Humanity confronts an existential threat without historic precedent. Environmental pressures have reached such intensity and pace of change that the earth system may be irreversibly tipped into a new and unpredictable state. The emerging global reality is, in turn, redefining overall conditions for business success. Addressing these challenges both demands and brings great opportunities for innovation. An important and sometimes neglected aspect of innovation is the design or redesign of business models, which has been identified as a greater source of lasting competitive advantage than new products and services per se. The business model has also been suggested as a new unit of analysis when discussing sustainability. However, this is still a relatively underexplored area. The aim of this work was therefore to develop an approach to business model design that supports strategic sustainable development, i.e., supports organizations to contribute to society’s transition towards sustainability in a way that strengthens the organization.       To be able to design a business model that supports strategic sustainable development, it is necessary to know what sustainability is and how to develop sustainability-promoting, economically viable strategies. Therefore, the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, which includes, e.g., an operational definition of sustainability and strategic guidelines for how to approach it, was used as an overarching framework. Specific research methods and techniques included, e.g., literature reviews, questionnaires, interviews, work with focus groups, participatory action research with partner organizations, creative problem solving techniques, modeling, and simulation.   The literature reviews revealed potential sustainability benefits of developing business models in conjunction with product-service systems (PSS). However, a knowledge gap exists regarding how to effectively connect these fields. Arguably, PSS strategies can best contribute to sustainability when business models support their implementation and when both the business models and the PSS strategies are guided by an understanding of strategic sustainable development. Therefore, an integrated approach to Business Model Design for Strategic Sustainable Development was co-developed and tested in PSS innovation work with partners, e.g., companies within the energy and lighting sectors. The tests indicated that the new approach helped to clarify strengths and weaknesses of current business models from a strategic sustainability perspective; to transform an organization’s vision and strategy into a sustainability-framed vision and a sustainability-promoting strategy; and to communicate the new vision and strategy to the value network as a basis for engaging important stakeholders in the change. For example, the approach supported one of the partner companies in its transformation towards providing sustainable PSS solutions in the form of light as a service. Examples of business benefits of the new approach include improved scalability and risk avoidance, which provide a foundation for better investment strategies. Benefits also include improved differentiability and a broadened view on, and a more solid foundation for, collaboration with stakeholders that are increasingly important to sustainable business success.

