Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1997. / Bibliography: leaves 168-173.

The society in which we live is economically based and the greater part of our activities centres in the economy. Within this context, the Department of Trade and Industry recognized that small business development was an important area for government intervention. A long process of highlighting the importance of this sector and creating the right environment in which small businesses could grow and flourish was initiated at the level of policy and legislation. In the Labour Relations field, an attempt at achieving some measure of certainty in previously disputed areas was made through the passing of the Labour Relations Act of 1995. This study aims at exploring the effects of this Act on the growth and development of the small business sector in the Nelson Mandela Metropole. In fulfilling this aim, the focus was restricted to factors such as dismissal of workers, strikes and lock-outs, freedom of association and dispute resolution. The theory pertaining to Labour Legislation and small business development was obtained by means of conducting a comprehensive literature study. The literature study included all relevant perspectives on the Labour Relations Act and Government Policy on small businesses. From the study, a questionnaire was developed to test the impact of the Act on the growth and development of the small business sector in the Nelson Mandela Metropole. The empirical results, in general, indicated non-compliance with the Labour Relations Act and negative views on the value of the Act on the growth and development of the small business sector in the Nelson Mandela Metropole. From the literature study and the findings of the research questionnaire, it became apparent that: · A comprehensive audit of the small business sector in the Nelson Mandela Metropole is needed. The aim of the audit would be to review the current operations of the small business sector in the Metropole. This outcome will indicate the extent of understanding and compliance with the various aspects of the Labour Relations Act. · The acquisition of industrial relations knowledge and skills by owners and leaders in the sector is vital for the development of the sector. The Skills Development Act provides a funding framework for skills training that is relevant to a specific industry. The small business sector could benefit significantly from the provision of this piece of legislation. · A comprehensive support programme for SMME’s is a necessary prerequisite for the growth and development of the sector. The support system could include tax incentives, flexible labour legislation and training as indicated in the above paragraph.

