Homicide rates have become a growing concern worldwide, yet many countries lack the proper resources and materials to adequately and efficiently report the data. While homicide rates on a global scale have had a history of lacking datasets and misreporting, the UNODC’s Global Study on Homicide 2013 aimed to identify some key factors and variables that trigger spikes or drops in homicide rates. This paper will focus on analyzing data from both the UNODC and World Bank to identify more factors that explain the levels and changes in homicide rates from 2006-2011. While this paper is not successful in explaining all determinants, it does find that variables relating to income distribution and population prove to be better explanatory variables of homicide.

Riyadh City, the capital of Saudi Arabia, presents an interesting context of problems in its urbanisation process, which started pronouncedly during the 1970s. The main factor that prompted urbanisation was the discovery and production of crude oil accompanied with the strong political desire for urbanisation and modernisation. This has enabled the country to embark on profound national development in all aspects of life. The fast growth in population and urban land expansion led to several challenges to the urbanisation process and to urban land policy. These started to occur as a result of high land demand and the absence of measures able to control urban land expansion. Surprisingly, land urban expansion exceeded the increase in urban population which itself was uncontrolled. Similarly, the increase in urban land use also generated empty urban lands scattered randomly in Riyadh City. Thus, the main thrust of this thesis is to investigate the nature of the urbanisation process and the role of urban land policy with emphasis on the impact of urban land expansion in Riyadh City, despite the policies that aimed at controlling and directing urban growth. The main objective of the study has been to provide a broad perspective on the urbanisation process in Riyadh City and examine five proposed hypotheses associated with the urbanisation problem. Other objectives were to understand the concept that most likely reflects the real nature of the urbanisation process from social and governmental perspectives, and to illustrate the concepts that govern urban land expansion with particular emphasis on how the residents perceive urban land expansion in view of services and infrastructure of their City. Following these objectives, the study has adopted a combined approach involving firstly acquiring the necessary background for the literature, which helped to set up the study. A total of 781 (or 78.1%) respondents to questionnaire in four groups: Land authority, Estate agents, Landowners and Residents indicated general agreement between land authority and residents, which was likely to disagree with perceptions of landowners and Estate agents on the majority of the 33 statements of the questionnaire. Results of the statistical analysis indicated that the proposed hypotheses were most likely to be rejected because of disagreement on urban land policies and their mechanism for the development and control urbanisation process. Results also indicated that urbanisation growth in Riyadh City was not organised, and land development not regulated and implemented by the municipality under control measures. The existing urbanisation problems can be attributed to the constitution, system of granting land, land ownership, view of people towards land and urbanisation in general make it difficult to apply measures to control urban land expansion. Other problems such as ineffective management, coordination on planning between the municipality and other organisations, inconsistency between urban land policy and lack of coordination between authorities in distributing land have greatly contributed to the urbanisation problem in Riyadh City. Thus, unless there is co-operation between people and authorities on one hand, and involvement of people in their city development on the other, the problem of urban land growth is perhaps a bigger challenge to comprehend in the future.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-08-20T17:10:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-04-22. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2015-08-20T17:25:51Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000841030.pdf: 3514380 bytes, checksum: e421b740c0cda5e1e7e6519ea7b7b444 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / A partir do último quartel do século XX, marcado por intensas transformações sociais, culturais, políticas e econômicas, conhecidas genericamente pelo termo globalização, houve a emergência e a proliferação de um novo produto imobiliário, os condomínios residenciais fechados voltados, essencialmente, para as classes médias e altas. Desde então esses empreendimentos estão presentes nas principais cidades do mundo, alterando a paisagem urbana, impondo novas formas de segregação socioespacial, reorientado o papel do poder público, da política e dos direitos sociais, além de gerar novas formas de sociabilidade entre os citadinos. Esse trabalho analisa o processo de produção dos condomínios residenciais fechados na cidade de São Carlos a partir do Grupo Encalso Damha, a maior construtora e incorporada desse tipo de empreendimento no interior paulista, e tem como objetivo caracterizar e ampliar o entendimento acerca das urbanizações privadas em curso em várias cidades do mundo e no Brasil, assim como revelar os significados presentes na construção dos novos muros e barreiras urbanos. Como fontes para a pesquisa, utilizamos o conteúdo presente no site da própria construtora; documentos municipais, obtidos junto a Secretária Municipal de Planejamento e Desenvolvimento Urbano de São Carlos; documentos e consultas realizadas no 1º Cartório de Registro de Imóveis de São Carlos; pesquisas de campo no local e amplo material bibliográfico sobre condomínios e loteamentos residenciais fechados em São Carlos. Assim, foi possível entender as relações entre as mudanças globais processadas no último quartel do século XX e a implantação desses empreendimentos na cidade de São Carlos; a ação do poder público em relação a esses empreendimentos; a formação e a consolidação do Grupo Encalso Damha e, principalmente, sua atuação nessa cidade. Esses empreendimentos acentuam a segregação socioespacial e tem... / From the last quarter of the twentieth century, marked by intense transformation social, cultural, political and economic, known generically by the term globalization, there was the emergence and proliferation of a new real estate product, residential gated communities geared primarily for classes medium and high. Since then these developments are present in the main cities of the world, changing the urban landscape, imposing new forms of socio-spatial segregation, reoriented the role of public authorities, political and social rights, and generate new forms of sociability among the townspeople. This paper analyzes the production process of this real estate product in the city of São Carlos from Encalso Damha Group, a major construction company and built this type of project, and aims to characterize and expand the understanding of private housing developments underway in several cities in the world and in Brazil, and especially in medium-sized cities in the interior as well as reveal the meanings present in the construction of new walls and urban barriers. As sources for research, use this content on their own construction site; municipal documents, obtained from the Municipal Secretary of Urban Planning and Development of San Carlos; documents and consultations on the 1st Registry of Property of São Carlos and field site surveys, and extensive publications on gated communities in San Carlos. Thus, it was possible to understand the relationships between global changes processed in the last quarter of the twentieth century and the implementation of these projects in the city of São Carlos; the action of the government in relation to these developments; the formation and consolidation of Encalso Damha Group and its activities in that city. These developments highlight the socio-spatial segregation and has guided the city's expansion vectors

