The research project examines Urban Sprawl in the United States and evaluates the alternative planning concept New Urbanism on a regional and local scale. The combination of qualitative and quantitative data sources explores the effectiveness of regional planning agencies on a macro level, as well as the success of mixed-use neighborhoods on a micro level. The results are based on three cities of the United States (Atlanta, Denver, and Portland), 80 qualitative interviews with urban experts, and over 160 questionnaires with residents of three New Urbanism neighborhoods (Riverside, Atlanta; Prospect, Denver; Orenco Station, Portland). The thesis shows and explains the challenges facing contemporary metropolitan areas and neighborhood development projects, the role and impact that public administrations and other policy makers have in this field, as well as how economic decisions on a local, regional, and global level can shape, change and develop urban landscapes. A central argument is that only superordinated regional planning authorities will be able to contain urban sprawl and to face its related complex socio-economic, administrative, and environmental problems. Also, New Urbanism neighborhoods can only be successful on a micro level when they are embedded in an all-embracing and socially well-balanced regional plan. This integrative two-way perspective from a macro and a micro level can enable us to understand urban structures, processes and problems in a more comprehensive way.

This article addresses the question how Bongo Fleva (or Flava, from the word ‘flavour’) - also defined as muziki wa kizazi kipya (‘music of a new generation’) - and Hip-Hop in Swa-hili, reflect Tanzanian urban youth culture, with its changing identities, life-styles, aspirations, constraints, and language. As far as young people residing in small centres and semi-rural ar-eas are concerned, I had the impression that they have the same aspirations as their urban counterparts, especially those in Dar es Salaam. They keep well up to date on urban practices through performances, radio and local tabloids, even if they lack the same job and leisure op-portunities as their city brothers. Although I do not take ‘youth’ as a fixed and homogeneous category, the ‘young generation’ has been assuming a central, though frequently ambiguous, position in many places in Africa (for this issue, see Burgess 2005). Here, however, I have chosen to focus on two urban contexts, namely Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, the sites of my one-and- -half-year fieldwork between 2004 and the end of 2005.

Growing up in an urban area has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of psychotic disorder in later life. While it is commonly held that a only a tiny fraction of exposed individuals will develop schizophrenia, recent evidence suggests that expression of psychosis in exposed individuals may be much more common, albeit at attenuated levels. Findings are based on a population sample of 2548 adolescents and young adults aged originally 14–24 years, and followed up over almost 5 years up to ages 17–28 years. Trained psychologists assessed all these subjects with the core psychosis sections on delusions and hallucinations of the Munich-Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Growing up in an urban area was associated with an increased risk of expression of psychosis in the adolescents and young adults (adjusted OR 1.31, 95% CI 1.03–1.66). The proxy environmental risk factor that urbanicity represents may shift a relatively large section of the adolescent population along a continuum of expression of psychosis. Other causal influences may be required to make the transition to schizophrenia in adult life.

Growing up in an urban area has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of psychotic disorder in later life. While it is commonly held that a only a tiny fraction of exposed individuals will develop schizophrenia, recent evidence suggests that expression of psychosis in exposed individuals may be much more common, albeit at attenuated levels. Findings are based on a population sample of 2548 adolescents and young adults aged originally 14–24 years, and followed up over almost 5 years up to ages 17–28 years. Trained psychologists assessed all these subjects with the core psychosis sections on delusions and hallucinations of the Munich-Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Growing up in an urban area was associated with an increased risk of expression of psychosis in the adolescents and young adults (adjusted OR 1.31, 95% CI 1.03–1.66). The proxy environmental risk factor that urbanicity represents may shift a relatively large section of the adolescent population along a continuum of expression of psychosis. Other causal influences may be required to make the transition to schizophrenia in adult life.

