-91-8Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, Christopher Silver and Mary Corbin Sies (Eds.), Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996?The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History?, Spiro Kostof, 2nd Edition, Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1999 ISBN 978-0-500-28099-7The American City: A Social and Cultural History, Daniel J. Monti, Jr., Oxford, England and Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. 391 pp.?ISBN 978-1-55786-918-0.Urban Development: The Logic Of Making Plans, Lewis D. Hopkins, Island Press, 2001. ISBN 1-55963-853-2Readings in Planning Theory, Susan Fainstein and Scott Campbell, Oxford, England and Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.Urban Planning Theory since 1945, Nigel Taylor, London, Sage, 2007 External linksWikimedia Commons has media related to: Urban planningUrban and Regional Planning at the Open Directory Projectv??d??eReal estate developmentsCommercialBusiness park? Office building? Shopping mall / center? Shopping district? Retail parkIndustrialIndustrial park? Industrial district? Business cluster? List of technology centersResidentialHousing development? Gated community? Multi-family residential? Private community? Housing estate? Tract housing? City blockEducation/ScienceScience park? List of research parks? Campus? Satellite campusMunicipalNew town? List of planned cities? Arcology? Model village? Garden city movementBuildingsHouse? Villa? Apartment? Tower block? High-rise? Apartment building? Skyscraper? List of house typesMiscellaneousCluster development? Urban planning? Brownfield land? Cemetery? Land use planning? Redevelopment? Urban design? Regional planning? Zoning? Context theory? Eminent domain? Construction? Park? Playground? Parking
Categories: Urban design Urban studies and planning

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Anna Friel In Temperley London ? ?The Amazing Spider-Man? LA Premiere

Anna Friel attended the LA premiere for ?The Amazing Spider-Man? at the Regency Village Theatre in Hollywood yesterday evening as the plus one of Rhys Ifans (in Dolce & Gabbana).

The actress was much more demure on this occasion wearing another Temperley London Spring 2012 gown.

Her rose-blush cross-front draped dress with a nipped-in waist features a waterfall-front double-layered skirt.

The sexy yet refined look was styled with gold tassel jewels and a tan clutch with gold hardware.

Anna decided to mix her metals by completing her look with silver metallic peep-toes.

I much prefer Anna?s look over the runway and I adore her loose wavy curls.

Which look do you prefer? Runway or the red carpet?

Credit: Style.com & Getty

Source: http://www.redcarpet-fashionawards.com/2012/06/29/anna-friel-in-temperley-london-the-amazing-spider-man-la-premiere/

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High court upholds Obama health law by 5-4 vote

Supporters of President Barack Obama's health care law celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012, after the court's ruling. AP Photo/David Goldman)

Supporters of President Barack Obama's health care law celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012, after the court's ruling. AP Photo/David Goldman)

FILE - This Oct. 8, 2010 file photo shows the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court at the Supreme Court in Washington. Seated from left are Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Standing, from left are Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito Jr., and Elena Kagan. The Supreme Court on Thursday, June 28, 2012, upheld the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

Claire McAndrew of Washington, left, and Donny Kirsch of Washington, celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012, after the courts's ruling on health care. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

William Temple, of Brunswick, Ga., waits outside the Supreme Court a landmark decision on health care on Thursday, June 28, 2012 in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The front of the U.S. Supreme Court is seen on the eve of Thursday's expected ruling on whether or not the Affordable Care Act passes the test of constitutionality Wednesday, June 27, 2012 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

(AP) ? The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld virtually all of President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul, including the hotly debated core requirement that nearly every American have health insurance.

The 5-4 decision meant the huge overhaul, still taking effect, could proceed and pick up momentum over the next several years, affecting the way that countless Americans receive and pay for their personal medical care.

The ruling hands Obama a campaign-season victory in rejecting arguments that Congress went too far in approving the plan. However, Republicans quickly indicated they will try to use the decision to rally their supporters against what they call "Obamacare," arguing that the ruling characterized the penalty against people who refuse to get insurance as a tax.

Obama declared, "Whatever the politics, today's decision was a victory for people all over this country." GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney renewed his criticism of the overhaul, calling it "bad law" and promising to work to repeal it if elected in November.

Breaking with the court's other conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts announced the judgment that allows the law to go forward with its aim of covering more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Roberts explained at length the court's view of the mandate as a valid exercise of Congress' authority to "lay and collect taxes." The administration estimates that roughly 4 million people will pay the penalty rather than buy insurance.