Orientador: João Carlos Soares Zuin / Banca: Luciana Bongiovanni Martins Schenk / Banca: Rafael Alves Orsi / Resumo: A partir do último quartel do século XX, marcado por intensas transformações sociais, culturais, políticas e econômicas, conhecidas genericamente pelo termo globalização, houve a emergência e a proliferação de um novo produto imobiliário, os condomínios residenciais fechados voltados, essencialmente, para as classes médias e altas. Desde então esses empreendimentos estão presentes nas principais cidades do mundo, alterando a paisagem urbana, impondo novas formas de segregação socioespacial, reorientado o papel do poder público, da política e dos direitos sociais, além de gerar novas formas de sociabilidade entre os citadinos. Esse trabalho analisa o processo de produção dos condomínios residenciais fechados na cidade de São Carlos a partir do Grupo Encalso Damha, a maior construtora e incorporada desse tipo de empreendimento no interior paulista, e tem como objetivo caracterizar e ampliar o entendimento acerca das urbanizações privadas em curso em várias cidades do mundo e no Brasil, assim como revelar os significados presentes na construção dos novos muros e barreiras urbanos. Como fontes para a pesquisa, utilizamos o conteúdo presente no site da própria construtora; documentos municipais, obtidos junto a Secretária Municipal de Planejamento e Desenvolvimento Urbano de São Carlos; documentos e consultas realizadas no 1º Cartório de Registro de Imóveis de São Carlos; pesquisas de campo no local e amplo material bibliográfico sobre condomínios e loteamentos residenciais fechados em São Carlos. Assim, foi possível entender as relações entre as mudanças globais processadas no último quartel do século XX e a implantação desses empreendimentos na cidade de São Carlos; a ação do poder público em relação a esses empreendimentos; a formação e a consolidação do Grupo Encalso Damha e, principalmente, sua atuação nessa cidade. Esses empreendimentos acentuam a segregação socioespacial e tem... / Abstract: From the last quarter of the twentieth century, marked by intense transformation social, cultural, political and economic, known generically by the term globalization, there was the emergence and proliferation of a new real estate product, residential gated communities geared primarily for classes medium and high. Since then these developments are present in the main cities of the world, changing the urban landscape, imposing new forms of socio-spatial segregation, reoriented the role of public authorities, political and social rights, and generate new forms of sociability among the townspeople. This paper analyzes the production process of this real estate product in the city of São Carlos from Encalso Damha Group, a major construction company and built this type of project, and aims to characterize and expand the understanding of private housing developments underway in several cities in the world and in Brazil, and especially in medium-sized cities in the interior as well as reveal the meanings present in the construction of new walls and urban barriers. As sources for research, use this content on their own construction site; municipal documents, obtained from the Municipal Secretary of Urban Planning and Development of San Carlos; documents and consultations on the 1st Registry of Property of São Carlos and field site surveys, and extensive publications on gated communities in San Carlos. Thus, it was possible to understand the relationships between global changes processed in the last quarter of the twentieth century and the implementation of these projects in the city of São Carlos; the action of the government in relation to these developments; the formation and consolidation of Encalso Damha Group and its activities in that city. These developments highlight the socio-spatial segregation and has guided the city's expansion vectors / Mestre

