Responding to increasing levels of planetary pollution, waste generation, carbon dioxide emission and environmental collapse, Ecologies of Inception re-thinks potentiality—an object’s ability to change—in architecture and design. The book problematizes the still-prevailing modern paradigm of design practice: the technical tabula rasa, a tendency to begin from scratch and use raw, amorphous, and obedient materials that can be easily and effectively manipulated, facilitating a seamless and faithful embodiment of intentions. Instead, the philosophy of design developed in the text prompts—through a variety of case studies, thinkers, and disciplines—a collective reconsideration of value, dissociating it from the projects and signatures of any one author or generation. Whereas the merits of up-cycling and circular design are canonically defined vis-à-vis status-quo economic and socio-cultural orthodoxies, this project unpacks the theoretical assumptions that underpin these practices, showing that they perpetuate the same biases and exclusions that generate waste in the first place. As an alternative, the book introduces a nodal and exaptive paradigm for design: a conceptual and methodological toolset for engaging the durational and anthropocenic materiality of the third millennium, and for radically prioritizing practices of maintenance, reuse, care, and co-option. This approach, which is inspired by (and builds upon) evolutionary biology, technological disobedience, queer use, adaptive reuse, experimental preservation, and improvisational practices such as collage, adhocism, bricolage, and kit-bashing, refuses to reduce pre-existing material substrates to abstract lists of properties or featureless lumps, encountering them on their own terms—as situated individuals and co-authors. Ecologies of Inception will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, educators, and professional architects and designers interested in sustainable design and seeking to develop conceptual and design tools commensurate with the magnitude and urgency of the climate emergency.

In this ground-breaking book, the first to provide an overview of the theory and practice of experimental architecture, Rachel Armstrong explores how interdisciplinary, design-led research practices are beginning to redefine the possibilities of architecture as a profession. Drawing on experts from disciplines as varied as information technology, mathematics, poetry, graphic design, scenography, bacteriology, marine applied science and robotics, Professor Armstrong delineates original, cutting-edge architectural experiments through essays, quotes, poetry, equations and stories. Written by an acknowledged pioneer of architectural experiment, this visionary book is ideal for students and researchers wishing to engage in experimental, practice-based architectural and artistic research. It introduces radical new ideas about architecture and provides ideas and inspiration which students and researchers can apply in their own work and proposals, while practitioners can draw on it to transform their creative assumptions and develop thereby a distinctive "edge" to stand out in a highly competitive profession.

Der Urban Design Ecologies Reader stellt Architekten und Stadtplanern wichtige Tools zum besseren Verständnis heutiger städtebaulicher Maßnahmen bereit. Essays führender Experten spannen den Bogen zwischen historischen Entwicklungen und innovativen Ansätzen zur Bewältigung der globalen Herausforderungen rasanter Urbanisierungsprozesse und des Klimawandels. Die neuesten Ansätze in den Bereichen Stadtentwicklung, darunter Kernkonzepte wie Stadtarchitektur, Architektur großer Metropolen (Stichwort "Großarchitektur"), Wucherung der Städte, Megastädte (oder die informelle Stadt) und Metastädte, die von digitalen Technologien und dem Ökologiegedanken getragen werden, werden im Detail erörtert.

Classic Indian texts and Vaastupurusha Mandala are not often discussed in the western discourse on urbanism, even while much of these predate the commonly taught European writings. This book sheds light on some of those forgotten concepts, thus making the lesser discussed classic Indian town organization ideas accessible to architecture, landscape, and urban planning students worldwide. The resonance of these concepts in present times are reviewed through case studies of select Hindu temple towns in India. Furthermore, the author underscores the formal abstraction of the classic Indian Mandala and transplants the discourse from sociology to socio-ecologically adept trans-disciplinary design thinking. The creative interpretations offer a premise to start revising classic models for current practice to influence the urbanism and ecology of a place in accordance with the changing climate.