This article addresses the question how Bongo Fleva (or Flava, from the word ‘flavour’) - also defined as muziki wa kizazi kipya (‘music of a new generation’) - and Hip-Hop in Swa-hili, reflect Tanzanian urban youth culture, with its changing identities, life-styles, aspirations, constraints, and language. As far as young people residing in small centres and semi-rural ar-eas are concerned, I had the impression that they have the same aspirations as their urban counterparts, especially those in Dar es Salaam. They keep well up to date on urban practices through performances, radio and local tabloids, even if they lack the same job and leisure op-portunities as their city brothers. Although I do not take ‘youth’ as a fixed and homogeneous category, the ‘young generation’ has been assuming a central, though frequently ambiguous, position in many places in Africa (for this issue, see Burgess 2005). Here, however, I have chosen to focus on two urban contexts, namely Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, the sites of my one-and- -half-year fieldwork between 2004 and the end of 2005.

Angesichts zunehmender globaler Städtekonkurrenzen haben politische Wiedererfindungen des Städtischen Konjunktur – mit immer kürzeren Zyklen und wechselnden Dynamiken der Inszenierung der jeweiligen Programmatiken. Berlin als junge Metropole liefert für die Implementation exogener Konzepte vielfältige Ansatzpunkte, zeigt jedoch auch umgehend ihre Grenzen auf. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes setzen sich mit Imaginationen, Diskursbeiträgen und Positionierungen auseinander, die den „großen“ politischen Konzepten jeweils „von unten“ entgegenwachsen und teilweise in Gegenbewegungen münden. Anschauungsmaterial liefern die Europäische Metropolregion Berlin-Brandenburg und das Projekt Mediaspree.

Over the last two decades Bongo Fleva music has become a popular form of entertainment as well as a key cultural element among Tanzanian urban youth. The objective of this paper is to examine the role of pseudonyms in this musical genre in Tanzania. It focuses on how Bongo Fleva artists adopt their pseudonyms and discusses their role in identity formation among urban youths in contemporary Tanzania. The paper argues that pseudonyms in Bongo Fleva, as in various other fields, have an important role to play in portraying one’s identity, culture, characteristics, profile, actions, hope and imagination.