No description available.

The thesis studies the case of water quality in Mexico as a crucial factor to prevent water scarcity. This is an important issue for Mexico since more than half of its territory is arid or semi-arid; moreover, the most productive regions are located in areas with significant water resources stress. In this regard, the current situation of water scarcity is studied from the changes in water management derived from the evolution of institutions in the country. The institutional changes were analyzed mostly in the transition from a centralized water supply and sanitation services with strong state intervention to the decentralization of such services that were transferred to municipalities. Decentralization was addressed by analyzing the performance of water supply and sanitation services in urban areas that are expected to continue growing in the near future. The literature shows that the decentralization process has been partial and has not improved as expected the performance of water supply and sanitation services, moreover, due to political reasons, limited human and financial resources it introduced more challenges to the accomplishment of sustainable water management. More importantly, the federal government is still the main agent for the development of the water sector in Mexico. The next part of the analysis consist of a quantitative and qualitative evaluation regarding water quality for the three most productive Hydrological-Administrative Regions (HARs) of Mexico in the period of 2003-2013. The HARs chosen are the HAR VI Río Bravo, HAR VIII Lerma Santiago Pacific and HAR XIII Waters of the Valley of Mexico which are very similar in terms GDP share and water stress degree. Through OLS regression models for each HAR the impacts of demographic, economic, water supply and sanitation services aspects were tested to known their effects on water quality. In order to improve the discussion of the results, additional to the comparison with the results of the literature review, three experts were asked to answer a questionnaire about the regressions outcome. The discussion showed different impacts of the independent variables in the dependent variable of each HAR, sometimes leading to unexpected results. The main conclusions of the thesis relate to the improvement of decentralization of water and sanitation services, to the need to improve data for future analyses and pay more attention to water quality issues. In this regard, decentralization requires to consider contextual differences in order to seize its advantages to improve the performances of water supply and sanitation services, moreover, at the operative level water management decisions must be taken without political interests involved. The statistical analyses stressed the need to develop more reliable data about water management issues to improve the understanding of factors that could potentially affect water quality. In this regard, the creation of useful statistical indicators to assess the evolution towards sustainability in water management. The considerations for future research must consider more seriously water quality issues. This topic has been often ignored, however, it is crucial for water scarcity abatement.

