My dissertation examines the causes of, and one possible program to help alleviate, urban public school district enrollment decline. Enrollment decline has plighted many cities in the Northeast and Midwest over the past two decades, leading to financial struggles and, sometimes, large school closures or reorganizations. In my first essay, " Determinants of Urban Enrollment Decline " , I describ...

This paper examines the trends of socioeconomic inequality in childhood undernutrition in urban India using data from all three rounds of the National Family Health Survey conducted during 1992-2005. We analyzed the prevalence of underweight (weight-for-age) among children less than three years old. The socioeconomic predictors were: household wealth and maternal education. Principal component ...

A cross-sectional study was undertaken on 600 Jat women (rural=300, urban=300), aged 40 to 70 years from Haryana state in North India. The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of anaemia and the dietary intake of rural and urban middle-aged (40-59 years) and older (60 and above) Jat women. The findings indicated that all the subjects exhibited a decline in the mean values of haemogl...

given the critical role played by urban green spaces and the emergence of remote sensing as avaluable natural resource management tool, this study sought to identify trends in green spaces within thecontext of south africa’s transition period (1990 - 2000). using the city of port elizabeth as a case study, threesets of landsat - 5 thematic mapper images (1990, 1995 and 2000) were geo-processed,...

I examine changes in the city-suburban housing price gap in metropolitan areas with and without court-ordered desegregation plans over the 1970s, narrowing my comparison to housing units on opposite sides of district boundaries. Desegregation of public schools in central cities reduced the demand for urban residence, leading urban housing prices and rents to decline by 6 percent relative to nei...

Urban ecosystems are carrying an extinction debt. Mitigating this debt will require the development of a predictive framework that improves our understanding of the factors causing decline of native biodiversity in urban areas. I argue that nitrogen is a common currency around which such a predictive framework could be built. I first summarise the evidence that shows the probable extent of nitr...

Urbanization is a major driver of land use change and global environmental decline. With accelerated urbanization worldwide, it is essential to put in place new policies to conserve urban ecosystems, species and the services these provide in order to secure more sustainable, resilient and livable cities for the 21st century. In urban planning, the concept of resilience has broadly replaced the ...