Decisions made regarding road building have far-flung consequences. Spending money on roads means that other public goals such as farmland preservation, air quality improvement and provision of housing may be frustrated. In order for knowledgeable land-use decisions to be made, the full cost of roads needs to be examined. This thesis explores the issue of roadway land costs from a professional planning point of view. A method for calculating roadway land costs is developed and is then applied to provincially-funded roads in the Greater Vancouver region. The case study revealed that annual provincial roadway land costs amount to approximately $162 per automobile. Limited supplies of land and limited financial resources suggest that it may be time to examine approaches that would make it less necessary to add capacity to the existing road network. Expenditures on roads can be reduced by shifting from current "supply side" tactics. This thesis suggests various policies that could be enacted to effect such a change. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Greater Vancouver is a cooperative federalism in which planning relies on consensus and cooperation between municipalities, provincial ministries and Crown corporations. A result of this approach is a system in which each organisation and municipality is responsible for making decisions and funding the issues within its jurisdiction. Often this results in inefficient decisions being made; decisions, that otherwise would have considered regional issues, tend to consider only local concerns. Experience suggests that regional governments are generally distrusted by the general public and may pose a threat to the urban power base of the provincial government. Instead, a conjoint approach - which uses the existing agencies and is activated at key points in the process - offers the optimum configuration. In Greater Vancouver, a commission made up of nine directly elected, nine municipally appointed, and nine provincially appointed councillors will provide a well balanced organisation which is responsible to the province, municipalities, and the public. The new commission will be responsible for creating regional goals and ensuring conformity of the municipalities, ministries and Crown corporations to those goals. Adjustments in the provincial legislations will be required to transfer control and funding functions to the new commission, and to pave the way for a truly integrated transportation planning process for Greater Vancouver. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The significant constraints retarding the adoption of a residential landuse innovation, planned unit development or PUD, by private land developers in Greater Vancouver was the subject of this study. PUD is a landuse approach that integrates a variety of dwelling types, recreational and community services while preserving much of the natural landscape of a site. Although its use was highly recommended by land developers and municipal planners in Greater Vancouver, few projects had actually been constructed by 1971. To identify the reasons for this delay, interviews were undertaken with key decision-making personnel in municipal planning departments and in thirteen land development companies who had repeated opportunities to use the PUD innovation prior to 1971. It was found that trial and adoption of the PUD approach was often delayed five years or longer primarily because of external conditions or agents involved in the implementation process. A serious shortage of suitable large tracts of land at reasonable costs had thwarted adoption by four developers and threatened to reduce PUD use by a further seven developers. Prior to 1968, there was a lack of suitable zoning to permit the clustering of housing, services, and open space in non-standard condominium developments. Even when appropriate legislation was developed, municipal planners and private developers still faced serious public and political opposition to the PUD innovation. Residents of predominately single-family neighbourhoods and their elected officials were afraid of change in their community , poorly informed concerning the nature of PUD, and extremely suspicious of the motivation of the private developers. This mistrust and information lag was viewed by the majority of developers as the most serious constraint against PUD adoption. Design, financing and marketing of the innovation were not perceived as significant constraints. In contrast to adoption research findings in other fields, a developer's information behaviour, antecedents or development status, and perception of the innovation were of secondary importance. Only one developer rejected PUD on the basis of incomplete information. There was no significant difference between developers of varying degrees of innovativeness as to the type, number or technical accuracy of information sources used at different stages of adoption. Only three development status characteristics were positively associated with increasing innovativeness. These characteristics, namely a large land inventory, large scale operations and a longterm investment horizon assisted developers in overcoming the primary constraints of PUD implementation. A firm belief in the relative advantage and compatibility of PUD with corporate goals also contributed to the persistance of highly innovative developers in the face of serious implementation constraints. Ultimately, the continued use of a landuse innovation depends on the satisfaction of residents with their environment, as well as the developer's satisfaction with the cost-benefit returns. If PUD in the nineteen seventies does prove to provide a desirable residential environment at acceptable costs and densities, its continued adoption may be assured. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines some of the problems associated with urban sprawl, and attempts to determine the role of soil quality with respect to land use changes on four rural-urban fringe sites in the metropolitan Vancouver area. Part I describes various characteristics of, and problems created by, urban sprawl, its effects on the countryside, and reasons why it occurs. In Part II, the study sites are described in terms of soils, parent materials, drainage, and topography. In addition, physical and cultural information regarding the regions surrounding each site is given to portray each site in its larger context. Details and evaluation of the research results follow. Four sites, one in each of the municipalities of Delta and Langley and two in the Municipality of Richmond, were selected with features reflecting the physical heterogeneity of the Lower Fraser Valley and for their proximity to urban centres. Four series of air photographs were assembled and examined, in conjunction with soils maps, to determine what land use modification had occurred over a period of about twenty years. Land use changes were correlated with soils data to determine which soils were most affected by urban development. The results of this study appear to indicate that soil quality (for agriculture) by itself is insufficient to delay urbanization of fringe land. Other factors, such as isolation from urban centres, zoning provisions, and economic viability, are as important as soil quality in determining the fate of agricultural land on the rural-urban fringes of Greater Vancouver. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Unknown

The focus of this study was the development and testing of a micro-spatial supply model which could explain and predict the allocation of residential development to subareas within a region. This involved a three step process. The first step was a review of the literature to determine what criteria were considered important in the location of residential development. Two types of location criteria were found to be important. The first of these criteria were intuitive accessibility measures used in other modelling studies. The second type of criteria were potential supply criteria suggested as important by surveys of residential developers. The second step involved the measuring and testing of various potential supply and accessibility measures to see which were important in explaining the allocation of residential development within the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). From these tests a microspatial allocation function was derived which could be tested in a large scale urban model of the GVRD. The third step involved incorporating the microspatial allocation function into the supply sub-model of a large urban model and running the model for four simulated years. The simulated data was then compared with actual data before and after the inclusion of the allocation function. Finally, the results of the tests were compared to similar studies which had compared simulated data with actual data. The test results indicate that approximately 50% of single family development and approximately 75% of multiple family development could be explained by potential supply measures. Accessibility measures were of' little significance in explaining single family development, and explained only about 10% of multiple family development. The results of testing the microspatial allocation functions in a large urban model were not as encouraging as the explanatory tests. Generally, the results of tests which compared actual data with simulated data indicate that the increase in performance with the microspatial allocation function was marginal. However, compared to similar studies the results are acceptable. In general, the study indicates that behavioural studies of the role played by developers combined with analytical models of this behaviour may provide considerable insight into the nature of the development process. It also lends strong supporting evidence to the suggestion that government organizations have been effective in allocating growth by their servicing and zoning policies. / Business, Sauder School of / Real Estate Division / Graduate

