Over the last decade, there has been rapid growth in research into the influence of the physical environment on physical activity. Previously, individual and social factors dominated research into the influences of physical activity. This new area of study has been built on the understanding that the physical environment may create an opportunity or a barrier to engagement in physical activity behaviours (Sallis & Owen, 1997). This research develops objectively measured features of the physical environment in order to investigate relationships with walking behaviour. Public health research of this nature is still at a preliminary stage, although research expertise outside of public health including transportation, urban planning and geographic information science has much to contribute to this emerging field. This study investigated walking in the neighbourhood in a sample of adults residing in Perth, Western Australia. Objective measurement of the physical environment using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was conducted including measurement of street connectivity, residential density, land use mix and retail floor area ratio at three different geographic scales (suburb, census collection district, 15 minute walk from a survey participants home). These measures were then combined into an index known as a walkability index and validated against survey participant reported data on walking within the neighbourhood using binary logistic regression. Among other findings, the evidence presented shows that depending on which geographic scale the physical environment is measured at and what type of walking in the neighbourhood is reported, the strength of relationship varies between an objectively measured walkability index and walking behaviour in the neighbourhood. These findings highlight the need to differentiate between walking for transport and walking for recreation, health and exercise when investigating the relationship between physical activity and the environment. These findings also show the importance of geographic scale of measurement in the relationship between physical activity and the physical environment, and the need for current high quality geographic data in this type of research.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1984. / Also available in print.

This thesis aims to scrutinize the Visegrad Quadruple Initiative as a device of the Central European countries in the process of involving into the re-negotiations in Europe and in world politics. The thesis argues that the Visegrad group was built in order to respond the demands of changing Europe and Euro-Atlantic structures, and thus to overcome the double process of transition and integration. However that was not the only reason to launch the Visegrad regional cooperation. The group produced an affirmative discourse that its members are distinguished from the other countries in transition, so that they are constantly one step forward to &lsquo / return to Europe&rsquo / . In the aftermath of the eastern enlargements of NATO and the EU alike, the original mission of the group, integration with the West, was achieved. That created a profound discussion about the survival of the group. As it is argued in this thesis, the group, as a prosperous and substantial regional cooperation, should rather continue to work in order to have more words to say in the re-negotiations processes. Another argument of the thesis is that the Visegrad group, taking Benelux group as a model in its continuity, is beneficial to produce a common foreign policy tendency among its members as long as the interests of its members are overlapping, otherwise the group is just being a political platform in which its members can share their views in such areas as regional regulations.

Theory suggests that plant interactions at the neighbourhood scale play a fundamental role in regulating biodiversity–productivity relationships (BPRs) in tree communities. However, empirical evidence of this prediction is rare, as little is known about how neighbourhood interactions scale up to influence community BPRs. Here, using a biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiment, we provide insights into processes underlying BPRs by demonstrating that diversity-mediated interactions among local neighbours are a strong regulator of productivity in species mixtures. Our results show that local neighbourhood interactions explain over half of the variation in observed community productivity along a diversity gradient. Overall, individual tree growth increased with neighbourhood species richness, leading to a positive BPR at the community scale. The importance of local-scale neighbourhood effects for regulating community productivity, however, distinctly increased with increasing community species richness. Preserving tree species diversity at the local neighbourhood scale, thus seems to be a promising way for promoting forest productivity.