Even though Congress called it a penalty, not a tax, Roberts said, "The payment is collected solely by the IRS through the normal means of taxation."

Roberts also made plain the court's rejection of the administration's claim that Congress had the power under the Constitution's commerce clause to put the mandate in place. The power to regulate interstate commerce power, he said, "does not authorize the mandate. "

Stocks of hospital companies rose after the decision was announced, while shares of insurers fell sharply. Shares of drugmakers and device makers fell slightly.

The justices rejected two of the administration's three arguments in support of the insurance requirement. But the court said the mandate can be construed as a tax. "Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness," Roberts said.

The court found problems with the law's expansion of Medicaid, but even there said the expansion could proceed as long as the federal government does not threaten to withhold states' entire Medicaid allotment if they don't take part in the law's extension.

The court's four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined Roberts in the outcome.

Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

Kennedy summarized the dissent in court. "In our view, the act before us is invalid in its entirety," he said.

The dissenters said in a joint statement that the law "exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in denying non-consenting states all Medicaid funding."

In all, the justices spelled out their views in six opinions totaling 187 pages. Roberts, Kennedy and Ginsburg spent 51 minutes summarizing their views in the packed courtroom.

The legislation passed Congress in early 2010 after a monumental struggle in which all Republicans voted against it. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Thursday the House will vote the week of July 9 on whether to repeal the law, though such efforts have virtually no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

After the ruling, Republican campaign strategists said Romney will use it to continue campaigning against "Obamacare" and attacking the president's signature health care program as a tax increase.

"Obama might have his law, but the GOP has a cause," said veteran campaign adviser Terry Holt. "This promises to galvanize Republican support around a repeal of what could well be called the largest tax increase in American history."

Democrats said Romney, who backed an individual health insurance mandate when he was Massachusetts governor, will have a hard time exploiting the ruling.

"Mitt Romney is the intellectual godfather of Obamacare," said Democratic consultant Jim Manley. "The bigger issue is the rising cost of health care, and this bill is designed to deal with it."

More than eight in 10 Americans already have health insurance. But for most of the 50 million who are uninsured, the ruling offers the promise of guaranteed coverage at affordable prices. Lower-income and many middle-class families will be eligible for subsidies to help pay premiums starting in 2014.

There's also an added safety net for all Americans, insured and uninsured. Starting in 2014, insurance companies will not be able to deny coverage for medical treatment, nor can they charge more to people with health problems. Those protections, now standard in most big employer plans, will be available to all, including people who get laid off, or leave a corporate job to launch their own small business.

Seniors also benefit from the law through better Medicare coverage for those with high prescription costs, and no copayments for preventive care. But hospitals, nursing homes, and many other service providers may struggle once the Medicare cuts used to finance the law really start to bite.

Illegal immigrants are not entitled to the new insurance coverage under the law, and will remain one of the biggest groups uninsured.

Obama's law is by no means the last word on health care. Experts expect costs to keep rising, meaning that lawmakers will have to revisit the issue perhaps as early as next year, when federal budget woes will force them to confront painful options for Medicare and Medicaid, the giant federal programs that cover seniors, the disabled, and low-income people.

The health care overhaul focus will now quickly shift from Washington to state capitals. Only 14 states, plus Washington, D.C., have adopted plans to set up the new health insurance markets called for under the law. Called exchanges, the new markets are supposed to be up and running on Jan. 1, 2014. People buying coverage individually, as well as small businesses, will be able to shop for private coverage from a range of competing insurers.

Most Republican-led states, including large ones such as Texas and Florida, have been counting on the law to be overturned and have failed to do the considerable spade work needed to set up exchanges. There's a real question about whether they can meet the deadline, and if they don't, Washington will step in and run their exchanges for them.

In contrast to the states, health insurance companies, major employers, and big hospital systems are among the best prepared. Many of the changes called for in the law were already being demanded by employers trying to get better value for their private health insurance dollars.

"The main driver here is financial," said Dr. Toby Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, which has pioneered some of the changes. "The factors driving health care reform are not new, and they are not going to go away."

The Medicaid expansion would cover an estimated 17 million people who earn too much to qualify for assistance but not enough to afford insurance. The federal and state governments share the cost, and Washington regularly imposes conditions on the states in exchange for money.

