An understanding of the relationships between the quantity and quality of environmentally relevant outputs from human processes and regional characteristics is a prerequisite for planning and implementing ecologically sustainable strategies. Apart from process-related parameters, continuous and discontinuous socio-economic long-term trends often play a key role in the assessment of environmenta...

In the real world, cities exist because of external economies associated with the geographic concentration of firms within a city. Of course, such a geographic proximity with input providers and consumers, would at first reduce transportation costs. But why cities, information cities, i.e. large agglomerations of people and economic activity emerge in the virtual world? In the Internet, transpo...

A megacity is usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population in excess of 10 million people. The number of megacities is increasing worldwide: in 1950 they were 4; in 1980 they were 28, in 2002 they were 39 and by 2015 they will be 59. In most agglomerations and megacities, urban planning and public infrastructure can guide the urban development in order to achieve a proper sust...

Some surveys indicate that providing bicycle lanes and paths may encourage more people to commute by bicycle. The presence of a striped lane or separated path can increase a cyclist’s perception of safety. With growing concerns over traffic congestion and vehicle pollution, public policy makers are increasingly promoting bicycling as an alternative for commuting and other utilitarian trip purpo...

After the Second World War, the international trend in crime prevention was to address crime through the criminal justice system, which typically included a combination of vigorous policing, and a 'tough' justice system. This was based on an individualistic approach to crime prevention, which assumed that individual motivation plays an important role in the decision to commit a crime (Travis an...

The impact of cities on the environment increasingly dominates the debate on sustainability. Most global and regional environmental problems originate in cities. Cities concentrate increasing numbers of people and human activities; thus, they import increasing amounts of natural resources and export vast quantities of emissions and waste. Urbanization also entails major changes in the way peopl...