This thesis approaches the phenomenon of open source software (OSS) from a managerial and organisational point of view. In a slightly narrower sense, this thesis studies commercialisation aspects around community-driven open source. The term ‘community-driven’ signifies open source projects that are managed, steered, and controlled by communities of volunteers, as opposed to those that are managed, steered, and controlled by single corporate sponsors. By adopting a business ecology perspective, this thesis places emphasis on the larger context within which the commercialisation of OSS is embedded (e.g., global and collaborative production regimes, ideological foundations, market characteristics, and diffuse boundary conditions). Because many business benefits arise as a consequence of the activities taking place in the communities and ecosystems around open source projects, a business ecology perspective may be a useful analytical guide for understanding the opportunities, challenges, and risks that firms face in commercializing OSS. There are two overarching themes guiding this thesis. The first theme concerns the challenges that firms face in commercialising community-driven open source. There is a tendency in the literature on business ecosystems and open source to emphasise the benefits, opportunities, and positive aspects of behaviour, at the expense of the challenges that firms face. However, business ecosystems are not only spaces of opportunity, they may also pose a variety of challenges that firms need to overcome in order to be successful. To help rectify this imbalance in the literature, the first theme particularly focuses on the challenges that firms face in commercialising community-driven open source. The underlying ambition is to facilitate a more balanced and holistic understanding of the collaborative and competitive dynamics in ecosystems around open source projects. The other theme concerns the complex intertwining of community engagement and profit-oriented venturing. As is acknowledged in the literature, the subject of firm-community interaction has become increasingly important because the survival, success, and sustainability of peer production communities has become of strategic relevance to many organisations. However, while many strategic benefits may arise as a consequence of firm-community interaction, there is a lack of research studying how the value-creating logics of firm–community interaction are embedded within the bigger picture in which they occur. Bearing this bigger picture in mind, this thesis explores the intertwining of volunteer community engagement and profit-oriented venturing by focusing on four aspects that are theorised in the literature: reinforcement, complementarity, synergy, and reciprocity. This thesis is designed as a qualitative exploratory single-case study. The empirical case is Joomla, a popular open source content management system. In a nutshell, the Joomla case in this thesis comprises the interactions in the Joomla community and the commercial activities around the Joomla platform (e.g., web development, consulting, marketing, customisation, extensions). In order to achieve greater analytical depth, the business ecology perspective is complemented with ideas and propositions from other theoretical areas, such as stakeholder theory, community governance, organizational identity, motivation theory, pricing, and bundling. The findings show that the common challenges in commercialising community-driven open source revolve around nine distinct factors that roughly cluster into three domains: the ecosystem, the community, and the firm. In short, the domain of the ecosystem comprises the global operating environment, the pace of change, and the cannibalisation of ideas. The domain of the community comprises the platform policy, platform image, and the voluntary nature of the open source project. And finally, the domain of the firm comprises the blurring boundaries between private and professional lives, the difficulty of estimating costs, and firm dependencies. Based on these insights, a framework for analysing community-based value creation in business ecosystems is proposed. This framework integrates collective innovation, community engagement, and value capture into a unified model of value creation in contexts of firm–community interaction. Furthermore, the findings reveal demonstrable effects of reinforcement, complementarity, synergy, and reciprocity in the intertwining of volunteer community engagement and profit-oriented venturing. By showing that this intertwining can be strong in empirical cases where commercial activities are often implicitly assumed to be absent, this thesis provides a more nuanced understanding of firm involvement in the realm of open source. Based on the empirical and analytical insights, a number of further theoretical implications are discussed, such as the role of intersubjective trust in relation to the uncertainties that commercial actors face, an alternative way of classifying community types, the metaphor of superorganisms in the context of open source, issues pertaining to the well-being of community participants, and issues in relation to the transitioning of open source developers from a community-based to an entrepreneurial self-identity when commercialising an open source solution. Furthermore, this thesis builds on six sub-studies that make individual contributions of their own. In a broad sense, this thesis contributes to the literature streams on the commercialisation of OSS, the business value and strategic aspects of open source, the interrelationships between community forms of organising and entrepreneurial activities, and the nascent research on ecology perspectives on