Roberts said Congress' ability to impose those conditions has its limits. "In this case, the financial 'inducement' Congress has chosen is much more than 'relatively mild encouragement' ? it is a gun to the head," he said.

The law says the Health and Human Services Department can withhold a state's entire Medicaid allotment if the state doesn't comply with the health care law's Medicaid provisions.

Even while ruling out that level of coercion, however, Roberts said nothing prevents the federal government from offering money to accomplish the expansion and withholding that money from states that don't meet certain conditions.

"What Congress is not free to do is to penalize states that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding," he said.

Ginsburg said the court should have upheld the entire law as written without forcing any changes in the Medicaid provision. She said Congress' constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce supports the individual mandate. She warned that the legal reasoning, even though the law was upheld, could cause trouble in future cases.

"So in the end, the Affordable Health Care Act survives largely unscathed. But the court's commerce clause and spending clause jurisprudence has been set awry. My expectation is that the setbacks will be temporary blips, not permanent obstructions," Ginsburg said in a statement she, too, read from the bench.

In the courtroom Thursday were retired Justice John Paul Stevens and the wives of Roberts, Alito, Breyer, Kennedy and Thomas.

.__

Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Charles Babington, Jessica Gresko, Jesse J. Holland and David Espo contributed to this report.

___

Online:

http://hosted.ap.org/interactives/2012/healthcare

Visit AP's Google Plus page at 4 p.m. EDT for a Google Hangout video chat where AP reporters will be discussing the impact of today's ruling and taking your questions: ?http://apne.ws/LgPvzL

Associated Press

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Thursday, June 28, 2012

Evidence of oceanic 'green rust' offers hope for the future

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2012) ? A rare kind of mineral which scientists hope could be used to remove toxic metals and radioactive species from the environment played a similar, crucial role early in Earth's history.

Research carried out by an international team of leading biogeochemists suggests for the first time that 'green rust' was likely widespread in ancient oceans and may have played a vital role in the creation of our early atmosphere.

Led by Newcastle University, UK, the study shows that during the Precambrian period, green rust 'scavenged' heavy metals such as nickel out of the water. Nickel availability is linked to the production of methane by anaerobic organisms, which is a major sink for oxygen produced during photosynthesis, and thus green rust played a crucial role in the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere.

Only discovered in the last decade, green rust is a highly reactive iron mineral which experts hope could be used to clean up metal pollution and even radioactive waste.

Newcastle University's Professor Simon Poulton said this latest discovery -- published this month in the academic journal Geology -- demonstrated the effectiveness of green rust as an environmental cleaner.

"Because it is so reactive, green rust has hardly ever been found before in nature and never in a water system like this," explains Professor Poulton, who led the research team involving experts from the Universities of Newcastle, Nancy, Southern Denmark, Leeds, Brussels and Kansas, and the Canadian Light Source and Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

"The discovery of green rust in Lake Matano, Indonesia, where we carried out our experiments shows for the first time what a key role it played in our ancient oceans -- scavenging dissolved nickel, a key micronutrient for methanogenesis."

Dr Sean Crowe of the University of Southern Denmark explains: "We still know relatively little about green rust but our research shows that it is likely to be much more prevalent in the environment than has previously been recognized and the role it plays in cycling elements such as nickel and other metals is significant.

"Understanding the important role it played in our past and its effectiveness at removing metals from the environment will help us to understand how we might be able to use it to clean up polluted land and water in the future."

The high reactivity of green rust is the reason it could be so much help in cleaning up polluted sites. The rust reduces elements like chromium, uranium and selenium, significantly reducing their solubility and mobility in the environment, and in some cases absorbing them into the rust's molecular structure.

Professor Poulton adds: "Green rust has received a lot of attention recently due to its possible role as a pollutant mediator, but it is particularly exciting to think that this may have been a natural process throughout huge periods of ancient Earth history."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Newcastle University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. A. Zegeye, S. Bonneville, L. G. Benning, A. Sturm, D. A. Fowle, C. Jones, D. E. Canfield, C. Ruby, L. C. MacLean, S. Nomosatryo, S. A. Crowe, S. W. Poulton. Green rust formation controls nutrient availability in a ferruginous water column. Geology, 2012; 40 (7): 599 DOI: 10.1130/G32959.1

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Seattle Among Top 5 Real Estate Markets: 14.9% Price Gain Over 5 ...