Through an engagement with an emerging strand of critical urban theory that reworks Henri Lefebvre’s notion of ‘planetary urbanisation’, this dissertation explores the complex relation between contemporary forms of resource extraction and processes of capitalist urbanisation. It does so through the case of the Huasco Valley, an erstwhile agrarian region in northern Chile that was comprehensively redesigned and engineered into a mining, energy and agroindustrial hinterland strongly embedded in global networks of production and exchange. The thesis begins by offering a general exploration of the political economy of the 1993-2013 commodity boom, which set the foundations for new institutional, economic and corporate scenarios that led to an explosive rate of industrialisation and urbanisation across remote and rural geographies of Latin America. In the Huasco Valley, this context has translated into socioecological plunder, disruptions in public health, labour precariousness, intraurban displacement, and exponential growth of household debt. On this basis, I suggest that the production of urban space that underlies geographies of extraction is intrinsically uneven and in that sense, symptomatic of a world order dependent on the ongoing fabrication of invisibilised and fractured peripheries that are subservient to the consolidation of a seamless global space for the efficient circulation of commodities. The dissertation then goes on to argue that the existing literature on planetary urbanisation has been insufficiently attentive to questions of labour and production, and this has precluded an analysis of the properly political underpinnings of the complete urbanisation of society. By advancing a materialist conception of history, I focus on labour transformations in the Huasco Valley to illustrate how, besides dispossession and socioecological degradation, the projection of material infrastructures for resource extraction has created the conditions of possibility for radical and emancipatory change. Processes of urbanisation taking place in this valley have not only transformed the built environment and the sphere of reproduction –via institutionalised forms of credit, cultural practices and consumer cultures-, but production itself. Automation, lean production, logistical networks, outsourcing and cybernetic systems, among others, have radically transformed instruments and relations of production, thereby replacing isolation and parochialism with vibrant forms of community, political organisation and metabolic interaction with extra-human natures.

No description available.

Urbanization is accelerating in the United States and is contributing to fragmentation of natural habitats, causing changes in species composition and declines in native species. Human population growth in Orlando is typical of growth in the southeastern United States and throughout the range of cypress (Taxodium distichum). Orlando has numerous isolated cypress wetlands, called cypress domes, and many remain among the current urbanized area. This makes Orlando ideal to study the effects of urbanization on cypress domes. Specifically, I tested how urbanization and its effects on fragmentation, hydrology, and fire regime) affected (a) the numbers and spatial pattern of cypress domes in central Florida and (b) the recruitment of cypress within cypress domes. Analysis of historical loss found over 3,000 cypress domes identified in images from1984, of which 26% were lost or degraded (i.e., no longer cypressdominated) by 2004. Due to changed land use, many remaining cypress domes, formerly surrounded by natural lands, have become surrounded by urban lands causing spatial clustering and homogenization. Surprisingly, I found that both natural and urban cypress domes showed lower recruitment than agricultural cypress domes, where the natural fire regime has not been altered. The probability of cypress recruitment in cypress domes urbanized for more than 20 years is very low. Previous to that, cypress tends to recruit on the edge of cypress domes where there is less competition and hydrological conditions are more favorable. I estimate that only ~50% of the current cypress domes are recruiting and the existence of those wetlands are tied to the lifespan of the current adults. By 2104, I estimate that ~89% of the cypress domes currently recruiting will fail to recruit. I believe that reducing urban sprawl and restoring the natural fire iii regime to natural cypress domes will mitigate the current fate of cypress domes. Without this, cypress in isolated wetlands in central Florida, and providing Orlando urbanization is typical, throughout urbanized areas of the range, could be at risk. Cypress in urban areas will be then relegated to riparian zones and with unknown consequences for the species that utilize the former cypress dome habitat

No description available.