Um ambiente favorável ao compartilhamento de informações e propício à inovação é capaz de proporcionar o progresso econômico e social. A inovação tecnológica passa, então, a ser assunto relevante, e no ponto de vista regional, o diferencial para a sustentabilidade local. Nesta perpectiva, este estudo objetivou traçar estratégias para o Poder Público Municipal promover a Inovação Tecnológica nas empresas. Os dados foram levantados através de abordagem qualitativa e quantitativa. O estudo caracterizou-se como exploratório, descritivo e de levantamento. A partir de um mapeamento do espectro industrial da cidade de Francisco Beltrão, foram aplicados questionários para identificar os índices de inovação às empresas atuantes em áreas de maior relevância econômica, por serem potencialmente inovadoras. Dentre estas, foram entrevistadas as que apresentaram graus de inovação muito altos ou muito baixos, com base no intervalo definido como padrão por meio da estatística, de modo a analisar o conhecimento dessas empresas frente às leis que incentivam a inovação e ao conhecimento sobre as ações impostas pelos stakeholders e pelo poder público municipal. Foram, também, entrevistados os stakeholders atuantes como parceiros na cidade e representantes do Poder Público Municipal, visando verificar a eficácia das ações disponibilizadas por estes e se tais ações chegam ao conhecimento das empresas. Os principais resultados encontrados indicaram um baixo índice geral de inovação das empresas da cidade de Francisco Beltrão. Outro ponto levantado, é o número baixíssimo de empresas que conheciam as leis e incentivos locais do Poder Público Municipal, bem como, que possuíam conhecimento sobre os stakeholders, que atuam como parceiros para incrementar a inovação. O maior índice de conhecimento dessas leis e ações dos stakeholders foram das empresas participantes do núcleo de tecnologia da informação, único núcleo de empresas da cidade visando a inovação tecnológica. Assim, foram propostas ao Poder Público municipal estratégias para promover a Inovação Tecnológica. Dentre as principais destacam-se: ações no ambiente legal com a criação de linhas de crédito, leis e políticas públicas, criação de redes de inovação, novos núcleos de empresas com participação dos stakeholders, promoção de uma cultura inovadora através de seminários, reuniões, debates, e programas de geração de idéias, bem como, o estímulo do intercâmbio entre as universidades, empresas e governo. / An environment conducive to sharing information and enabling environment for innovation is able to provide the economic and social progress. Techno logical innovation then became relevant subject, and the regional point of view the difference for local sustainability. In this prospect, this study aimed to devise strategies to the municipal government to promote technological innovation in companies. The data were collected through qualitative and quantitative approach. The study was characterized as exploratory, descriptive survey. The mapping from a spectrum of industrial town of Francisco Beltrão, questionnaires were applied to identify the rates of innovation enterprises operating in areas of greatest economic importance, because they are potentially innovative. Among these, those who were interviewed had levels of innovation too high or too low, based on the range set as the default by statistics, in order to analyze the knowledge of these laws against companies that encourage innovation and knowledge about the actions imposed by stakeholders and the municipal government. Were also interviewed stakeholders working as partners in the city and representatives of municipal government in order to verify the effectiveness of the actions provided by these and come to the attention of companies. The main results indicated an overall low rate of innovation by the town of Francisco Beltrão. Another point raised is the very low number of companies that know the laws and local incentives the local government and ignorance of stakeholders to enhance innovation. The highest knowledge of these actions was the companies participating in the core of information technology, unique in the city core. So, were proposed to the municipal government strategies to promote technological innovation. Among the major include: actions to the legal environment with the creation of credit lines, public policies and laws, creation of innovation networks, new core businesses with input from stakeholders, promoting an innovative culture through seminars, meetings, debates and programs to generate ideas, and encourage exchange among universities, businesses and government.

