This thesis will critically analyse Australia’s censorship laws with a specific focus on the regulation of pornography distributed via the internet, a means of mass production and distribution of pornography. It will be argued that Australia’s current censorship laws are deficient because their focus is morality based. A morality based approach does not take into account what pornography is and does; in particular, the sex equality harms to real women and the inequality within society caused by pornography. This thesis will argue that the current censorship regime is an ineffective means of regulating internet pornography because it fails to address the complexities of internet regulation and the selling and marketing of sexual inequality online. This thesis will also argue that these censorship laws have had little or no impact in reducing the availability of pornography distributed via the internet. This thesis argues that a civil rights/equal opportunity approach to pornographic harm, as proposed by the anti-pornography civil rights ordinance drafted by American feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (“the ordinance”), should be adopted into Australian law. The ordinance will be examined with a particular focus on how it can be amended and incorporated into Australian equal opportunity legislation in order to more effectively regulate the distribution of pornography via the internet in a manner that addresses the harms to social inequality caused by pornography.

The City of South Lake Tahoe currently does not have an adopted subdivision ordinance. This has caused confusion about the approval process and regulatory requirements as well as delays in application processing. This Professional Project will explore the opportunity for the City to adopt a subdivision ordinance that would provide direction for subdivision design and approval and further the City’s smart growth and sustainability policies. However, there would need to be careful consideration for the potential increase in costs that are associated with additional fees or off-site improvement requirements. The Subdivision Ordinance would be written with the goals of achieving a streamlined process and incorporating design standards consistent with smart growth principles and sustainability consistent with the City’s Sustainability Plan. In addition, the Subdivision Ordinance must be consistent with the goals, policies, and programs of the City of South Lake Tahoe General Plan. The project would begin with a literature review on subdivision regulation and the regulatory environment in South Lake Tahoe. Several subdivision ordinances would be reviewed for their ability to meet the goals of the South Lake Tahoe Ordinance. Throughout the process there will be consultation with other professionals. The final product will be a draft subdivision ordinance and an analysis of how well the draft achieves the goals.

The city of Seattle, Washington made headlines in 2014 when its city council enacted the highest minimum wage in the history of the United States. The ruling appeared to begin a trend as similar policies began diffusing in cities across the country. In reality, however, municipal minimum wage ordinances have existed since the early 1990’s. Yet, despite over two decade’s worth of data on the subject, little research has been conducted to understand the characteristics that influence cities to enact minimum wages in the first place. This study contributes to our understanding of the predictors of minimum wage ordinances by retesting prior variables of significance over a more recent time period, while also introducing a new set of variables to the literature. I find that cities with an increased percentage of residents with bachelor’s degrees face an increased likelihood for future policy adoption. Additionally, I find that some age demographics may be significant predictors in future studies of minimum wage.

Background: Context and purpose of the study. To examine (1) associations between county-level zoning to support farmers' market placement and county-level farmers' market availability, rural/urban designation, percent African American residents, and percent of residents living below poverty and (2) individual-level associations between zoning to support farmers' markets; fruit and vegetable consumption and body mass index (BMI) among a random sample of residents of six North Carolina (NC) counties. Methods: Zoning ordinances were scored to indicate supportiveness for healthy food outlets. Number of farmers' markets (per capita) was obtained from the NC-Community Transformation Grant Project Fruit and Vegetable Outlet Inventory (2013). County-level census data on rural/urban status, percent African American, and percent poverty were obtained. For data on farmers' market shopping, fruit and vegetable consumption, and BMI, trained interviewers conducted a random digit dial telephone survey of residents of six NC counties (3 urban and 3 rural). Pearson correlation coefficients and multilevel linear regression models were used to examine county-level and individual-level associations between zoning supportiveness, farmers' market availability, and fruit and vegetable consumption and BMI. Results: At the county-level, healthier food zoning was greater in more urban areas and areas with less poverty. At the individual-level, self-reported fruit and vegetable consumption was associated with healthier food zoning. Conclusions: Disparities in zoning to promote healthy eating should be further examined, and future studies should assess whether amending zoning ordinances will lead to greater availability of healthy foods and changes in dietary behavior and health outcomes.