Knowledge about land use and land cover represents an important information basis for various planning applications. In particular, urban and suburban regions are subject to a high dynamic development. The detection and identification of changes is therefore an important instrument to follow and accompany the developments by planning. Here, aerial photography and, increasingly, satellite images serve as an important basis for information. The recognition and mapping of changes is still a time-consuming and cost-intensive matter which is mostly realized by visual interpretation of aerial photography and to an increasing degree of high- and ultra-high-resolution satellite images. Within the scope of the present work a new, robust and largely automated process based on a statistical change analysis is developed and presented. Basis for the data are multitemporal high-resolution satellite image data. The generated suspect areas, respectively areas of change, are supposed to function as clues in order to facilitate the process of the visual interpretation of multitemporal image datasets with regard to change mapping, since only marked areas of change have to undergo further examination. Consequently, this process can be used as a tool to ease and accelerate the updating of planning bases in general and maps in particular so far realised by visual interpretation. However, the automation of the process is not only supposed to serve the purpose of saving time and cost but also to bring the interpretation process to a higher level of objectivity. In order to improve the quality of the whole process, for the preprocessing of the image data selected methods of image processing have been integrated. Through the use of additional geo-information reference data for the automated calculation of the areas of change, a further refinement of the results can be reached. The obtained results in the first time-cut (1997-1998) can be proved and verified by a different data-take (1997-2000). To reach a convenient use and a good distribution of the developed method, the process has been implemented by means of the widespread image processing software ERDAS IMAGINE. This allows to make the developed method available for other users, since it can easily be integrated into the working environment of ERDAS IMAGINE. / Das Wissen um die Landnutzung und Landbedeckung ist für planerische Anwendungsgebiete eine wichtige Informationsgrundlage. Gerade urbane und suburbane Regionen unterliegen einer hohen Entwicklungsdynamik. Das Erkennen und Aufzeigen von Veränderungen ist somit ein wichtiges Instrument um Entwicklungen zu verfolgen und planerisch zu begleiten. Luft- und zunehmend Satellitenbilder dienen hierfür als wichtige Informationsgrundlage. Das Erkennen und Kartieren von Veränderungen ist nach wie vor eine zeitaufwändige und kostenintensive Angelegenheit, die überwiegend durch visuelle Interpretation von Luft- und zunehmend auch mit hoch- und höchstauflösenden Satellitenbildern realisiert wird. In dieser Arbeit wird ein neues, robustes, weitgehend automatisiertes, auf einem statistischen Ansatz beruhendes Verfahren der Veränderungsanalyse entwickelt und vorgestellt. Die Datengrundlage bilden multitemporale, hoch auflösende Satellitenbilddaten. Die generierten Verdachts- bzw. Veränderungsflächen sollen als Anhaltspunkte fungieren, um den Prozess der visuellen Interpretation von multitemporalen Bilddatensätzen in Hinsicht auf eine Veränderungskartierung zu erleichtern, da nur als Veränderungsflächen markierte Areale einer weiteren Untersuchung unterzogen werden müssen. Das Verfahren kann somit als Werkzeug dienen, die durch visuelle Interpretation realisierte Aktualisierung von Planungsgrundlagen bzw. Kartenwerken zu erleichtern und zu beschleunigen. Die Automatisierung des Verfahrens soll jedoch nicht allein dem Zweck der Zeit- und Kostenersparnis dienen, sondern auch den Interpretationsprozess objektiver gestalten. Um die Qualität des Verfahrens zu erhöhen, werden ausgewählte Methoden der Bildverarbeitung für die Vorverarbeitung der Bilder in das Verfahren integriert. Durch das Einbinden zusätzlicher Geobasisdaten in die automatisierte Berechnung der Veränderungsflächen kann eine weitere Verbesserung der Ergebnisse erzielt werden. Die Ergebnisse, der im ersten Zeitschnitt (1997-1998) untersuchten Datensätze, werden mit Hilfe eines weiteren Zeitschnitts (1997-2000) überprüft und verifiziert. Um eine unkomplizierte Anwendung und Verbreitung der Methode zu erreichen, wurde das Verfahren mit Hilfe der weit verbreiteten Bildverarbeitungssoftware ERDAS IMAGINE realisiert. Dies ermöglicht, das Verfahren auch anderen Nutzern zur Verfügung zu stellen, da es problemlos in die Arbeitsumgebung des Bildverarbeitungssystems ERDAS IMAGINE integriert werden kann

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Background. Evidence suggests that in affective, non-psychotic disorders: (i) environmental exposures increase risk of subthreshold psychotic experiences (PEs) and strengthen connectivity between domains of affective and subthreshold psychotic psychopathology; and (ii) PEs are a marker of illness severity. Method. In 3021 adolescents from the Early Developmental Stages of Psychopathology cohort, we tested whether the association between PEs and presence of DSM-IV mood disorder (MD)/obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) would be moderated by risk factors for psychosis (cannabis use, childhood trauma and urbanicity), using the interaction contrast ratio (ICR) method. Furthermore, we analysed whether the interaction between environment and PEs was mediated by non-psychotic psychopathology. Results. The association between PEs and MD/OCD was moderated by urbanicity (ICR = 2.46, p = 0.005), cannabis use (ICR = 3.76, p = 0.010) and, suggestively, trauma (ICR = 1.91, p = 0.063). Exposure to more than one environmental risk factor increased the likelihood of co-expression of PEs in a dose–response fashion. Moderating effects of environmental exposures were largely mediated by the severity of general non-psychotic psychopathology (percentage explained 56–68%, all p < 0.001). Within individuals with MD/OCD, the association between PEs and help-seeking behaviour, as an index of severity, was moderated by trauma (ICR = 1.87, p = 0.009) and urbanicity (ICR = 1.48, p = 0.005), but not by cannabis use. Conclusions. In non-psychotic disorder, environmental factors increase the likelihood of psychosis admixture and helpseeking behaviour through an increase in general psychopathology. The findings are compatible with a relational model of psychopathology in which more severe clinical states are the result of environment-induced disturbances spreading through a psychopathology network.