La logistique collaborative est récemment devenue un élément important pour beaucoup d'entreprises afin d'améliorer l'efficacité de leur chaîne logistique. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions les possibilités offertes par les problèmes de collectes et livraisons pour améliorer les performances des chaînes logistiques grâce au transport collaboratif. La thèse est inscrite dans un projet européen nommé SCALE (Step Change in Agri-food Logistics Ecosystem). Dans un premier temps, deux métaheuristiques sont proposées et étudiées pour résoudre le problème de collectes et livraisons avec transbordements. Celles-ci sont comparées aux travaux de la littérature et permettent d’améliorer les résultats sur certaines instances. Dans un deuxième temps, un modèle pour un problème de collectes et livraisons (PDVRP) est proposé. Celui-ci est utilisé pour étudier les bénéfices de la collaboration sur le transport. Il est appliqué sur des données générées aléatoirement et sur des données réelles issues du projet SCALE. Enfin troisièmement, un modèle pour un PDVRP particulier est présenté. Dans ce modèle, les marchandises doivent passer par exactement deux points de transbordement entre les points de collecte et les points de livraison. Ce problème est inspiré d'une seconde étude de cas réalisée dans le cadre du projet SCALE. Ceci permet de mettre en évidence l’intérêt de la collaboration et du transbordement dans le domaine du transport de marchandises. / Collaborative logistics have become recently an important element for many companies to improve their supply chains efficiency. In this thesis, we study pickup and delivery problems to improve supply chains efficiency thanks to collaborative transportation. The thesis was part of the European project SCALE (Step Change in Agri-food Logistics Ecosystem). Firstly, two metaheuristics are proposed and studied to solve the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Transshipments. These metaheuristics are compared with literature works and the results of several instances are improved. Secondly, a mathematical model for a pickup and delivery problem (PDVRP) is proposed. This model is used to study the benefits of collaboration on transportation. It is applied on random data and on a case study from SCALE with real data. Finally, a model for a particular PDVRP is presented. In this model, the shipments have to cross exactly two transshipments nodes between their pickup and delivery points. This problem is inspired by a second case study made during the project SCALE. This allows to highlight the importance of collaboration and transshipment in the field of goods transportations.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Mathematics) / The main theme of this thesis is the construction of linear codes from adjacency matrices or sub-matrices of adjacency matrices of regular graphs. We first examine the binary codes from the row span of biadjacency matrices and their transposes for some classes of bipartite graphs. In this case we consider a sub-matrix of an adjacency matrix of a graph as the generator of the code. We then shift our attention to uniform subset graphs by exploring the automorphism groups of graph covers and some classes of uniform subset graphs. In the sequel, we explore equal codes from adjacency matrices of non-isomorphic uniform subset graphs and finally consider codes generated by an adjacency matrix formed by adding adjacency matrices of two classes of uniform subset graphs.

Private law instruments of environmental protection Abstract Private law deals primarily with the regulation of relations between individuals and the protection of their individual rights, whether personal or property. The aim of this dissertation is therefore to determine whether and how the instruments of private law can be used to protect the environment. For this purpose, an analysis of the relevant private law institutes has been carried out, such as the protection of the personality, neighbourhood law, and the prevention and compensation of damage, which are the most important means of protecting the rights of an individual. Protection of personality in private law is primarily designed to protect the life, health and privacy, but it is useful to indirectly protect the environment from the effects that these values threaten, as shown by extensive decision-making practice of the European Court of Human Rights. The right to live in a favourable environment is a new institute in Czech civil law, which could have a great potential for environmental protection purposes, but it still lacks a more detailed regulation and there is also no case law. Neighbourhood law serves to protect the real estate owners against the disruptive effects of the activities of their neighbours. These are referred to as imissions...

The Diploma is focused on the EU's external borders impact on the border area of Lviv. Both local and regional level of social and economic development of the border area and its relations with Poland and EU are examined in the context of political development from the beginning of independent Ukraine until presents. Mixed-Methods approach has been applied as it allows case studies to be set in a wider context. Structural and regional disparities of the development are observed by methods of quantitative analysis and Descriptive Statistics. Qualitative Research is applied to analyse a cognitive role of the border. From the political point of view, the development of Eastern European border area is controlled by European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and related EU regional political initiative. In the Western Ukrainian regions these are mainly represented by micro-projects focused on local problems and their solutions and intensification of the local cross-border cooperation development. Statistical analysis states that remarkable economic development has not reached the required level yet. However, the increasing social and infrastructural potential ushers in its rise in the future. Key words: Ukraine, border area of Lviv, border impact, cross-border cooperation, European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)