La Cuenca del Madre de Dios, es una región que está plenamente inserta en el trópico húmedo y abarca una considerable superficie del oriente peruanoboliviano. Esta región con vastas áreas naturales, empieza a mostrar cambios fundamentales en la organización de su espacio. Su ocupación si bien se reconoce es desde muy antiguo, por parte de grupos etnicos; ha visto en el presente siglo, principalmente en las tres últimas décadas, el acontecer de diferentes fases en las relaciones del hombre con su medio. El estudio para el desarrollo integral de espacios definidos por cuencas hidrográficas multinacionales como la del Madre de Dios, supone problemas técnicos y políticos. El diseño del estudio, con un enfoque amplio, debe considerar factores de tipo físico, socio-económico, político e institucional.Estas notas, resultado de la experiencia de trabajo en la región, presentan una visión sintética de la realidad de la Cuenca y ponen el acento en: La Oferta Ambiental, la Ocupación del Territorio, la Caracterización de sus Unidades Político-Administrativas y la Estrategia para el Desarrollo Integral. El ecodesarrollo, la ordenación territorial y la integración son elementos claves de una estrategia de actuación que considere a la Cuenca como marco de la planificación regional que define un contexto espacial y ambiental adecuado para las tareas del desarrollo. Por todo lo anterior, el Ecodesarrollo como estilo y la Integración Territorial Multinacional como política-, son consideradas de suma importancia para el desarrollo integral y sostenido de espacios fronterizos en las regiones tropicales como lo es la Cuenca del Madre de Dios.  The Madre de Dios Basin is a region totally inserted in the humid tropic and covers a large section of the Peruvian and Bolivian Oriente. This region with extensive natural areas has already started to show changes in its spatial organisation. Though it was settled by different ethnic groups since ancient times, it has been in the last three decades that sorne important changes have occurred in the man-environment relationships. To study binational basins such as the one of Madre de Dios, brings about many technical and political difficulties. This is because the research project design must be broadly oriented to cover topics such as physical, socioeconomic, political, and institutional. In this paper 1 present the results of a fieldwork experience in the region. They give us a synthetic view of the Madre de Dios reality, placing special attention to the environmental realm, its characterization of the political and administrative units, and a strategy to integral development. Land management, ecodevelopment and integration are key elements toward a decision-making strategy that takes the basin as a framework to regional planning.

Place marketing has become one of the most popular methods used by urban elites and civic boosters to revitalize and re-image cities in order to project a world-class city image. However, case studies examined in the literature have primarily focused upon Western cities and thus conclusions with respect to place marketing's mechanisms and effects are limited. This thesis seeks to broaden the application of place marketing as a concept by using Astana, Kazakhstan as a case study. The thesis focuses upon evaluating place marketing as a concept to determine whether the construction and projection of a world-class city image of place through spectacular developments and entertainment facilities is truly a global practice. The research indicates that Astana is following the place marketing model seen in case studies of Western cities, especially with respect to the construction and projection of a world-class city image.

Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Sheri L. Smith / In 1998, the City of Manhattan, Kansas and Kansas State University jointly developed a City of Manhattan Bicycle Master Plan. This plan created a vision for bicycling in the community, established goals and designated streets to be improved with bicycle facilities. The Master Plan also developed recommendations to incorporate bicycle facility planning into the growth of Manhattan. This plan created a solid political foundation that showed that bicycling matters in Manhattan, Kansas. However, the 1998 Bicycle Master Plan lacked specifics on how to incorporate these recommendations and routes into the existing and future street system. The 2008 Bicycle Master Plan Update attempts to address the shortcomings of the 1998 Master Plan and incorporate the growth and expansion of the City since 1998. The initial step of the Bicycle Master Plan Update was to calculate a Bicycle Safety Index. The Bicycle Safety Index was modeled after previous research conducted on the City of Manhattan, where street and land use attributes, such as road surface materials, street width, traffic volume, presence of angled-parking and traffic speeds were weighted and calculated in a spatial environment using GIS software. The result was a rating of all streets in Manhattan based on their suitability for safe bicycle travels. Using the results of the Bicycle Safety Index, specific routes were developed based on their proximity to bicycle destinations, such as commercial areas, schools and parks. Routes were created by using ESRI's Network Analyst software. Routes proposed by the software were evaluated by a windshield and handlebar survey to ultimately determine the appropriateness of each route. Following the determination of the proposed routes, specific facility recommendations for each street segment were proposed based on the traffic volume, vehicle speeds, street widths and the geometry of the segment. General recommendations and funding options were created to assist in the advancement of the goals and objectives originally initiated in the 1998 Master Plan. The result is a Master Plan that can be used by City Planners to incorporate bicycle transportation into the City and a map for bicyclist to travel from one place to another in the City safely.

