Evolving Prosocial and Sustainable Neighborhoods and Communities

Sustainable Urban Design and Walkable Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods are good communities

The communities of a social network are sets of vertices with more connections inside the set than outside. We theoretically demonstrate that two commonly observed properties of social networks, heavy-tailed degree distributions and large clustering coefficients, imply the existence of vertex neighborhoods (also known as egonets) that are themselves good communities. We evaluate these neighborh...

The Design of Intentional Communities: a Recycled Perspective on Sustainable Neighborhoods

This article uses Skinner’s The Design of Experimental Communities to guide behavior analytic interpretations of non-behavior analytic research on contemporary intentional communities, highlighting ways in which this research substantiates many of Skinner’s notions about reinforcement contingencies in a successful community. The article then considers intentional communities in light of more cu...

Evolving sustainable water networks

The need for efficient pipe networks for urban water supply and drainage is introduced and discussed in the context of global sustainable development. The role of computer based analysis and design tools in the planning and operation of such systems is described, with the way in which these tools can help to minimize use of resources, energy and water losses being explained. In particular, nume...

Planning Sustainable Communities: An Appropriate Basis for Sustainable Residential Communities?

This chapter evaluates the impact of commodification of land and housing on the sustainability of the residential built environment. Commodification, an institutionalized practice in the western industrialized world, refers to the capacity of individuals to trade land and housing freely in the marketplace. This practice is so commonplace that it rarely undergoes any fundamental analysis in term...