The world currently has more people living in cities than in rural areas. In the United States this is no exception, and as a result government policy is focusing on the supply of 'green' jobs that help repair and expand its infrastructure in an attempt to help curb non-renewable resource use. The expansion of public transportation throughout the country is one facet of the multi-pronged US government policy. In the tri-county area of South Florida (Palm Beach County, Broward County, and Miami-Dade County) a research study known as the South Florida East Coast Corridor Transit Analysis (SFECCTA) entered Phase 2 in January 2009. This study looks at incorporating the FEC freight corridor which transverses the downtown areas of 47 cities into a major North- South commuter system. This system would also supplement the existing commuter Tri- Rail corridor. The proposed methodology in this manuscript attempts to address the issue of providing an adaptable, efficient and convenient public transportation in a low to medium density environment where the automobile is the preferred mode of travel. Emphasis is placed on connecting existing origin and destination locations in and around the greater West Palm Beach metropolitan area in Palm Beach County, FL. The goal of the methodology is to establish potential routes that will connect high amounts of residence to places of social interaction, consumption, employment, and the proposed SFECCTA regional transportation system with Light Rail Transit as the end goal. As a result the proposed corridors focus on creating dedicated and shared right of ways that already exist via the road network. The discussion and conclusion provide methodology successes, improvements, and economic development recommendations. / by Dylan Kennard. / Vita. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Chan Chung Shing. / Thesis submitted in: June 2005. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-110). / Abstracts and questionnaires in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / List of Tables --- p.ix / List of Figures --- p.x / List of Appendices --- p.xi / Chapter CHAPTER 1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Urban park management in Hong Kong --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Conceptual framework of the study --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Objectives of the study --- p.5 / Chapter 1.4 --- Scope and significance of the study --- p.6 / Chapter 1.5 --- Organization of the thesis --- p.8 / Chapter CHAPTER 2 --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.10 / Chapter 2.1 --- Definitions and typologies of urban parks --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2 --- Multi-dimensional functions of urban parks to livable and sustainable cities --- p.13 / Chapter 2.3 --- The need for recreation management frameworks and indicators of urban parks --- p.16 / Chapter 2.4 --- Definition and functions of indicators in recreation management --- p.18 / Chapter 2.5 --- Studies of indicators in park management and their implications --- p.20 / Chapter 2.6 --- Summary --- p.25 / Chapter CHAPTER 3 --- BACKGROUND OF STUDY AREA --- p.27 / Chapter 3.1 --- History and management of urban parks in Hong Kong --- p.27 / Chapter 3.2 --- Classifications of the major parks in Hong Kong --- p.28 / Chapter 3.3 --- Site selection of the study --- p.33 / Chapter 3.4 --- Baseline data of urban parks --- p.34 / Chapter 3.5 --- Summary --- p.36 / Chapter CHAPTER 4 --- METHODOLOGY --- p.37 / Chapter 4.1 --- Methods of data and information collection --- p.37 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- First stage (In-depth interviews and questionnaire survey) --- p.38 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Second stage (Questionnaire surveys) --- p.40 / Chapter 4.1.3 --- Modified Delphi approach --- p.41 / Chapter 4.2 --- Methods of data analysis --- p.42 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Matrix frameworks --- p.42 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Importance-performance (I-P) analysis --- p.43 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Factor analysis --- p.44 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Driving force-State-Response (DSR) framework --- p.45 / Chapter 4.3 --- Summary --- p.46 / Chapter CHAPTER 5 --- RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS I - Indicators for Sustainable Urban Parks in Hong Kong --- p.48 / Chapter 5.1 --- Results --- p.48 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Characteristics of park managers and park users --- p.48 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Visitation characteristics of park users --- p.51 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Core indicators extracted based on the perception of park users --- p.52 / Chapter 5.2 --- Discussions --- p.54 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Characteristics of respondents and implications on park management --- p.54 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Components of urban park management selected in studies --- p.55 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Components extracted for frequent and non-frequent park users --- p.57 / Chapter 5.3 --- Recommendations --- p.58 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Development and implementation of urban park indicators --- p.58 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- DSR Framework for sustainable urban park management --- p.61 / Chapter 5.4 --- Summary --- p.64 / Chapter CHAPTER 6 --- RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS II - Indicator Ratings between Park Managers and Park Users --- p.65 / Chapter 6.1 --- Results --- p.65 / Chapter 6.1.1 --- Rankings of importance of indicators by park managers and park users --- p.65 / Chapter 6.1.2 --- Rankings of performance of indicators by park managers and park users --- p.67 / Chapter 6.1.3 --- Ranking of indicators by frequent and non-frequent park users --- p.69 / Chapter 6.2 --- Discussions --- p.70 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Discrepancies between the perceptions of park managers and park users --- p.70 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Park management problems caused by discrepancies between stakeholders --- p.72 / Chapter 6.2.3 --- Causes of discrepancies --- p.73 / Chapter 6.2.4 --- Park users' perception of urban parks' performance --- p.73 / Chapter 6.3 --- Recommendations --- p.74 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- Public participation of urban park management issues --- p.74 / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Multi-stakeholders' approach in urban park management --- p.75 / Chapter 6.4 --- Summary --- p.76 / Chapter CHAPTER 7 --- RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS III - Importance-Performance of Indicators in Urban Parks --- p.77 / Chapter 7.1 --- Results --- p.77 / Chapter 7.1.1 --- Importance-Performance (I-P) graph based on park managers' responses --- p.79 / Chapter 7.1.2 --- Importance-Performance (I-P) graph based on park users' responses --- p.81 / Chapter 7.2 --- Discussions --- p.82 / Chapter 7.2.1 --- Importance-Performance (I-P) Analyses of urban parks in Hong Kong --- p.82 / Chapter 7.2.2 --- Comparisons between responses of park managers and park users --- p.84 / Chapter 7.3 --- Recommendations --- p.85 / Chapter 7.3.1 --- Condition of urban parks in Hong Kong --- p.85 / Chapter 7.3.2 --- Resource allocation of urban parks --- p.86 / Chapter 7.3.3 --- Marketing methodology in public recreation management --- p.87 / Chapter 7.4 --- Summary --- p.88 / Chapter CHAPTER 8 --- CONCLUSION --- p.89 / Chapter 8.1 --- Summary of findings --- p.89 / Chapter 8.2 --- Implications of the study --- p.92 / Chapter 8.2.1 --- Indicator development and implementation in urban parks --- p.92 / Chapter 8.2.2 --- Multi-stakeholder approach in urban park management --- p.93 / Chapter 8.2.3 --- Adoption of marketing research methodology in recreation studies --- p.94 / Chapter 8.3 --- Limitations of the study --- p.94 / Chapter 8.4 --- Suggestions for future study --- p.96 / Bibliography --- p.99 / Appendices --- p.111

