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'Water stress' is a term used when the pressures of urbanisation and the uncertainty of climate change on hydrological limits and capacities can no longer be overcome by traditional supply-oriented engineering responses because of their economic and environmental costs. It can be argued that the key alternative water policy responses are occurring with the changing role of development and Catchment Management Planning (CMPg) to a more 'catchment consciousness' water management model. In England and Wales the emergence of 'water stress' in the 1990s has coincided with the national launch of CMPg and renewed interest in development and water issues. Thus the research question sought to investigate how the National Rivers Authority (NRA) as a statutory environmental agency sought to improve and integrate river management by extending its influence to development planning through Catchment Management Planning (CMP) between 1991 and 1996. The particular areas of outcome focused on were water quality improvement, water resource management and flood protection, major NRA functions. The research findings demonstrated that there were different types of development response linked to water issues, scale of implementation and potential contribution to city form. The most important factor in the type of response was the water issue, with the flooding relationship being most advanced and water resources the least. The CMPg process assisted by supporting the promotion of water policies in DPs and creating a new context (involving stakeholder involvement and consensus building) in which to implement these policies. CMPg was found to be having the greatest impact in areas where no previous consensus over particular water issues had existed, and thus had begun to act as a new arena for debate on the problems and solutions required.

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No description available.

Tour guides are one of the most visible players in tourism but little scholarly attention has been given to the links that tour guides may have with sustainable development. This study addresses the gap by promoting an understanding of how tour guides can assist in moving tourism in a sustainable direction. Sustainable development is expected to improve the quality of life for all people without causing undesirable ecological and socio-cultural outcomes. As a central agent in the entire tourism system, tour guides have a variety of roles to play in response to the expectations of the various tourism stakeholders. A literature review suggests that tour guides can contribute to destinations'sustainable development by exerting their functions on experience management, resources management and local economic promotion. Interpretative guiding is the means by which tour guides can realize these above potentials. A case study was conducted in Hainan, China. The guiding performance there was examined to see whether and to what extent tour guides are contributing to the achievement of local sustainability. It was discovered that the tour guides in Hainan do not exert (well) their expected functions either in enhancing enjoyable experiences for tourists, in supporting local resource conservation, or in promoting the healthy development of the local economy. Their potentials are blocked by the issues and problems of instant money-making-centered guiding conduct, below-cost group receiving industry practices and unfair remuneration system for the guides, absence of protection measures to ensure the guides??? interests, opportunism in guiding and lenient certificating requirements, lack of professionalism and effective training, ineffective monitoring measures, and limited awareness of sustainable development. In order to better the situation, unhealthy travel and trade industry practice should be banned; effective certificating, training and monitoring measures should be developed and implemented; tour guides??? personal interests should be protected and local awareness of sustainability, in particular that of the industry members, should be fostered. Serious efforts of the government administration as well as industry members and tour guides are required if tour guides are to fulfill their potential as agents of sustainable development.

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This study is research into practice, concerned with locating a critical perspective into the possibilities of drama in achieving sustainable development within communities. This qualitative research approach draws on action-research paradigms, ethnographic techniques and drama methodologies to create in depth analysis of the facilitation and action of community drama within case study contexts. The case study contexts were drawn from the field of mental health provision and the context of self-advocacy for people with learning difficulties. Drama and video workshops were facilitated within these groups between periods of 9 - 18 months. Participants were involved from three groups including a women's group and a male orientated group within mental health provision, and a group for young adults with learning difficulties within a self advocacy project. This thesis contributes to knowledge in the field of Theatre for Development and UK community based drama in the following ways: The thesis suggests that previous assumptions and claims as to the 'success' of community drama projects need closer, critical interrogation. Analysis of the field work reveals that 'visions' of theatre and development face conflict when positioned in context, as both the nature and action of community is itself contested and ambivalent. The relationship of the facilitator role to other involved parties is given specific interrogation. The role and persona of the facilitator as a key player is identified, and demonstrated as such throughout the thesis through adoption of self-reflexive strategies of writing. It becomes clear that the radical, pedagogic intent of the drama process to foster collective ownership through the critical addressing and the representation of issues pertinent to a group's social reality, is questioned by those involved at various levels in the process. In exploring the nature of drama and video representations as resistance and intervention, sites of personal resistance and 'counter' interventions are illuminated. However, the reality of resistance is also bound up within the complexity of identity politics where the consequences of 'coming out' and accepting a label can become both a liberatory and oppressive experience. In chapter eight the continual difficulty of sustainability is examined and critiqued in the light of key issues identified within the previous chapters. Finally, the thesis assesses the substantive issues in relation to current discourses in cultural theory. By resisting opportunities to prescribe models and techniques thus reproducing the discourses critiqued this study culminates with optimism. Developing creative frameworks, that genuinely engage with contradiction and the complicated politics of context, are deemed as critical conditions for practices.

