According to the United Nations’ report, State of World Population 2008, humankind has come to a turning point; more than 50% of the earth’s population now lives in urban centres. Along with considerations for housing, employment, and public health, this shift changes the way we design roads and streets; it escalates the number of automobiles in urban areas with finite room for road expansion. Space constraints, along with intense development of alternative transportation fuels, and the burden of sprawling suburbs on municipal infrastructures suggest the hypothesis that before we run out of energy alternatives for personal mechanized transport, we will run out of space in which to use it. This thesis explores how Toronto, a city largely designed for automobile use, is being re-adapted into a city wherein public and active transportation can once again be the primary means of urban mobility and the opportunities inherent in the development of interregional multi-modal transit stations for the cultivation of civic space, local commerce, urban form, and commercial transportation.

According to the United Nations’ report, State of World Population 2008, humankind has come to a turning point; more than 50% of the earth’s population now lives in urban centres. Along with considerations for housing, employment, and public health, this shift changes the way we design roads and streets; it escalates the number of automobiles in urban areas with finite room for road expansion. Space constraints, along with intense development of alternative transportation fuels, and the burden of sprawling suburbs on municipal infrastructures suggest the hypothesis that before we run out of energy alternatives for personal mechanized transport, we will run out of space in which to use it. This thesis explores how Toronto, a city largely designed for automobile use, is being re-adapted into a city wherein public and active transportation can once again be the primary means of urban mobility and the opportunities inherent in the development of interregional multi-modal transit stations for the cultivation of civic space, local commerce, urban form, and commercial transportation.

Abstract After the financial tsunami in 2008, the global economy slowly revives. Taiwan's department store retail industry is flourishing. There is one common feature from observing the location of these new department stores. They have all chosen to locate inside or next to the train station, high-speed railway stations, subway stations and other passenger transportation stations. Department stores in Taiwan formally entered another era. The research shows to discuss the development and definition of terminal department stores from the history of Japan¡¦s department stores. By using quality research, the managers of SKM and GMALL reply to understand what the 7 competitions indexes of terminal department stores. 1.Based on this perspective, the study examines the seven competitions indexes of terminal department stores: 1. Site conditions and the business district: the crowd from transportation is the advantage for terminal department stores, moreover, the booming of the business district will benefit terminal department stores. 2. Commercial space and transfer stations: terminal department stores collocate the commercial space and transfer stations. 3. Product constitution and recruit firm: the major selling points of terminal department stores are famous restaurant, take-out food and instant food of convenient stores that will congregate the consumers to increase their time for shopping in other floor. 4. Service: terminal department stores add more service for customer e.g. passenger luggage storage, wireless Internet for business travelers, foreign currency exchange and delivery of goods. 5. Marketing planning ability: marketing can use not only advertisement and promotion in station, but the DM of members and online community website. 6. Finance: terminal department stores establish one or two years that are lack of overall revenue performance. 7. Overall environment and strategy: combination complementary measures and marketing abroad will add up stores¡¦ image and promotion.

Landfilling waste material is still one of the most common methods to take care of waste in a big part of the world. Gaborone, the capital of Botswana located in the southern part of Africa is no different in this way. The major part of all waste is landfilled in Gaborone and there is only a minor part of all collected material that is recycled. One solution that earlier studies suggest is to build a transfer and recycling station in the city of Gaborone that can contribute to a more sustainable waste management. This study aims to identify the major waste streams of recyclable waste and also the major stakeholders that are active in this area through an exploratory study involving interviews, a workshop and a survey. The result of this thesis can hopefully assist in the preparations for such a transfer station. The conclusions of this study are many and contains of both hard facts and also loose ends that can contribute to pursue further studies. The first important result is that all the waste collection companies transports everything they collects to a landfill and it is only recycling organizations that are working with collection and recycling in Gaborone. These recycling organizations are a few but smaller compared to the waste collection companies in collected amounts of material. Besides these collection organizations, Gaborone City Council, the local municipality works with collection of household waste and the collaboration between these three groups that operates in the same environment is very poor. All the interviewed stakeholders showed a positive interest in the transfer and recycling station but there is only a small part of the commercial business in Gaborone that believes in a more serious waste management than landfilling. Despite that one major shopping mall actually sort out recyclables and saves 30% in waste management costs thanks to that. Another issue is the prevailing cultural contradictions that is obvious among the organizations in Gaborone. The last two bigger issues is the tremendously dull political bureaucracy that is appearing in Botswana and also that voices are raised that corruption is great beneath the surface.

This research analyzed environmental and economic factors associated with municipal solid waste (MSW) management of select high growth Planning District Commissions (PDCs) of Virginia. Current MSW management scenarios were compared to future hypothetical scenarios utilizing a regional landfill or waste-to-energy (WTE) combustion facility. Life-cycle inventory and full cost accounting methods of the Municipal Solid Waste Decision Support Tool, developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), were utilized to estimate annualized environmental emissions and economic costs. Model results and analysis indicate that a regional landfill would be the least cost intensive MSW management strategy in comparison to current management methods; however present the greatest environmental burden with respect to methane emissions. It was also inferred that a WTE facility would represent the least environmental burden with respect to energy offsets via MSW combustion while being the most cost intensive option. The study supports the anecdotal view that a regional-based approach to MSW management of high-growth PDCs would help reduce costs and potential environmental impacts.

In the first part of master thesis is presented general introduction to district heating system (DHS) and hydraulic calculation for DHS. The next part deals with analysis operation of DHS and the pressure diagram for certain time interval. Subsequently, the thermohydraulic characteristics for the hydraulic main branch (comparing manual calculation with software calculation) and also the selected thermal and hydraulic characteristics for the whole DHS are shown. The last part is focused on the determination of the amount of heat supplied based on the ultrasonic flowmeter and the temperature probes. Subsequently, the computer simulation is also carried out, aiming at approximating the real heat supply from heat source to solved thermal network in winter.

Content of this diploma thesis is to describe functioning of heat meters, billing of measured values and aplication of this knowledge on existing building. Apartment building have five storeys and a basement. Every storey have two apartments. Design of a heating system is divided into two separete variants. First variant consist of two gas condensing boilers as source of heat and second variant consist of heat transfer station.