The role of the environment in the development process is frequently framed as a one-way interaction, with humans decoupling from natural systems, and often damaging them in the process. When the environment is granted an influential role, it is often in establishing the initial conditions under which development will take place, for example, through natural resource endowments or climate factors. However, in some extreme environments, it may be responsible for not only the initial opportunities available in a society, but also for continuously shaping those opportunities through time. The field of Sustainable Development is fundamentally concerned with this two-way interaction between the environment and society, recognizing both as part of a coupled system. The chapters in this volume demonstrate some of the costs associated with development in an extreme environment using methods from climate science, ecology, remote sensing, and economics. By looking at places exposed to tropical cyclones, to persistent pollution resulting from fires that burn readily in a drought-prone location, to annual floods that frequently and randomly strike households in a country, we see that the environment critically shapes aspects of societies and their economic opportunities. By no means are all opportunities dictated by the environment. However, these chapters robustly illustrate that the environment imposes some critical boundaries on development in extreme environments and policies aiming to increase welfare must take account of the coupling of social and natural systems.

In less than two decades since the notion of sustainable development has become firmly established in policy and academic domains, the debate within the field of sustainable development has shifted from the issue of definition to one of measurement. From the national to local levels, considerable efforts have been embarked in China to develop appropriate sustainability assessment measures (SAMs). The studies of SAM at the municipal level in China are particularly booming due to the diversity of Chinese cities both in terms of size and function. In spite of the value in generating creative thinking, the overlapping and redundancy in efforts of devising SAMs, partly because of the inapplicability of the devised SAMs, have undermined the usefulness of SAMs to guide policy-making and foster behavioral changes toward sustainable development. Many Chinese academic researchers and professionals have indicated these problems but primarily focused on methodological and technical aspects. This research attempts to address the radical issues embedded in the whole scheme of sustainability assessment with the objective of improving the applicability and effectiveness of SAMs for Chinese cities. Based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative investigations, this research identifies the major problems facing with the development and application of SAM for Chinese cities and the influential factors and proposes an implementation scheme for better appraisal of sustainability of Chinese cities. / The study has revealed a number of key findings. First, the evolvement of the SAMs for Chinese cities, typically characterized by increasing complexity and number of participants, was closely related to the evolvement of people's understanding of, and aspiration for, sustainable development. Second, of the problems identified by the sustainability assessment practitioners, the most crucial ones for SAM development and application respectively, are the unavailability of required data and incomprehensiveness of sustainable development dimensions. Third, the key factors that influence the applicability and effectiveness of SAMs for Chinese cities include difference between SAM developers and users in their understanding of the objectives and criteria of sustainability assessment; the context of the city subject to assessment, the process of decision-making in Chinese municipal governments and various methodological issues, etc. / With the above findings, this research concludes that sustainability assessment is an issue-driven, context-specified and decision-making-tailored task which demands the collaborative efforts of government users, data providers and SAM developers. The implementation scheme of sustainability assessment should preferably go through five phases: preparation for sustainability assessment, establishment of SAM, calculation of SAM results, application of SAM results and lastly the evaluation and improvement of SAM. Of the above, the first, the fourth and the last phases are of particular significances for Chinese cities. The research also highlights issues related to the evaluation of the applicability and effectiveness of SAM through an analysis of the ecological footprint and human development index of five cities in China including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Taiyuan and Guilin. The perspectives and insights derived from these case studies have shed some light on the future development and application of similar SAMs for other Chinese cities. / Lu, Jia. / "May 2007." / Adviser: K. C. Lam. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-01, Section: A, page: 0333. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 210-229). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

This research analyzes the relationship between local land use regulations and commercial development in the City of Bakersfield, California, specifically focusing on how the regulations are used to inform commercial development to be sustainable or not. This research contributes to similar research efforts through its contribution of the Sustainable Development Indicator Checklist, the tool used to measure sustainable development within the regulations as well as the built environment. Analysis of six case study locations falling under the C-B (Central Business), C-C (Commercial Center), and PCD (Planned Commercial Development) zone designations indicated the local land use regulations were not informing development to be particularly sustainable, mostly due to vague language, constraining language, and sometimes a combination of the two. Recommendations are made for how the City of Bakersfield can improve the land use regulations to be more pertinent to the process of informing future commercial development to be more sustainable.

"April 2004" / Bibliography: leaves 288-296. / xi, 345 leaves : ill., maps ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / "The main contributions to knowledge offered by this thesis include a detailed exploration of the multiple dimensions of sustainability in the development of a framework for assessing sustainable housing, and investigation of the context dependence of sustainability and finally, the application of the framework for generating guidelines for sustainable housing in Hanoi." --p. 281. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, 2004

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Idaho, 2006. / Abstract. "April 2006." Includes bibliographical references. Also available online in PDF format.

In the context of sustainable development, evaluations have particularly high relevance as complex issues have to be dealt with generally over an extended period of time. Furthermore, there is a growing demand to evaluate against the concept of sustainable development. Especially evaluations with sustainable development are a rather new type of evaluation, as the source of its evaluation questions and the criteria applied are rooted in the concept of sustainable development. Sustainability of a specific project or process is often highly case specific as sustainable development is determined by many often unique issues. However, evaluations would be highly inefficient, if they would have to be newly designed in every case. Thus it is necessary to determine and utilize the major issues for evaluations with sustainable development. This paper is part of a series of three papers - which can be used independently - that present the major common issues for evaluations with sustainable development in a Tool Box. The results presented here are based on outcomes of a research project funded by the "Austrian Science Fund". This paper includes the evaluation planning and commissioning procedure. It describes the steps from the idea to implementation of an evaluation with sustainable development. In the context of general requirements of evaluation planning and commissioning, the special features of evaluations with sustainable development are highlighted. (author's abstract) / Series: Research Paper Series of the Research Focus Managing Sustainability

This thesis studied four CEMUS courses offered in spring 2011. The purpose of this study was: 1) to measure CEMUS students‘ self-reported behavior and action as well as behavior intention towards sustainable development; 2) to analyze different factors and barriers to their behavior and action; 3) to analyze course coordinators‘ knowledge and perspectives about behavior change and action towards sustainable development; and 4) to analyze each course‘s impact on students. Finally, this thesis discusses how education can be improved to foster behavior and action towards sustainable development. This study used both qualitative and quantitative methods. According to the results, most CEMUS students were willing to recycle; to switch off electricity when it‘s not needed; and to travel by bicycle or public transportation instead of by car. On the other hand, fewer students had a willingness to pay for environmental costs and to cut down water consumption and waste. Among the opportunities for indirect action, it was political participation and working within the field of sustainable development (SD) that were most preferred. In contrast, much fewer students were willing to avoid purchasing products from companies with poor track records on CSR, to participate in voluntary work related to SD and to donate money for social or environmental causes. The two most frequently perceived constraints for behavior change among students were a lack of money and obstructive social norms. As a course outcome, four out of six coordinators expect students to take action afterwards but there is a lack of knowledge on how to encourage students to behave and act more sustainably. Based on the results, this thesis discussed what kinds of learning methods can be applied in CEMUS and ESD. It was concluded that education should focus on a specific domain and a small spatial scale, and assign project assignments in which students communicate and interact with stakeholders. Such an approach will help to approach the goals of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). CEMUS could also implement the theory of locus of control, emotional involvement and four different kinds of knowledge in their education in order to improve the effectiveness of CEMUS courses when it comes to promoting behavior and action towards sustainable development.