Heritage assets and the values associated with their protection deserve recognition as they represent a reference point from which cities can look to their past, understand the present, and plan for the future. To strengthen our understanding, this research explores the relationship between Heritage Conservation District (HCD) designation and its effect on community improvement efforts. In doing so, it seeks to explore the reasons for and values associated with the desire for communities to conserve their architectural heritage. The concept of the HCD is also investigated as a mechanism for promoting heritage, and the role of the HCD in achieving revitalization goals is described. Multiple sources of evidence were analyzed to provide insight into these research objectives. Planning and policy documents and mapped census data were examined, and open-ended interviews, community surveys, and field observation were undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of policy implementation and its impact on communities. Markham Village and Unionville, two HCDs located in the Town of Markham, Ontario, serve as case studies and provide a focus on current experiences within a real-life setting. Community improvement indicators were devised to determine progress toward community improvement and to measure the success of these HCDs. This study attempts to provide a means by which to monitor and evaluate conservation and revitalization goals.

Heritage assets and the values associated with their protection deserve recognition as they represent a reference point from which cities can look to their past, understand the present, and plan for the future. To strengthen our understanding, this research explores the relationship between Heritage Conservation District (HCD) designation and its effect on community improvement efforts. In doing so, it seeks to explore the reasons for and values associated with the desire for communities to conserve their architectural heritage. The concept of the HCD is also investigated as a mechanism for promoting heritage, and the role of the HCD in achieving revitalization goals is described. Multiple sources of evidence were analyzed to provide insight into these research objectives. Planning and policy documents and mapped census data were examined, and open-ended interviews, community surveys, and field observation were undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of policy implementation and its impact on communities. Markham Village and Unionville, two HCDs located in the Town of Markham, Ontario, serve as case studies and provide a focus on current experiences within a real-life setting. Community improvement indicators were devised to determine progress toward community improvement and to measure the success of these HCDs. This study attempts to provide a means by which to monitor and evaluate conservation and revitalization goals.

This thesis examines the history of groundwater management through the development of groundwater conservation districts in Texas. Political, economic, ideological, and scientific understandings of groundwater and its regulation varied across the state, as did the natural resource types and quantities, which created a diverse and complicated position for lawmakers and landowners. Groundwater was consistently interpreted as a private property right and case law protected unrestricted use for the majority of the twentieth-century even as groundwater resources crossed property and political boundaries, and water tables declined particularly during the second-half of the century. The case study of the Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District describes the complicated history of groundwater in Texas as the state attempted to balance natural resource legislation and private property rights and illuminate groundwater’s importance for the future.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-134).

The purpose of this report is to investigate the feasibility of irrigating the lands of the Cache Valley Water Conservation District No. 1. The district, as it now stands, is very much in need of many improvements. The Main canals are now in use and are in a good condition to serve all the lands with the required amount of water, but the few laterals that are now constructed, are in a poor condition, with the remaining laterals yet to be finished. Before successful irrigation can be practiced, a large portion of the land will require leveling and small areas are water-logged, which will require drainage. The soils of the area are of an impervious nature, and alkaline to some extent, which will require a definite method of procedure to put them in condition for plant growth. This report consists of a study of the factors affecting the feasibility of irrigating this district and includes a suggested program of reclamation.

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No description available.

Thesis (M. En.)--Miami University, Institute of Environmental Sciences, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], v, 101 p. : ill. Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-64).

Modern cities are often perceived as the antithesis of nature; the built environment is understood as the transformation of raw and untamed nature into a rationalized human landscape. However, a variety of scholars since the nineteenth century have noted the persistence of nature in cities, not only in providing essential services but also resisting human control. Most recently, urban geographers and environmental historians have argued that processes of urbanization do not entail the replacement of natural with artificial environments, but are more accurately understood as a reconfiguration of human/nature relations. In this dissertation, I employ this relational perspective to study a specific form of urban nature: stormwater flows. Urban drainage or stormwater management activities in US cities are a vivid example of the tensions between nature, society, and technology. In this study, I present a comparative case study of two US cities--Austin, Texas and Seattle, Washington--where stormwater issues have been a central focus of public debate over the last four decades. Using textual analysis, in-depth interviews, and experiential research methods, I argue that stormwater management practices involve not only the rational management of technological networks but also implicate a wide range of seemingly unrelated issues, such as local governance, environmental protection, land use decisionmaking, community development, aesthetics, and social equity. To describe the relational implications of urban nature, I present a framework of ecological politics to characterize drainage activities as rational, populist, or civic. I argue that the latter form of politics has the greatest potential to relieve the tensions between urban residents and their material surroundings by embracing a systems perspective of human/nonhuman relations and engaging local residents in the hands-on management of environmental flows. It is through the development of deliberative and grounded forms of civic politics that urban residents can forge new relationships between technology and nature, and in the process, understand their place in the world. / text