No description available.

While the migration of Abraham Lincoln’s family to the Northwest has often been documented as a significant event of his youth, historians have neglected the powerful repercussions this family decision had on Lincoln’s assessment of the South and the secession crisis in 1860 and 1861. Lincoln’s years living and working in the Northwest from 1831 to 1861 exposed him to the anti–slave system ethos of that region’s southern-born migrants. Sensitive to the restraints they believed the social system of slavery placed upon their own liberties, these former southerners simultaneously despised the slave system, hated African Americans, and sympathized with white slaveholders and nonslaveholders who remained in the South. After building his initial sense of southern society from these migrants, Lincoln spent his years as a U.S. congressman learning the significance of the Northwest Ordinance in creating the free society in which they had thrived. Emphasizing Thomas Jefferson’s role in conceiving the Northwest Ordinance and utilizing statistical evidence to prove the superiority of free soil over slave, Lincoln’s colleagues further expanded Lincoln’s conception of the South. All these influences combined to produce Lincoln’s uniquely northwestern approach to slavery, the South, and the secession crisis. Believing that the self-interest of white nonslaveholding southerners naturally propelled them away from the South and toward free society, Lincoln perceived the slave South as a vastly unequal society controlled by a minority of aristocratic slaveholders who cajoled or chided their nonslaveholding neighbors into accepting a vision of the South’s proslavery, expansionist future. As president-elect, Lincoln therefore overestimated the Unionist sentiment of southerners before and during the secession crisis. He remained convinced that the majority of white nonslaveholders would not support a secessionist movement that he believed countered their own self-interest. With time, and through careful communications with the South, he remained convinced that he could settle secessionist passions and bring southerners to trust him and the Republican Party. This northwestern perception of the South therefore explains, in part, Lincoln’s silence and his refusal to compromise during the secession crisis.

A study, as part fulfilment of the MBA requirements, was undertaken to establish the critical success factors within the township establishment process through the Townplanning and Township Ordinance 15 of 1986. The study included a literature survey and evaluation of current practises to get a thorough understanding of the present requirements and procedures available to developers to do township establishment. This created a knowledge base from which a guideline was extracted to determine what activities are critical to the township establishment process in terms of the Township Ordinance. This was supported by personal interviews and questionnaires with experienced relevant role players i.e. developers, project managers, engineers and town planners to draw on their experiences with regard to the factors which they deem critical to the successful establishment of a township. The study found that there are four critical success factors that can have a detrimental impact on the profitability of a project. These factors include the quality of the professional team, preliminary investigations, geotechnical and environmental investigations. However, with the current skill shortages and lack of enthusiasm experienced within the local and external governmental bodies, obtaining statutory approval from these authorities seems to have a more significant impact on the timely transformation of land into residential, commercial or industrial stands. The findings of the study concluded that the crux of a successful township application lies in the pro-active management, integration and coordination off all activities within the scope of the professional team, local and external bodies: Obtaining statutory approval from local and external authorities is becoming increasingly difficult as local authorities lack the necessary expertise and enthusiasm to facilitate the application process. This places further emphasis on the pro-active management of all activities to optimize the township establishment process in order to minimize the risk of project delays, cost overruns and loss of income. It is therefore recommended that careful consideration supported by further research be conducted to identify the managerial activities and requirements to manage the township establishment process successfully within the present environment of an uncoordinated approach, acute shortage of skills, lack of knowledge and even corruption as a new simplified bill will not necessarily remove all the present short comings. This should include the structures required to develop the necessary capacities within the governmental authorities to facilitate the process. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Graduate School of Management / unrestricted