M.A. (Development Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This study was aimed at assessing the implementation status of the National Decentralisation Policy in Zomba District Council in Malawi given the current situation where the council is operating without ward councilors. It also undertook an exploration of factors affecting the implementation of the National Decentralisation Policy in Zomba District Council and made recommendations which can positively contribute to the effective implementation of the National Decentralisation Policy in Zomba District Council. Using both qualitative and quantitative research design, data for the study was collected using interviews, questionnaires and document analysis. The study found that the implementation of the National Decentralisation Policy in Zomba District Council during the period under study was unsatisfactory. The major challenges to the implementation of the National Decentralisation Policy in Zomba District Council were largely linked to the absence of councilors in the current council setup, violation of legal instruments governing the implementation of the National Decentralisation Policy by the incumbent leadership, lack of political will among the ruling elite to see full implementation of the National Decentralisation Policy, poor performance of structures operating in place of ward and council committees and inadequate finances at the disposal of Zomba District Council. The study concluded that Zomba District Council needed ward councilors to fully implement the National Decentralisation Policy. However the study also observed that it would be impossible to attain the objectives of the decentralization policy if there was no political will on the part of the incumbent leadership to see the National Decentralisation Policy implemented in full at Zomba District Council.

In this dissertation, we examine the socioeconomic impact of land reform schemes and discuss the policy implications of combining aspects of both state-led and market-based approaches to land reallocation through regional planning. We focus on land reform settlements in Northeast Brazil, where both approaches operated over the same time frame (1997-2002). Empirically, we identify the effects of various indicators on the socioeconomic growth of a sample of rural territories and localities, giving emphasis to the influence of the market-based Land Bill Programme (PCT) and the traditional state-led scheme (INCRA) on that growth through panel data analysis, cross-section regressions and field-based analysis. It has been concluded that: i) The scope for plan-led strategies towards sustainable development in the countryside has been given less than sufficient emphasis in the land reform literature; ii) There is not clear evidence that the market-based approach leads to higher socioeconomic growth regionally than does the state-led approach, or vice versa; iii) Although the market-based scheme contributed to improved access to title, the PCT settlements failed to impact positively settlers' welfare in the majority of sites; iv) Securing both higher access to land rights and better living conditions through land reform requires an approach that combines both state-led and market-based elements; v) Securing measurable positive impacts on the regional economy requires a land reform strategy that has a regional scope. As a policy implication, the work suggests the adoption of a plan-led land reform strategy that is coordinated at all government levels and between the public and private sectors, and one that involves establishing strategic portfolios of potentially sustainable areas, defining spending priorities for those areas along with funding possibilities through regional planning. Differently from the commonsense literature on land reform in developing countries, this work demonstrates that regional planning has an essential part to play in land reform through proposing a plan-led strategy that combines elements of both market-based and state-led approaches to the benefit of the regional economy.

The three former British possessions, on the. East coast of Africa, namely, Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika have much in common because of their past history and British rule. They are planning to form a Federation of East Africa, with one Central Government, one President and one flag. One of the points being considered is the location for the Federal Capital. Some of the existing East African cities and towns have forwarded their claims for the seat of the Federal Government. The purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, the author feels that new Capital cities are often designed as prestige cities, or as monument cities. Their locations are often based upon the political decisions, usually as a compromise between two existing major cities claiming for the seat of government. The result is an entirely new city designed from the start as a monumental city. The best examples are Ottawa, Washington, Canberra and Brasilia, the national capitals of Canada, United States, Australia and Brazil respectively. Such capitals lack social and economic activities that exist in more developed capital cities of the world like London, Paris and Rome. In this age of space ships, science and technology have made so much progress that man in the street has not been able to catch up with these. New cities can now he built in a matter of months, or a few years, but social warmth and comfort, social atmosphere and civilization still take their course. Man still grows at the same rate as he did centuries ago. We are far from the world Aldous Huxley has predicted, his world of mass production of human beings and of test tube babies. There is no doubt that technology has shown us ways and means of mass producing the buildings, but one cannot see the day when social structures will be established overnight. The people who provide the life and vitality of the community are still the backbone of the society. For the Federation of East Africa to have a new Capital that will have a good set of social facilities as quickly as possible, in order to have people that make a society and a city, the existing social amenities and facilities in the various existing towns and cities should be examined and evaluated. Secondly, to find a suitable location for the new Federal Capital of East Africa, a study was made by reviewing and evaluating some of the existing new capitals of the world. This gave the author an insight of the reasons for their existence, techniques and problems involved in selecting their locations, and the problems, like social and economic, that exist in these capitals today. This gave a picture of their success and failure. Based on this study and on existing physical, social, economic, administrative and political conditions in East Africa, criteria were established under the same five headings. The criteria were then applied on those towns and cities that have forwarded their claims for the seat of the Federal Government. The results were evaluated on their merits, and three existing towns were selected in order of preference as potential locations for the new Federal Capital of East Africa. The results of these findings are that the Capital for the proposed Federation of East Africa should be located adjacent to Nairobi, and it should share available social, economic and physical facilities and amenities with this cosmopolitan centre, and that in addition the new capital should be a national monument. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The thesis analyzes South Korean rural development programmes implemented from 1968 to 1986. It examines the respective planning goals, implementation methods, and outcomes of two Korean development programmes: the Rural Non-Farm Employment Programme and Saemaul Undong. The theoretical framework for this analysis is based on a comparison of the Functional Integration Approach (FIA) and the Territorial Development Approach (TDA). FIA theory has been developed mainly by consultants from the United States Agency for International Development (e.g., Dennis A. Rondinelli). These theorists assume that rural underdevelopment stems from the lack of urban technology and information. Accordingly, they see that transfer of urban technology is the key to rural economic development. The theory prescribes the promotion of rural trade centres and networks bridging urban and rural areas. TDA theory has been modelled by John Friedmann and his colleagues. It is a bottom-up, people-oriented approach. Advocates of this approach emphasize even distribution of economic power, while those of FIA focuses on economic growth. The TDA theory proposes that planners involve intended beneficiaries in decision-making processes, and help poor people directly. TDA attempts to close the urban/rural linkages selectively, since it is thought that some urban influences are harmful to rural development. TDA has been criticized as unfeasible since in most countries it requires significant reforms of the existing power structure. The Korean Rural Non-Farm Employment reflects some aspects of FIA theories, and Saemaul Undong some aspects of TDA. The non-farm employment programme has been planned by professional planners in national planning agencies. The planners have attempted to promote manufacturing industries in selected rural centres. However, the programme has not been successful in creating more rural employment for poor people. A major reason for this appears to be that the programme promotes employment opportunities which are inappropriate to the skills of the rural poor. Saemaul Undong was initiated by the late president Chung-Hee Park. The programme was implemented by central politicians, local administrators, and rural people. Goals of development were not purely economic. Rather, they included social development and the programme focused on areas regardless of economic potential. It has improved the quality of rural infrastructure, technology, and people's confidence, combinations of which may be a basis for long-term development. It has also improved rural gross income, though the growth has necessitated increased expenses. From the analysis of the two Korean rural planning programmes, the thesis concludes that TDA, as exemplified by Saemaul Undong, is a promising regional planning strategy. Specifically the thesis concludes that planning for rural development in countries like Korea should include the following TDA approaches: 1) involve beneficiaries in the decision-making process, 2) employ appropriate local inputs and knowledge, 3) facilitate linkages among rural institutions, as well as between rural people and government agencies, and 4) assist innovation from within rural areas. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This thesis presents one aspect of urbanization, the country-residential phenomenon. In the study the country residential process and pattern are defined and described in the context of the urban system. Various factors influencing the location of the country residences in this system and the implications of country residential growth to the agricultural industry, the rural municipality, and the resident himself are analyzed. Based on this analysis a strategy for controlling ex-urban growth is suggested. The Calgary Region offers an interesting case study of the process of country residential growth, since this process is the only form of urban decentralization outside the legal City permitted by public policy. Because of this the familiar residential suburbs and industrial parks found around Canadian cities are absent, and instead, isolated residences dot Calgary's periphery. Country residential growth or ex-urbanization is a term describing a process of fringe development in which the individual decision-maker opts out of the mainstream of the residential growth process, suburbanization, but nonetheless chooses to remain part of the urban system and identifies with that system. The country resident is differentiated from the suburbanite by motivation. The suburbanite is in the fringe because that is where the available housing is. The country resident, on the other hand, is there because that is where he wants to be. The country resident values the rural landscape and activities associated with it. By far the most important activities are equestrian. In this study, albeit the survey population was only equivalent to a small city neighbourhood, every occupational grouping was represented. Even though, the randomness and heterogeneity of the country residential pattern implies that no underlying process was responsible for the extant pattern, an analysis of consumer preference did uncover some order in the determinants and the constraints of location. These include (1) the physical environment, (2) the existing road network, (3) accessibility, (4) government policy, and (5) the land market. Presently, the country resident is shown to be less a burden on municipal resources than the city resident is, principally, because the main cost of country residential living fall on the resident himself. Country residential growth, or as it usually is called in this context sprawl, is very much a problem of consumer economics. The cost picture will remain more or less the same up until a suburban form of residential growth occurs in the fringe, wherein the costs are shifted to the public. When this happens the rural municipalities will suffer financial difficulties tantamount to or greater than the central citys’. Aside from the ameliorating cost structure, land resources in the fringe around Calgary are being allocated in a wasteful and completely undirected fashion. The procedure of resource allocation is almost the antithesis of planning but typifies what is occurring throughout Canada. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate