Vacant urban land--the product of land market activity, the actions of private agents, and the policies of public agents--is an important challenge for policy makers. Vacant lots on the urban fringe and in central and interstitial areas have affected growth patterns in Latin America. Contributors to this book analyze the problems and opportunities related to vacant urban land in five cities: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Quito, Ecuador; Lima, Perú; and San Salvador, El Salvador.

The editors of "The University as Urban Developer" now extend that work's groundbreaking analysis of the university's important role in the growth and development of the American city to the global view. Linking the fields of urban development, higher education, and urban design, "Global Universities and Urban Development" covers universities and communities around the world, including Germany, Korea, Scotland, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Finland - 13 countries in all.The book features contributions from noted urban scholars, campus planners and architects, and university administrators from all the countries represented. They provide a wide-angled perspective of the issues and practices that comprise university real estate development around the globe. A concluding chapter by the editors offers practical evaluations of the many cases and identifies best practices in the field.

This book underlines the importance of establishing, in the planning and urban policies oriented towards sustainability, a relationship between the urban expansion – observed in its different forms and dynamics – and the ability of soil and landscape to support agricultural productivity and interface processes. This is the development of a specific investigation theme linked to the problem of soil degradation and peri-urban lands allows a valuable re-interpretation in the field of landscape studies. This book queries the value of the "rural" around a city, in a multidisciplinary perspective encompassing land transformations, good practices, and urban planning trends. Land transformations are at the center of analysis and discussions on the management, planning, and design of the landscape everywhere. This topic is particularly appropriate for European landscapes where land changes are often associated with the degradation of rural and natural areas. This issue represents a crucial point within the framework of the ecological transition towards a truly sustainable society and economy, as established by the European Union. This book is the result of detailed bibliographic research, of in-depth historical research on the most recent challenges and topics of greatest interest in the field of urban studies. Original landscape transformations analyses were performed, introducing also some practical cases, considered relevant contributions in spatial planning.

The opening of the economy to external markets has brought about the re assessment of the significance of large spatial agglo­merations and the accentuation of polarization at national scale. The dual movement of centralization and de-concentration proces­ses, inwards and outwards, contributes to urban sprawl beyond the limits of metropolitan areas, as has been demonstrated in Shang­hai, Jakarta, Delta Metropolis, Mexico City, Sao Paolo and Santia­go. lts consequences for urban structure and urban morphology are immense and complex, and it has fostered social fragmentati­on of space, changing location opportunities, land uses and centra­lities. The importance of transport and communication is accentua­ted, large intra and inter urban connectivity are generated together with the generation of articulated networks, corridors, nodes with impact in land values. New lifestyles, new urban environments and new form of governance emerge and need to be theoretically and empirically underpinned.