peer-production communities. A variety of opportunities for future research are highlighted. Denna avhandling undersöker fenomenet öppen källkod, ’open source’, ur ett lednings och styrningsperspektiv. Mer konkret studeras aspekter på kommersialisering av ett community-drivet open source projekt (OSS, open source software). Uttrycket ’community-drivet’ hänvisar till open source projekt som drivs och styrs av volontärgrupper, till skillnad från open source projekt som drivs och styrs av enskilda företag. Genom att tillämpa ett affärsekologiperspektiv fokuserar denna avhandling på det vidare sammanhang som karaktäriserar kommersialisering av OSS, såsom globala och kollaborativa produktionssystem, värderingarna öppenhet och samarbete, marknadsstrukturer, och diffusa organisationsgränser. Aktiviteterna i open source communityn och dess kringliggande ekosystem kan bidra till många fördelar för företag, och därför kan ett affärsekologiperspektiv vara en användbar analytisk lins för att förstå de möjligheter, utmaningar och risker som företag står inför när de kommersialiserar OSS. Två övergripande teman lyfts fram i denna avhandling. Det första temat handlar om de utmaningar som företag står inför när de kommersialiserar community-driven OSS. Det finns i litteraturen om affärsekologier och open source en tendens att betona fördelar, möjligheter och positiva aspekter på beteende på bekostnad av att undersöka utmaningar som företag står inför. Affärsekologier innebär dock inte enbart möjligheter för företag, utan kan också orsaka en rad utmaningar som företag behöver hantera för att lyckas. Med utgångspunkt i denna obalans i litteraturen fokuserar det första temat på de utmaningar med kommersialisering av community-driven OSS. Detta görs för att bidra till en mer balanserad och holistisk förståelse av den på samma gång kollaborativa och konkurrerande dynamiken i affärsekologin runt ett open source projekt. Det andra temat handlar om sammanflätningen (intertwining) mellan community-deltagande och vinstdrivande verksamhet. Såsom det framgår i litteraturen har frågan om samverkan mellan företag och communities blivit allt viktigare, eftersom communityernas överlevnad, framgång och hållbarhet har blivit strategiskt viktiga för många organisationer. Även om många strategiska fördelar kan uppstå som en följd av samverkan mellan företag och communities saknas forskning om hur värdeskapande uppstår i en vidare kontext. Med ett bredare perspektiv i åtanke undersöker denna avhandling sammanflätningen av frivilligt community-deltagande och en vinstdrivande verksamhet genom att fokusera på fyra aspekter av sammanflätning som förekommer i litteraturen: förstärkning, komplementaritet, synergi, och ömsesidighet. Denna avhandling är utformad som en kvalitativ utforskande fallstudie. Det empiriska fallet är Joomla, ett innehållshanteringssystem som bygger på open source. Inom ramen för avhandlingen undersöks fallet i termer av samspel inom Joomla-communityn och de kommersiella aktiviteterna som sker runt Joomla-plattformen (t.ex., webbutveckling, rådgivning, marknadsföring, anpassningar, och extensions). För att uppnå ett analytiskt djup kompletteras affärsekologiperspektivet med idéer och förslag från andra teoretiska områden, såsom intressentmodellen, community-styrning, företagsidentitet, motivationsteori, prissättning, och buntning. Resultaten visar att utmaningarna med kommersialisering av community-driven OSS kretsar kring nio olika faktorer som kan grupperas i tre områden: ekosystemet, communityn, och företaget. Ekosystemsfaktorerna innefattar den globala verksamma miljön, förändringshastigheten och kannibalisering av idéer. Community-faktorerna innefattar plattformspolicy, plattformsimage, och att deltagandet i open source projektet sker på frivillig basis. Slutligen innefattar företagsfaktorerna suddiga gränser mellan privatliv och arbetsliv, svårigheten att uppskatta kostnader samt beroendeförhållanden mellan företag. Baserat på dessa insikter föreslås en modell för att analysera communitybaserad värdeskapande i affärsekologier. Modellen integrerar kollektiv innovation, community-deltagande, och value capture i en holistisk modell för community-baserad värdeskapande i kontexten samverkan mellan företag och communities. Vidare beskrivs effekterna av sammanflätningen av frivilligt community-deltagande och vinstdrivande verksamhet i termer av förstärkning, komplementaritet, synergi, och ömsesidighet. Genom att visa att sammanflätningen av frivilligt community-deltagande och vinstdrivande verksamhet kan vara stark i fall där det ofta antas implicit att kommersiella aktiviteter inte förekommer ger denna avhandling en mer nyanserad förståelse av företags roll i kontexten open source. Baserat på empiriska och analytiska insikter diskuterar denna avhandling ett antal teoretiska konsekvenser, såsom rollen som intersubjektiv tillit spelar i förhållande till den ovisshet som kommersiella aktörer står inför, ett alternativt sätt att klassificera community-typer, metaforen superorganismer i kontexten open source, community-deltagares välbefinnande, samt hur open source utvecklare hanterar övergången från en community-baserad självidentitet till en entreprenöriell självidentitet vid kommersialisering av OSS. Dessutom ger de sex delstudier som avhandlingen bygger på egna bidrag som presenteras i respektive delstudie. I stora drag bidrar denna avhandling till litteraturen om kommersialisering av OSS, affärsmässiga och strategiska aspekter på open source, samspelet mellan community-driven entreprenörsverksamhet samt den framväxande forskning som använder ett affärsekologiperspektiv för att studera kollegial produktion baserad på allmännytta. En mängd olika möjligheter för framtida forskning lyfts fram.

