Results by title

105 books match the query 'Sustainable development' and 6 start with p

cover of Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto

Peer to Peer

The Commons Manifesto

Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis and Alex Pazaitis

University of Westminster Press, 2019

Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a more profound transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As capitalism faces a series of structural crises, a new social, political and economic dynamic is emerging: peer to peer.

What is peer to peer? Why is it essential for building a commons-centric future? How could this happen? These are the questions this book tries to answer. Peer to peer is a type of social relations in human networks, as well as a technological infrastructure that makes the generalization and scaling up of such relations possible. Thus, peer to peer enables a new mode of production and creates the potential for a transition to a commons-oriented economy.

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cover of Planning Paradise: Politics and Visioning of Land Use in Oregon

Planning Paradise

Politics and Visioning of Land Use in Oregon

By Peter A. Walker and Patrick T. Hurley

University of Arizona Press, 2011

“Sprawl” is one of the ugliest words in the American political lexicon. Virtually no one wants America’s rural landscapes, farmland, and natural areas to be lost to bland, placeless malls, freeways, and subdivisions. Yet few of America’s fast-growing rural areas have effective rules to limit or contain sprawl.

Oregon is one of the nation’s most celebrated exceptions. In the early 1970s Oregon established the nation’s first and only comprehensive statewide system of land-use planning and largely succeeded in confining residential and commercial growth to urban areas while preserving the state’s rural farmland, forests, and natural areas. Despite repeated political attacks, the state’s planning system remained essentially politically unscathed for three decades. In the early- and mid-2000s, however, the Oregon public appeared disenchanted, voting repeatedly in favor of statewide ballot initiatives that undermined the ability of the state to regulate growth. One of America’s most celebrated “success stories” in the war against sprawl appeared to crumble, inspiring property rights activists in numerous other western states to launch copycat ballot initiatives against land-use regulation.

This is the first book to tell the story of Oregon’s unique land-use planning system from its rise in the early 1970s to its near-death experience in the first decade of the 2000s. Using participant observation and extensive original interviews with key figures on both sides of the state’s land use wars past and present, this book examines the question of how and why a planning system that was once the nation’s most visible and successful example of a comprehensive regulatory approach to preventing runaway sprawl nearly collapsed.

Planning Paradise is tough love for Oregon planning. While admiring much of what the state’s planning system has accomplished, Walker and Hurley believe that scholars, professionals, activists, and citizens engaged in the battle against sprawl would be well advised to think long and deeply about the lessons that the recent struggles of one of America’s most celebrated planning systems may hold for the future of land-use planning in Oregon and beyond.
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cover of Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation in Indonesia's Oil Palm Zone

Plantation Life

Corporate Occupation in Indonesia's Oil Palm Zone

Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi

Duke University Press, 2021

In Plantation Life Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi examine the structure and governance of Indonesia's contemporary oil palm plantations in Indonesia, which supply 50 percent of the world's palm oil. They attend to the exploitative nature of plantation life, wherein villagers' well-being is sacrificed in the name of economic development. While plantations are often plagued by ruined ecologies, injury among workers, and a devastating loss of livelihoods for former landholders, small-scale independent farmers produce palm oil more efficiently and with far less damage to life and land. Li and Semedi theorize “corporate occupation” to underscore how massive forms of capitalist production and control over the palm oil industry replicate colonial-style relations that undermine citizenship. In so doing, they question the assumption that corporations are necessary for rural development, contending that the dominance of plantations stems from a political system that privileges corporations.
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cover of Prairie Crossing: Creating an American Conservation Community

Prairie Crossing

Creating an American Conservation Community

John Scott Watson

University of Illinois Press, 2016

Carved out of century-old farmland near Chicago, the Prairie Crossing development is a novel experiment in urban public policy that preserves 69 percent of the land as open space. The for-profit project has set out to do nothing less than use access to nature as a means to challenge America's failed culture of suburban sprawl.

The first comprehensive look at an American conservation community, Prairie Crossing goes beyond windmills and nest boxes to examine an effort to connect adults to the land while creating a healthy and humane setting for raising a new generation attuned to nature. John Scott Watson places Prairie Crossing within the wider context of suburban planning, revealing how two first-time developers implemented a visionary new land ethic that saved green space by building on it. The remarkable achievements include a high rate of resident civic participation, the reestablishment of a thriving prairie ecosystem, the reintroduction of endangered and threatened species, and improved water and air quality. Yet, as Watson shows, considerations like economic uncertainty, lack of racial and class diversity, and politics have challenged, and continue to challenge, Prairie Crossing and its residents.

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cover of Prophets of Agroforestry: Guaraní Communities and Commercial Gathering

Prophets of Agroforestry

Guaraní Communities and Commercial Gathering

By Richard K. Reed

University of Texas Press, 1995

For almost four centuries, the indigenous Chiripá (Guaraní) people of eastern Paraguay have maintained themselves as a distinct society and culture, despite continual and often intense relations with Paraguayan society and the international economy. In this study, Richard K. Reed explores the economic and social basis for this ethnic autonomy.

Reed finds that Chiripá economic power derives from their practice of commercial agroforestry. Unlike Latin American indigenous societies that have been forced to clear land for commercial agriculture, the Chiripá continue to harvest and sell forest products, such as caffeinated yerba mate, without destroying the forests. Reed also explores the relation of this complex economy to Chiripá social organization and shows how flexible kin ties allowed the Chiripá to adapt to the pressure and opportunities of the commercial economy without adopting the authoritarian nature of rural Paraguayan society.

These findings offer important insights into the relations among indigenous groups, nation-states, and the international economy. They also provide a timely alternative model for sustainable management of subtropical forests that will be of interest in the fields of development and environmental studies.

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cover of Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century: Concepts, Models and Metrics

Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century

Concepts, Models and Metrics

Edited by Henrietta L. Moore, Matthew Davies, Nikolay Mintchev, and Saffron Woodcraft

University College London, 2023

A powerful vision for reimagining prosperity for the twenty-first century.

Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century sets out a new vision for prosperity in the twenty-first century and how it can be achieved for all. The volume challenges orthodox understandings of economic models but goes beyond contemporary debates to show how social innovation drives economic value. Drawing on substantive research in the UK, Lebanon, and Kenya, it develops new concepts, frameworks, models, and metrics for prosperity across a wide range of contexts, emphasizing commonalities and differences. Departing from general propositions about post-growth to delineate pathways to prosperity, the volume emphasizes that visions of the good life are diverse and require empirical work co-designed with local communities and stakeholders to drive change. It will be essential reading for policymakers who are stuck, local government officers who need new tools, activists who wonder what is next, academics in need of refreshment, and students and people of all ages who want a way forward.
 
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