Tripoli is the western capital of Libya and, is the largest urban centre in the whole country. The old city has evolved since Phoenician times, but grew gradually during the Roman and the Arab rules. It reached its ultimate stage of urban development at the end of the Ottoman rule, when the walled town of Tripoli was a fully built-up area. The urban development, of new Tripoli was initiated during the Italian rule when the central business district and part of the middle zone were developed for commercial and residential uses After the Independence of the country (1951) and recent oil development. The city began to experience a vast and rapid growth owing to various economic and social forces. Between 1954 and 1964 it nearly doubled in population partly through in-migration and partly through natural increase. Tripoli has important political and economic functions. The first is derived from the fact that the city is the western capital and the administrative centre of the Mugataa of Tripoli. The economic function is stronger than the political one, the growth of the shopping centre and central business district, together with the emergence of various industries within the city, are its most striking features. As a result of its growth, the city has begun to experience serious problems of transportation and traffic flow, shortage of housing, rise of rents, the emergence of the Shanty Town and other serious urban problems. Thus city planning and municipal programmes are of crucial importance to the city, in order to cope with the rapid growth of the population and expansion of housing development as well as to create better urban facilities and amenities "Mugataa" to indicate the province. Elsewhere he has avoided many Libyan expressions in certain places in order to make the thesis clearer in English. In conclusion, I wish to record my grateful acknowledgment to Professor W B Fisher who accepted me in his Department as a post-graduate research student. I am greatly indebted to Professor J I Clarke for his generous supervision, encouragement and useful criticism. I wish also to thank all high officials and civil servants in Libya who supplied me with reports, statistics and valuable information during ray field work in Tripoli. I would like to record my gratitude to the Libyan University and the Ministry of Education for offering me the scholarship. My thanks are also extended to other research students who gave me every kind of help.

A greater knowledge of the interactions between the Greenland Ice Sheet and climate is critical to understanding the possible impacts of future global warming, including ice sheet contribution to global sea-level rise and perturbations to ocean circulation. Recent acceleration, thinning and retreat of major tidewater glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica during the past two decades demonstrate the potential for ice sheets to respond to climate change much faster than previously assumed. One approach to understanding the role of atmospheric and oceanic warming to ice sheet dynamics is to investigate how ice sheets responded to past periods of climate change. This thesis uses benthic foraminifera as a proxy to reconstruct past changes in the temperature of the relatively warm West Greenland Current, to investigate the possible influence of ocean warming on ice sheet dynamics during the initial marine-based deglaciation phase, and throughout the Holocene, when the ice was positioned close to the present margin. This thesis finds that the marine-based ice sheet in central West Greenland collapsed rapidly due to a combination of high relative sea-level and ice sheet thinning due to climatic warming. Foraminiferal evidence does not support a major influence of ocean forcing on initial deglaciation. However, Holocene changes in the relative temperature of the West Greenland Current may have had a more significant influence on ice stream dynamics following the marine-based ice retreat, when outlet glaciers were positioned within coastal fjords. Changes in the relative temperature of the West Greenland Current are determined “upstream” by wider scale changes in the North Atlantic region.

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No description available.

The principal aim of the research has been to investigate the geography of trade in the Shetland Islands during the period from the mid-sixteenth century until the outbreak of the First World War. The evolution of island trade is traced through a series of historical phases characterised by the several types of organisation and control to which Shetland trade was subject during the periods this squeeze commenced, with the itinerant merchants, who held the initiative in trade development from the early sixteenth century until the Union of Scotland and England. Subsequently, in the early eighteenth century, a distinctively insular organisation of trade began to evolve in which the course of economic development was shaped by local enterprise, provided first by landowners, and then by local merchants. This growth was paralleled by that of locally-owned shipping and the development of communications, notably the mail service, upon which trade depended. After the mid- nineteenth century, the demand of the market became increasingly dominant, and the individual commodity trades became separately organised, while externally-owned shipping took the major share in provision of transport and communications. From the historical analysis, it emerges that the development of trade in Shetland has been governed both at internal and external scales by a complex of physical factors, which have closely moulded the locational patterns of both production and trade Itself, while strongly conditioning the primary production nature of the economy. Meanwhile, the general pattern of economic development was closely related to the-organisation of trade. Throughout the period, the growth of Shetland trade had much in common with overall British trends, in those parts of Britain where commercial development depended upon organisation and initiative of landowners and merchants. Nonetheless, Shetland's insular trade organisation was maintained, while island enterprise directed the course of trades expansion, until the middle of the nineteenth century In the final phase of development, prior to 1914, this Insular organisation and. control was slowly eroded as the Shetland economy because -increasingly dominated by large-scale commercial organisation based outwith the islands.