While many real estate markets across the U.S. continue to struggle, a handful of cities are on the leading edge of the real estate recovery. ?We?ve seen increasingly strong signs in the Seattle market in 2012, from sales and prices increasing to inventory dropping to record lows.

A new study also puts Seattle as one of the top cities for investment purposes. ?Housing Predictor listed the top five cities for price gains over the next five years, and Seattle came in at #4, with an expected increase in prices of nearly 15 percent.

Fourth-best market: Seattle
Expected five-year price gain:14.9%

?Seattle has weathered the housing downturn better than the majority of the nation, despite a sizable decline in home values,? Colpitts says.

He adds that the Emerald City?s stable of large, well-paying tech firms ? from?Amazon to?Microsoft ? bodes well for real estate prices in the 3.4-million person metro area.

?Higher salaries paid to workers should bolster the housing market,? the expert says.

Realtor.com lists roughly 1,800 Seattle homes for sale, from a?$60,000 two-bedroom condo to an?$18 million waterfront estate.

??Seattle Homes, LLC: ? Sam DeBord, Managing Broker, Realtor
Coldwell Banker Seattle: Coldwell Banker Danforth & Associates
Twitter |?Facebook |?LinkedIn | Sam (at) SeattleHome.com

Data Source: NWMLS ? The Northwest Multiple Listing Service did not compile or publish this information.

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Wichita principal testifies in school finance trial about effect of cuts ...

TOPEKA ? The principal of one of Wichita?s poorest schools gave judges in the state school finance trial a ground-level lesson Tuesday in how cutbacks have hurt her effort to teach a difficult-to-teach population.

Amy Hungria, principal of Hamilton Middle School, said cuts have dramatically hurt her efforts to educate students in a neighborhood plagued by generations of poverty, prostitution and drug dealing.

?We not only focus on the educational aspect of it,? Hungria said of running the school. ?We are also clothing our students, feeding our students. I refer to our nurse?s office as the clinic ? That takes a lot of time and energy in order to meet those basic needs first.?

The school is situated on South Broadway, between Lincoln and Pawnee.

About 96 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, a traditional measure used by schools to define poverty. And of the remaining 4 percent, some would qualify if the parents would fill out the paperwork, Hungria said.

A fourth of the students are in special-education classes; another fourth are in the English-as-a-second-language program, Hungria testified. Some are in both.

And when it comes to standardized tests, ?over 50 percent of our students are not where they?re supposed to be at this time,? she said.

School districts, including Wichita, are suing the state, alleging that the Legislature and governor have failed in their constitutional duty to provide adequate funds for public education.

Hungria was the last of a half-dozen Wichita teachers and administrators to testify in the trial, which began June 4.

Because of budget cuts, closed schools and boundary realignment, the student population at Hamilton will rise from 524 pupils at the end of the last school year to 663 next year, she said.

?And I?m not seeing any additional allocation,? she added.

She testified to a catalog of cuts at Hamilton since the Legislature, faced with its own recession-caused budget problems, began reducing school per-pupil funding three years ago.

She said three of the biggest losses were a school-resource officer, a truant officer and an assistant principal. They dealt with discipline problems and at times would go to students? doors to bring them to school if the parents didn?t make them come.

Now, she said, she has to divert her own time from educational leadership to discipline and school safety.

?It is not unknown for myself and a janitor to ask vagrants to leave our school property so they don?t interact with our students,? she said.

She testified that when she came to the school in 2008, she had full-time math and literacy coaches to work with her teachers; now she shares those positions with other schools.

?I essentially went from having 10 days a week to two days a week,? she said.

She also lost two of her nine special-education teachers, a math teacher and a language arts teacher. The school librarian is now part time and also teaches two classes in language arts.

Sixth-grade band has been canceled and the seventh- and eighth-grade band classes were combined to save money, Hungria said.

All over the school, classes are getting larger. ?As class sizes continue to increase, students are getting less one-on-one assistance? of the type they need to have a realistic chance of succeeding, she said.

The outcomes issue

A key contention in the state?s case is that increased funding doesn?t necessarily mean better outcomes for students.

Gaye Tibbets, one of the Wichita lawyers hired to represent the state, pointed out that some of the school?s test scores had improved, especially among special-education students, whose scores rose four percentage points in 2011, and eighth-grade math, where scores rose 14 percent.

However, she acknowledged that other scores were either flat or falling.

She also noted that the poverty-stricken students are eligible for as much as $1,800 a year worth of off-site and after-school tutoring.