Planning literature in the United States focuses heavily on urban centers. However, the 2000 Census considers one-fifth of America's population to be rural. To adequately plan for this portion of the American population requires an understanding of the strengths and barriers to planning in rural areas. Such an understanding is noticeably absent from current planning literature. Therefore, this thesis seeks to determine what factors influence the adoption of comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances in rural counties in the United States. Through an evaluation of variables pertaining to urban hierarchy, institutional factors and political processes, two independent variables stand out. For both comprehensive planning and zoning, legislation mandating adoption and higher median household incomes both encourage adoption and show statistical significance. The percentage of the county's work force that works within the county (versus commuting) also positively correlates with zoning ordinance adoption and is statistically significant. In addition to clarifying the processing of planning and zoning adoption in rural areas, this study also provides a review of state planning and zoning statutes and reports primary research on the frequency of land use planning tools in rural America. This study highlights the need for a better understanding of rural planning in general and in particular the political structures and processes in rural areas. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

No description available.

Nessa pesquisa OS CHIFRES ENTRE A CRUZ E A ESPADA: um estudo das festas de touros (XV-XVI) na Espanha, buscamos identificar como se deu essa emergência de um discurso de controle régio e clerical sob as chamadas festas de touros nos séculos XV e XVI – sendo aquilo que chamamos de “os chifres entre a cruz e a espada” justamente essa leitura das festas taurinas que legitimaram e deram vasão a essa construção das festas mais austeras e em conformidade com as doutrinas e dogmas cristãos, naquilo que denominamos de discurso de ordenança festiva. Para isso, analisamos uma gama de documentos, entre uma Crônica (Crónica del Condestable de Castilla Don Lucas de Iranzo), um Tratado (Tratado do Jogo), Bula (Salute Gregis Dominici) e o prólogo de um Cancioneiro (Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena) na tentativa de construir e identificar nessa tipologia diversa de documentos, as várias maneiras utilizadas para compor o discurso de ordenança festiva. Observáveis em três frentes de análise – o discurso clerical, o discurso clerical percebido e praticado ou não pela nobreza e o discurso espacial/heterotopológico (sendo esse último, de suma importância, e tendo sido analisado partindo do conceito foucaultiano de heterotopia e as várias possibilidades que ele pode representar na análise dos mais diversos espaços). Também, perseguimos ao longo da pesquisa um tema que apesar de já há muito debatido mostrou que ainda encontra terreno fértil para novos debates historiográficos, as festas em si – analisadas partindo da proposta da festa como questão e como discurso. / In this research HORNS BETWEEN THE CROSS AND THE SWORD : a study of the bulls parties (XV- XVI) in Spain, we seek to identify how was this emergence of a regal control speech and clerical specifically under the so-called bulls parties in the XV and XVI - being what we call " the horns between a rock and a hard place " just this reading of bullfighting festivals that legitimized and gave arterial runoff to that construction of the austere celebrations and they were in accordance with the Christian doctrines and dogmas , what We call the ordinance festive speech and gave way to this construction of more austere celebrations that were in accordance with the Christian doctrines and dogmas, in what we call the festive ordinance speech. In order to do so, we analyzed a range of documents, from a chronicle (Crónica del Condestable de Castilla Don Lucas Iranzo), a treaty (Tratado del Juego), a bula (Salute Gregis Dominici) and the prologue of a songbook (Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena) in an attempt to identify and construct in this different typology the various ways used to compose the festive ordinance speech. Observable in three fronts of analysis - the clerical speech, the clerical speech perceived and practiced (or not) by the nobility and the space/heterotopological speech (the latter, of paramount importance, has been analyzed with Foucault's concept of heterotopia and the various possibilities that it can represent in the analysis of the most diverse spaces as a starting point). We also seek throughout the research a theme that, although it has been discussed many times before, still shows that there is fertile ground for new historiographical debates: the parties themselves – analyzed from the premises of parties as problem and as speech.