A methodology is proposed for assessing the physical form of urban areas. Termed morpho, it deals with fundamental elements form: streets, plots and buildings. It includes seven assessment criteria: one each individually; relation between pairs elements; finally, linking function. The application this provides a quantitative ‘morphological basis’ an area, identifying its strengths weaknesses. a...

"Americans ense that something iswrong with the places where we live and work and go about our daily business." So begins a recent jeremiad by author Howard Kunstler on the "environmental calamity" we call the suburbs [Kunstler, 1996, p. 43]. Critics point to fundamental spects of post-war planning, such as zoning, highway dependence, and decentralization, asthe determinants of our current subu...

Shear thickening fluids (STFs) are typically composed of a concentrated stabilized dispersion of rigid sub-micron particles in a carrier fluid and show a marked increase in viscosity beyond a critical shear rate [1]. It has been demonstrated that STFs can be integrated in dynamically loaded structures to tailor their damping and stiffness properties [2]. Potential applications are alpine skis w...

In the developing world, little is known about urban chronic poverty based on quantitative evidence mainly due to lack of data tracking the same households over time. In this paper, we analyse 3 waves of a unique and rich panel data set on 1500 households collected through the Ethiopian Urban Household Surveys from 1994 to 1997. Based on real total household expenditure per month as our preferr...

the current status and quality of urban and regional development has been criticized by many academics and professionals in different fields. at city centers in addition to traffic congestion, population growth, urban and regional sprawl and suburbanization have resulted in unsustainable conditions in many cities all around the world. in this regard, different aspects of urban form, especially ...

Regime theory, the dominant paradigm in the study of urban politics, maintains that cities are governed by informal arrangements consisting of public and private sector elites. Because economic growth is the main policy objective of regimes, research has tended to focus on mayoral coalition building and development policy. Thus much less attention has been paid to policies that more directly im...

Brazil is a Federal South American Republic, in which there are 27 federated states divided into 5 regions and Brasília, the federal capital. In 30 years, the country has almost doubled its population. From 93 millions people in 1970 to 182 millions people in 2004. Nowadays, more than 80% of Brazilian population lives in the urban centers, from which 30% are concentrated on the Metropolitan Reg...