Hungria said not as many students as she would like can take advantage of the tutoring opportunity.

The tutoring can be provided online, but ?our families do not have electricity,? much less computers and Internet access, she said.

And while the tutors can go to the home, many of the children have to baby-sit younger siblings, and some families live in such substandard housing that parents are reluctant to allow outsiders in the home.

Hungria appeared to catch a sympathetic ear from at least one member of the three-judge panel that will decide the case.

Retired Sherman County District Judge Jack Burr said he found it unfair that schools like Hamilton are held to the same testing standards as all other schools.

?It seems to me like everybody?s going over the same high jump, but you?re having to wear a 25-pound weight belt or something,? Burr said.

He said although it doesn?t have anything to do with the case at hand, ?I?ll vote for you for administrator of the year.?

?I just want another assistant principal,? Hungria replied.

Effect of cuts

Earlier, the Wichita school district?s chief financial officer, Linda Jones, testified to the overall situation for the district, saying that it has had to cut $53 million and 265 jobs because of state budget cuts and increased costs in the past three budget years.

?We had 265 less people on our payroll. Those are real people,? Jones said.

The state has cut base aid per pupil from $4,433 in 2009 to $3,780 this year. That cut, $653 a pupil, has cost Wichita about $47 million from 2009 to 2012, Jones testified.

In addition, the state cut about $4.7 million from the district?s state aid for capital building programs, Jones said.

Wichita did get additional money from the state ? about $27 million ? to fund increased enrollment of poor and non-English-speaking students, she said.

But the district also had to absorb millions of dollars in increased costs, including insurance, transportation, utilities and early-retirement obligations, Jones testified.

?Have there been any costs for the Wichita school district to educate its kids that have gone down?? asked Alan Rupe, a lawyer representing the school districts.

?I really can?t think of any,? Jones testified.

Overall, the district?s general annual general fund has dropped from about $339 million to $312 million in the last three budget years, she said.

State officials have argued that when all sources of funds ? not just the general fund ? are taken into account, schools actually are getting more money than before the recession and the onset of state cuts.

Jones testified that position is misleading because its calculations include state employee pension funds that merely pass through the district, and funds from federal economic stimulus actions that won?t be available in the future.

Arthur Chalmers, a lawyer representing the state, pressed Jones on how much money is returned to the district by principals who underspend their budgets.

Jones initially estimated about $1 million, but later corrected herself and reduced that to about $200,000.

?We redirect all that money,? she said. ?Generally it?s redirected to special ed, where there?s the most need.?

Reach Dion Lefler at dlefler@wichitaeagle.com.

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Tips for Improving Your Business Security: Biometric Access Control ...

If you are a business owner, you may want to consider using biometric access control to make your business secure. With crime on the rise, it is wise to use the latest technology to protect your investment and keep yourself and your employees safe and secure. It is time to be proactive in keeping yourself protected.

Biometric access control works by authenticating the identity of your staff members by checking certain physical characteristics. And because it is nearly impossible to fake physical characteristics, this type of security adds a very strong extra layer of protection to your business. Conventional security has its place in many situations, but if you are serious about stepping up the security measures that you have in place, you should consider biometric access control.

Many places such as hospitals, the military, police stations and financial institutions use biometric access control. This alone attests to its reliability and efficiency. If these places use biometrics, with their need for enhanced security, shouldn?t you consider using it as well, to keep yourself as safe as possible?

Fingerprint access is one type of identification that you can use in your biometric system. When this type of system is set up, the only people who have access to restricted areas are those whose fingerprints have been recorded in the computer system. Anyone who tries to enter by using a fingerprint that is not enrolled will not be granted access.

Is your business off limits to the general public? If so, then biometrics can help ensure that only staff members and employees have access to your property. By installing a security fence around your property, you can funnel traffic to one entrance. Simply put a gate up at the entrance that is controlled by biometrics, and only those whose physical characteristics are enrolled will be able to enter.

Keep in mind that biometric access control is not just for big business and mega-corporations. It is also for the small business owner who takes security very seriously. Take charge of your security by installing biometrics. You will love the peace of mind that it brings.

Author Mark Mahaffey can teach you how to secure your business with access control. He is your expert in access control systems. Please visit Best Security Products to learn more about access control in Solana Beach.

Illinois SR22 insurance rates may never be as low as $20. Check your personal rates for Illinois SR22. It takes less than 5 minutes to complete the quote.

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