Cette recherche porte sur l’une des traditions urbanistiques britanniques de l’après-guerre, le town design, et sur sa transmission en France dans le cadre de la construction des villes nouvelles. Ma thèse se développe ainsi en deux temps : la première partie définit ces savoirs urbanistiques dans le milieu britannique et étudie leur mise en pratique ainsi que leur formalisation ; la seconde partie analyse leur réception et leur reformulation dans le contexte français, ainsi que les motivations des acteurs impliqués. Mon travail s’attache à analyser la façon dont la tradition du town design se codifie progressivement au travers des plans anglais des années d’après-guerre, ces études urbaines commanditées par des municipalités dans lesquelles s’exprime et se formalise une façon de faire la ville. Un enjeu important de mon travail est de replacer, dans l’histoire des débats urbains, l’apport de ces professionnels « installés », modernistes, en tant qu'inventeurs de formes et de doctrines. Cette histoire des savoir-faire étudie plus spécifiquement la façon dont des concepts sont mobilisés par les acteurs et transformés par leur pratique. Au fondement de la tradition du town design se trouve la méthode du neighbourhood planning, qui repose sur l’opérationnalisation du concept d’unité de voisinage. Ce concept opératoire, appliqué au développement d’un territoire, se traduit directement par l’usage de trois outils de conception : le programme (distribution spatio-temporelle et fonctions des équipements), la mobilité (connexions et temporalité des déplacements) et la composition par groupements (et non via un tracé ordonnateur). Ces outils se trouvent appliqués dans la centralité avec l’opération du Barbican Centre, chef d’œuvre ambigu du town design qui, s’appuyant sur un dispositif de precinct, propose un environnement autonome et attractif comme réponse au défi de la construction de logements dans les conditions de la centralité. Un autre enjeu, qui fait l’objet de la seconde partie de ce travail, est d’étudier différents modes de transmission de ces savoir-faire urbanistiques et d’identifier des « chaînes de transmission » et les « agents de transfert » dans le contexte français. Je montre l’intérêt profond des concepteurs français de villes nouvelles pour le travail sur la programmation et pour l’exigence rationnelle générale (accumulation de données, élaboration d’hypothèses…) qui caractérisent l’approche britannique. À la fin des années 1960, les acteurs des villes nouvelles veulent rompre avec l’urbanisme de plan, caractéristique des savoir-faire urbains appliqués en France depuis l’après-guerre. Une étude de cas autour de la collaboration de la Mission de Cergy-Pontoise avec Shankland et Cox fournit un exemple clair de transfert de savoir-faire entre deux grandes institutions publiques : il s'agit d'une part du département d’architecture du London County Council (LCC) – en charge, notamment, de l’élaboration du plan de Londres de 1944 et de sa mise en application – et d'autre part de l’Institut d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la région parisienne (IAURP), en charge de la création des villes nouvelles autour de la capitale. L’intérêt pour l’expérience britannique s’explique par les instructions très claires du ministère, relayées par le directeur de la Mission, Bernard Hirsch, qui exigent de laisser aux sociétés privées une plus grande part d’initiative dans le développement de la ville nouvelle. L’expérience britannique permet aussi aux jeunes architectes de la Mission, comme l’ont fait avant eux les jeunes architectes du LCC, de définir une nouvelle pratique d’aménageur-concepteur : un concepteur dont l’action n’est ni exclusivement réglementaire ni celle d’un « auteur », et qui accepte l’incertitude de l’évolution du projet dans le temps / My research focuses on a post-war British planning tradition called “town design”, and on its transfer and diffusion in France through the work of new towns designer. The first part of the dissertation defines this tradition as a specific set of urban skills and concepts developed during the British post-war years. The second part analyses its reception and reformulation in the 1960’s French context. The dissertation aims to show how the tradition of town design was gradually codified through the making of urban plans commissioned by municipalities in the post-war years. An important issue was to establish that “mainstream” professional modernist architects could be inventors of forms and doctrines. This study shows more specifically how concepts are mobilised and transformed by professional pratice. The tradition of town design relies on neighbourhood planning and uses the neighbourhood unit’ as an operational concept in the development of central areas. As such, the Barbican Center may be considered an ambiguous masterpiece of town design. It confronts the challenge of building dwellings in central areas within a pedestrian precinct conceived as an autonomous and attractive environment. The second part of this work is dedicated to the study of the different ways in which the urban tradition has been “transmitted” to France and of its "transmission chains" and "transfer agents" in the French context. The thesis shows that the French new town designers praise the British tradition for its emphasis on briefing and programming, as well as its data-driven, firmly rational approach. The case study of the close collaboration between the Mission de Cergy-Pontoise and the Shankland and Cox practice demonstrates that a full set of skills and concepts was transferred between two major public institutions: the architects’ department of London County Council (LCC) and the Institut d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la région parisienne (IAURP), which was in charge of the creation of new towns around the capital