The principal aim of the research has been to trace the spatial evolution of the central place structure off North-East Scotland, beginning in Chapter II in the twelfth Century with the creation of royal burghs within the region. Chapter I introduces the region and the concept of the central place system employing General Systems Theory to give a broad overview of the historical development. Quoting contemporary examples, the spatial insqualities resulting from the erection of the free burghs with their monopolistic trading privileges are outlined as contrast to the structure that emerged after the relaxing of some of the royal burgh privileges in the seventeenth century. A detailed analysis of the central place structure of Aberdeenshire in 1695 is made from the Poll Book record. The final major theme in the historical section is devoted to the analyis of change and adaptation in the structure of central places coincident with the technological and economic changes of the nineteenth century. From the historical analysis, a principal conclusion is that transportation is a vital factor to the central place structure; thus to provide the link between the historical and present-day sections, Chapter VI discusses the changes in the pattern of accessibility, particularly since the 1930's. The greater opportunity for consumer travel has led to more complex patterns of allegiance. By means of questionnaires the present-day central place structure is examined while in the final chapter, case studies of hinterland delimination, both the deterministic and probabilistic methods, are outlined.

The rural-urban fringe is that zone around a city into which the urban area is expanding, but which still retains much of its agricultural and open space character. Studies of this transitional area have been carried out around maiy cities in North America whereas British cities have hot been so intensively investigated. An historical study was undertaken to establish whether or not a fringe existed prior to the introduction of the automobile, since many American researchers have attributed the emergence of this zone to the increased personal mobility made possible by widespread car ownership. In order to determine the character and changes which have taken place in the form of urban growth an analysis was made of Edinburgh at twenty year intervals after 1850. At each period the inner fringe boundary was delimited,forming a line outwards from which the spread of urban land uses could be identified. In addition a study was made of the degree of agricultural orientation towards the Edinburgh market at ten year intervals after 1866. These detailed investigations established the fact that during tho 19th century urban growth was limited to the immediate vicinity of the built-up area, beyond which was a scatter of institutions and several villages whioh had begun to assume a dormitory role. In contrast to this restricted zone of urban expansion poor transport facilities for bulky and perishable agricultural produce gave rise to a wide ring of urban oriented farming activity. After 1900 improved transportation media allied with a demand for houses with gardens in semi-rural surroundings led to a rapid outward growth of Edinburgh along the main roads reaching out to and beyond the older dormitory villages. The growing demand for recreation facilities resulted in the multiplication of perks, playing fields and golf courses, which along with many institutions and agriculture infilled the interstices between the tentacles of urban growth. The implementation of planning legislation in 1947 brought free urban expansion to an end and resulted in the infilling of the star pattern giving rise to a compact urban area around which a Green Belt of agricultural, recreational and institutional land uses was established. This restricted area has forced new urban expansion out of the towns and villages beyond the belt giving rise to a ring of satellite settlements quite separate from the city. Improved transport has negated the necessity for agriculture to depend on the adjacent urban market. This means that the fringe area at the present time is dependent on a few rural land uses which contrasts with the important role played by agriculture during the 19th century. The form and process of urban growth over the last one hundred years, which had been identified with reference to Edinburgh, were then compared with the more extensively documented rural urban fringe areas around North American cities. In this comparison the differences and similarities between them were highlighted and wherever possible accounted for. In the appendices a full account is given of the premises used in delimiting the inner boundary of the fringe as well as functions and area which should be investigated in order that the area! extent of the rural-urban fringe around cities in the United Kingdom may be determined.

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No description available.

No description available.