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No description available.

University of Technology, Sydney. Institute of Sustainable Futures. / This thesis investigates the implications that urban motorway development has for the sustainability of cities. It does this by focusing on the sudden increase in road traffic that follows after the opening of additional motorway capacity, known as induced traffic growth, and asking whether induced traffic growth affects the ability of an urban system to sustain its essential economic functions. The investigation also addresses how urban systems impact on the biosphere. Induced traffic growth, and the urban motorway development responsible for it, are often cited as a threat to sustainability because they are seen to increase fuel consumption and air pollution without necessarily improving accessibility within a city. Opponents to urban motorway construction claim that it merely represents a reshuffling of system elements, such that the spatial relationships between transport and land-use are changed, but the amount of time spent travelling, and the number of economic exchanges made by people, remain much the same. Motorway development advocates refute these claims, arguing that motorway construction reduces travel times, cuts emissions and fuel consumption and increases economic activity, thereby enhancing sustainability. While it should be possible to resolve these issues through a program of empirical analysis, the phenomenon remains contested, raising questions about why and how its contested status affects transport decision-making and transport science. These questions are answered in this thesis by first investigating the social and political context in which debate over induced traffic growth has taken place. To do this, Soft Systems Methodology is used to investigate the way in which conflicts over urban motorway development have been resolved in London, Sydney and Zürich. The comparative analysis highlights differences between the rules of the political decision-making systems in each of the cities, and how these distribute power to different groups within society. While the history of conflicts is similar in each of the cities, more power is given to special interest groups from industry in London and Sydney. By contrast, the system in Zürich gives more power to resident populations through its system of direct democracy. Consequently, urban motorway development, the induced traffic growth it gives rise to and the impacts they have on city operations are acted upon in Zürich to the extent that transport policy has focused more on the development of comprehensive public transport systems. This leads to the conclusion that the contested status of induced traffic growth is more a product of the socio-economic goals of particular interest groups within society than it is of shortcomings in the empirical record or essentially unresolved theoretical issues. With the political context as background, the thesis then reviews the empirical analyses and theoretical explanations for the phenomenon. First, a review of past empirical analyses is undertaken to identify the grounds that have been cited to refute the induced traffic growth hypothesis. Two key areas are identified. The first involves difficulties with distinguishing the sources of induced traffic growth from traffic reassignment. The second concerns the absence of traffic data for routes that are potential alternatives to a new motorway from which traffic reassignment may have taken place. A case study of the M4 Motorway in Sydney is presented with data for all arterial through-routes that cross relevant screenlines, thereby overcoming several of the shortcomings identified in the review. This case study adds to the general literature of case studies that corroborate the induced traffic growth hypothesis, but provides the first substantial documented case for an Australian city. A review of the theoretical explanations for the phenomenon finds that while both microeconomic evaluation and standard modelling procedures provide accounts for the phenomenon that meet institutional expectations of technical veracity, neither constitutes a substantial description of the causal mechanism for the phenomenon, leaving unanswered questions about some findings in the empirical record. This conclusion prompts the development of a systems-based explanation for induced traffic growth that defines it as a form of multiple system feedback processes controlled by a travel budget time constant. By accounting for the phenomenon and its effects in this way, an explanation is provided for changes to travel behaviour and patterns of land-use development that reveals how urban motorway development affects urban systems in an holistic way. The final section of the thesis combines the insights gained by examination of the politics of the transport decision-making system with empirical analyses and theoretical explanations for induced traffic growth, to produce a general systems view of cities and their place within the earth’s biosphere. This treatment considers the problems of oil depletion and global climate change, and the effects that urban motorway development has on the ability of urban systems to adapt to changes in the system environment brought about by these problems. The thesis concludes that urban motorway development and the processes that it triggers, which are embodied in the phenomenon of induced traffic growth, can undermine a city’s comparative ability to sustain the accessibility needs of its residents.