Neste trabalho, debruçamo-nos sobre uma porção da cidade de São Paulo, situada em seu oeste próximo, tida aqui, de forma ampla, sob a designação de Água Branca. Partindo da realidade presente em sua complexidade, questionamos a existência da "Água Branca" enquanto bairro. Ao nos debruçarmos sobre o bairro, seu conceito e as teorizações envolvendo este nível de organização da vida urbana, descobrimos que a Água Branca tem um movimento histórico de suas espacialidades, que não se restringe ao bairro. O bairro e a sua sociabilidade definidora, a vida de bairro, pode ter existido no local, mas, nem tal local surge como um bairro, nem persiste como tal no presente momento. Este movimento nos mostrou três momentos. A Água Branca foi inicialmente uma localidade rural dos arredores paulistanos. A partir da industrialização, começa a surgir no local o bairro de Água Branca. A configuração da Metrópole, advinda do avanço do processo de urbanização, dissolve o bairro e o local passa a ser uma porção imersa na metrópole. Neste momimento o local se transforma: o espaço, o modo de vida no interior deste, as suas relações com o restante da cidade, enfim, sua função, estrutura e forma. Tais espacialidades são engendradas e só podem ser entendidas se vistas a partir da relação dos processos históricos mais amplos, como a (des)industrialização e a urbanização, (des)valorização imobiliária, etc., processos estes que ocorrem na escala da cidade como um todo ou mesmo do país, com os processos sociais que ocorrem em escala local. Ou seja, para se compreender o local e suas transformações históricas é necessário compreender, paralelamente, tanto os processos sociais mais amplos quanto aqueles relativos à escala do próprio local. Por isso, percorremos os processos de industrialização e urbanização da cidade de São Paulo de forma ampla, procurando ressaltar os aspectos destes processos que mais nos interessam para a compreensão do local. / In this research, we lean out on a fraction of São Paulo city, located on its near west, took here, in a large way, under the designation of Água Branca. Taking from the present reality in its complexity we question the existence of "Água Branca" as a neighbourhood. When we leaned out on the neighbourhood, its concept and the theorizations of this urban life organization level, we discovered that Água Branca has a historical movement of its spacialities which goes beyond the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood and its specific sociability, called "neighbourhood life", might has existed on the area. But, neither this local arises as a neighbourhood nor persists as one nowadays. This movement showed us three moments. Água Branca was in the beginning a rural location of the São Paulo surroundings. From industrialization, begins to arise on the area the heighbourhood of Água Branca. The configuration of the metropolis, resulted from the urbanization process advance, dissolve the neighbourhood and the area begins to be an immersed portion on the metropolis. On this movement, the area goes through a transformation: the space, the way of life inside of it, its relations with the rest of the city, at last, its function, structure and form. Such spacialities are done and only can be understood if they are analized from the relation of amplier historical processes, such as the (un)industrialization and the urbanization, (un)valorization of the space, etc., in short, processes that occur in the city as a whole or even in the country scale, with the social processes which occur on local scale. In other words, to understnad the area and its historical transformations it is necessary to understand both the amplier social processes and the ones related to the local scale simultaneously. Because of it, we examined the processes of industrialization and urbanization of São Paulo city in an ample way, intending to emphasize the aspects of its processes that are more important for the understanding of the area.