This is the first book to clarify the relationships between multi-functions of urban agriculture, creative classes, and social business in China and Japan. Specifically, it constructs a new framework showing how these factors contribute to the sustainability of cities by introducing the mixed methods research of structural equation modeling and the trajectory equifinality model. Policy implications drawn from the research suggests that governments should provide opportunities to create a virtuous cycle to improve the accumulation of social capital in order to attract those who think creatively. It is widely agreed that a sustainable city should meet the needs of the present generation without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. However, there has been no completely agreed-upon definition for what a sustainable city should be nor upon the paradigm for what components should be included. On the other hand, there is a possibility that the multi-functions of urban agriculture may attract especially those who are thinking creatively. These creative thinkers have a high level of social capital, pay attention to social issues, and are greatly motivated to find solutions through social enterprises such as agriculture-related business.

We are now at a point where 'analytical advances' permit researchers to theoretically and empirically formulate, model, and test many of the ideas pertaining to the working of Richard Florida's 'creative class' in interesting and new ways. The kind of advances we have in mind include, but are not limited to, recent developments in growth theory in economics, improvements in statistics and in regional science that permit researchers to analyze data in novel ways, and progress in computer science that allows researchers to take advantage of, for instance, natural language processing. The objective of this book is to demonstrate how new analytical advances permit one to have a richer and more nuanced understanding of the ways in which the creative class has functioned and the ways in which its abilities can be harnessed for the betterment of society at large.

In the absence of a widely accepted and common definition of social enterprise (SE), a large research project, the "International Comparative Social Enterprise Models" (ICSEM) Project, was carried out over a five-year period; it involved more than 200 researchers from 55 countries and relied on bottom-up approaches to capture the SE phenomenon. This strategy made it possible to take into account and give legitimacy to locally embedded approaches, thus resulting in an analysis encompassing a wide diversity of social enterprises, while simultaneously allowing for the identification of major SE models to delineate the field on common grounds at the international level. These SE models reveal or confirm an overall trend towards new ways of sharing the responsibility for the common good in today’s economies and societies. We tend to consider as good news the fact that social enterprises actually stem from all parts of the economy. Indeed, societies are facing many complex challenges at all levels, from the local to the global level. The diversity and internal variety of SE models are a sign of a broadly shared willingness to develop appropriate—although sometimes embryonic—responses to these challenges, on the basis of innovative economic/business models driven by a social mission. In spite of their weaknesses, social enterprises may be seen as advocates for and vehicles of the general interest across the whole economy. Of course, the debate about privatisation, deregulation and globalised market competition—all factors that may hinder efforts in the search for the common good–has to be addressed as well. The first of a series of four ICSEM books, Social Enterprise in Asia will serve as a key reference and resource for teachers, researchers, students, experts, policy makers, journalists and other categories of people who want to acquire a broad understanding of the phenomena of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship as they emerge and develop across the world.

This book presents an economic framework that addresses the motivation of the innovative entrepreneur.

This open access book presents and discusses current issues and innovative solution approaches for land management in a European context. Manifold sustainability issues are closely interconnected with land use practices. Throughout the world, we face increasing conflict over the use of land as well as competition for land. Drawing on experience in sustainable land management gained from seven years of the FONA programme (Research for Sustainable Development, conducted under the auspices of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research), the book stresses and highlights co-design processes within the “co-creation of knowledge”, involving collaboration in transdisciplinary research processes between academia and other stakeholders. The book begins with an overview of the current state of land use practices and the subsequent need to manage land resources more sustainably. New system solutions and governance approaches in sustainable land management are presented from a European perspective on land use. The volume also addresses how to use new modes of knowledge transfer between science and practice. New perspectives in sustainable land management and methods of combining knowledge and action are presented to a broad readership in land system sciences and environmental sciences, social sciences and geosciences. This book received the Gerd Albers Award. The prize is awarded by the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP).

This book on urban design extends and develops the widely accepted 'compact city' solution. It provides a design proposal for a new kind of sustainable urban landscape: Urban Agriculture. By growing food within an urban rather than exclusively rural environment, urban agriculture would reduce the need for industrialized production, packaging and transportation of foodstuffs to the city dwelling consumers. The revolutionary and innovative concepts put forth in this book have potential to shape the future of our cities quality of life within them. Urban design is shown in practice through international case studies and the arguments presented are supported by quantified economic, environmental and social justifications.

This Special Issue presents the latest advances in agriculture, aquaculture, food technology and environmental protection and engineering, discussing, among others, the following issues: new technologies in water, stormwater and wastewater treatment; water saving, lake restoration; new sludge and waste management systems; biodiesel production from animal fat waste; the microbiological quality of compound fish feeds for aquaculture; the role of technological processes to improve food quality and safety; new trends in the analysis of food and food components including in vitro, in vivo, and in silico analyses; and functional and structural aspects of bioactivities of food molecules.