This dissertation focuses on the precise and meaningful measurement of change as it pertains to the urban subarea residential housing status. The word "measurement" is qualified as meaningful in the sense that the approach adopted is of relevance to public policy. Specifically, the dissertation is aimed at providing answers to the following research questions: First, how can the changes in residential housing status in the different parts of an urban area be precisely and meaningfully measured? Second, what variables are most appropriate for the measurement? Third, can these variables be useful for differentiating between various parts of the urban area? Fourth, do the resul ts of an urban subarea housing classification system depend on the specific variables used in the classification? Using data drawn mainly from the 1960 and 1970 censuses of housing for Portland, Oregon SMSA, a simple but robust methodology is developed for indexing and monitoring changes in the urban subarea residential housing status. The research borrows appreciably from Fisher and Winnick's, and Toulan' s formulations of the filtering process in the urban housing market. The variables used in the measurement and classification analyses include the changes in the following variables: median home value or contract rent, median household income relative to the average household size, housing quality, percentage of all occupied housing units, and percentage of owner occupied housing units. Principal component analysis is used for construction of composite index of change in urban subarea residential housing status. Furthermore, this composite index is used in a multivariate linear discriminant analysis for the classification of the various subareas (census tracts) in Portland, Oregon SMSA. The findings validate the variables employed in the analyses, and support the hypothesis that the results of an urban subarea classification system depend, to some extent, on the housing market variables used in the classification. The findings from the study show that operationally simple but robust systems can be developed for monitoring the changes in residential housing status in urban neighborhoods, in relation to the general urban area.

This study is an attempt to discover the intercultural communication problems and the methods of coping used by the Nigerian students in the Portland metropolitan extent to which these discovered problems and tried solutions compare with those of other international students that are commonly reported in the literature.

Many North Americans have been moving to exurbia --low density, rural housing within the commuting range of urban areas. It has been assumed that employment is a major link. of exurban households with urban areas. It has been assumed that employment is a major link. of exurban households with urban areas. This analysis of exurban commuting patterns is based on a mail survey of 1408 households who bought homes in 1987 near Portland, Oregon. The bid-rent model of urban form predicts that exurbanites will trade-off long commutes for lower housing prices. But previous research suggests that exurban living may not require long commutes because of decentralized employment. The study finds that exurban commuters travel farther than suburban commuters and pay less for housing. Exurban home buyers do not, however, have longer commutes the farther out they live. Instead those with urban jobs generally locate closer to the city center than those with decentralized jobs. The commuting times of exurban principal wage earners are also influenced by occupation, flextime use, and by the presence and employment status of other adults in the household. The commuting times of exurban secondary wage earners are influenced by the number of hours they work, their mode of travel, and the number of children they have. Although most exurban home buyers moved to obtain a bigger lot and a more rural environment, there were many differences among households. Four types of exurban households were identified with cluster analysis. Only the Child-Raising households take full advantage of decentralized jobs to live in rural areas without longer commutes than suburbanites. In contrast, Long-Distance Commuters travel nearly twice the average time because they usually hold urban jobs and want large, but inexpensive, lots. Affluents also hold many urban jobs but can afford larger lots closer-in than others. The Economy-Minded commute average distances to obtain cheaper housing on smaller lots. This study improves understanding of the exurban development process. The study also finds that the bid-rent model of urban form is a useful theory for understanding exurban development despite the decentralization of employment and the predominance of two wage earner households.