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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Impact Of ‘‘No Impact Man’’: Alternative Hedonism As Environmental Appeal, Jen Schneider, Glen Miller
The Impact Of ‘‘No Impact Man’’: Alternative Hedonism As Environmental Appeal, Jen Schneider, Glen Miller
Jen Schneider
As ‘‘No Impact Man,’’ writer Colin Beavan conducted a one-year experiment to determine whether he and his family could reduce their environmental impact to zero while living and working in Manhattan. This article examines the No Impact Man (NIM) experiment both as ‘‘alternative hedonism,’’ a reconceptualization of the ‘‘good life’’ that avoids unduly damaging the natural world, and also as a kind of ‘‘eco-stunt,’’ an attempt to garner significant media coverage about positive environmental behaviors. We use DeLuca’s theorization of the ‘‘image event’’ to analyze the No Impact Man franchise—blog, book, and documentary film—though we modify that theory in order …
Making The Human Dimensions Of Sustainable Community Development Visible To Engineers, Juan Lucena, Jen Schneider, Jon A. Leydens
Making The Human Dimensions Of Sustainable Community Development Visible To Engineers, Juan Lucena, Jen Schneider, Jon A. Leydens
Jen Schneider
Recently, engineers – particularly those working on sustainability-related initiatives – have increasingly turned their efforts towards under-served communities. This paper summarises the findings in Engineering and Sustainable Community Development (Juan Lucena et al., 2010) aimed at a diversity of these efforts which are grouped here under the term ‘engineering to help’. These initiatives often exist under names such as community service, humanitarian engineering, and engineers without borders or activities such as the Institution of Civil Engineers' co-sponsored workshop ‘Helping local communities to help themselves’. Although there has been a blossoming of engineering-to-help-related programmes around the world, there is a …
A Meta-Analysis Of Global Urban Land Expansion, Karen C. Seto, Michail Fragkias, Burak Güneralp, Michael K. Reilly
A Meta-Analysis Of Global Urban Land Expansion, Karen C. Seto, Michail Fragkias, Burak Güneralp, Michael K. Reilly
Michail Fragkias
The conversion of Earth's land surface to urban uses is one of the most irreversible human impacts on the global biosphere. It drives the loss of farmland, affects local climate, fragments habitats, and threatens biodiversity. Here we present a meta-analysis of 326 studies that have used remotely sensed images to map urban land conversion. We report a worldwide observed increase in urban land area of 58,000 km2 from 1970 to 2000. India, China, and Africa have experienced the highest rates of urban land expansion, and the largest change in total urban extent has occurred in North America. Across all regions …