This volume offers a unique, integrative perspective on the political and ecological processes shaping landscapes and resource use across the global North and South. Twelve carefully selected case studies demonstrate how contemporary geographical theories and methods can contribute to understanding key environment-and-development issues and working toward effective policies. Topics addressed include water and biodiversity resources, urban and national resource planning, scientific concepts of resource management, and ideas of nature and conservation in the context of globalization. Giving particular attention to evolving conceptions of nature-society interaction and geographical scale, an introduction and conclusion by the editors provide a clear analytical focus for the volume and summarize important developments and debates in the field.

The primary goal of this book is to enable effective, updated and easy preparation for UPSC and State PSC exams. Both the structure and content of the book have been carefully designed to serve the triple purposes of self-study, revision, and expert guidance to the aspirant. # Each chapter begins with Learning Outcomes, Chapter Analysis and Issues to Ponder to introduce the topics covered, develop curiosity, and capture student’s interest. # The book is filled with infographics at relevant places which is helpful to learn answer writing presentations of Mains exam writing. # The infographics or images are such that they can be memorized and elaborated in words for answer making. # Further, this is a Text-Guide in the sense that it combines the theoretical knowledge of a textbook with the practical, strategic aspects of a Guide. # This Text-Guide aims to solve all content and guidance-related problems of a student at once. # It is powered with a section called ‘Expert’s Advice’ where the author directly addresses, guides and instructs the student using his expert knowledge. # This will help the student to understand which sections are most important, what can be asked in future, and what should not be skipped strictly from exam point-of-view. # In terms of the content, the differences between Ecology and Environment and between Environmental Studies and Environmental Sciences have been clearly maintained throughout the book. # The writing style is lucid, concise and cross-referential. Sections from all chapters are linked with questions that previously appeared in Prelims and Mains, thus helping you keep the big picture in mind. # Prelims Confusing Terms Simplified, Prelims Pointers, Mains Pointers, Think Tank, and In short are mentioned throughout the book wherever necessary. # A separate Chapter with short revision notes encompassing the crux of the whole book, by the name of SNAPSHOT, is provided at the end of the Book. # This book is a comprehensive text-guide with exhaustive discussion in 45 Chapters. The theory is enriched with Previous year Prelims Questions, NCERT based MCQs and Mains related questions and answers. # There is detailed emphasis on concepts and anecdotes through factsheets in all the chapters.

A collection of ethnographies grounded in second-generation political ecology, which focuses on the interchanges between nature and culture, and the local and the global.

In 1968 when I forsook horticulture and plant physiology to try, with the help of Sea Grant funds, wetland ecology, it didn’t take long to discover a slim volume published in 1959 by the University of Georgia and edited by R. A. Ragotzkie, L. R. Pomeroy, J. M. Teal, and D. C. Scott, entitled “Proceedings of the Salt Marsh Conference” held in 1958 at the Marine Institute, Sapelo Island, Ga. Now forty years later, the Sapelo Island conference has been the major intellectual impetus, and another Sea Grant Program the major backer, of another symposium, the “International Symposium: Concepts and Controversies in Tidal Marsh Ecology”. This one re-examines the ideas of that first conference, ideas that stimulated four decades of research and led to major legislation in the United States to conserve coastal wetlands. It is dedicated, appropriately, to two then young scientists – Eugene P. Odum and John M. Teal – whose inspiration has been the starting place for a generation of coastal wetland and estuarine research. I do not mean to suggest that wetland research started at Sapelo Island. In 1899 H. C. Cowles described successional processes in Lake Michigan freshwater marsh ponds. There is a large and valuable early literature about northern bogs, most of it from Europe and the former USSR, although Eville Gorham and R. L. Lindeman made significant contributions to the American literature before 1960. V. J.

An ideal text for students taking a course in landscape ecology. The book has been written by very well-known practitioners and pioneers in the new field of ecological analysis. Landscape ecology has emerged during the past two decades as a new and exciting level of ecological study. Environmental problems such as global climate change, land use change, habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity have required ecologists to expand their traditional spatial and temporal scales and the widespread availability of remote imagery, geographic information systems, and desk top computing has permitted the development of spatially explicit analyses. In this new text book this new field of landscape ecology is given the first fully integrated treatment suitable for the student. Throughout, the theoretical developments, modeling approaches and results, and empirical data are merged together, so as not to introduce barriers to the synthesis of the various approaches that constitute an effective ecological synthesis. The book also emphasizes selected topic areas in which landscape ecology has made the most contributions to our understanding of ecological processes, as well as identifying areas where its contributions have been limited. Each chapter features questions for discussion as well as recommended reading.