AGRICULTURE

This week's theme is agriculture. You can post something about the diffusion of a particular crop, methods of agriculture, religious rituals and agriculture, modern innovations, etc.

Reconstruction in Nigeria

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kclmqg_tz0

Developement in New Orleans

Compact Communities

Respecting our land means using it efficiently.

Compact communities have a smaller per capita footprint on our land base and keep our costs of servicing down. Compact communities allow us to absorb new residents and jobs without sacrificing our quality of life, our environment, or the fiscal health of our towns and cities.

Unfortunately, conventional development patterns over the past 50 years have relied upon the following strategies:

• separating homes, jobs and shopping from each other;
• connecting these uses by roads and parking lots;
• building housing, retail, and office parks at low densities.

This is reflected in the fact that, over the last three decades, the rate of BC’s population growth was only about half of the rate of land urbanization (87% vs 162%). This inefficient use of land has severe consequences on our economy, our environment, our farmland, our health, and our safety. Now more and more, communities are experiencing the hard realities of this low-density, single-use pattern including:

• traffic congestion and pollution;
• few choices (other than car) for getting around;
• loss of working farmland and green spaces to sprawl;
• high housing costs and low housing diversity;
• unaffordable road and infrastructure maintenance costs;
• increasing obesity, diabetes, asthma, and other health problems related to vehicle dependency.

Perhaps one of the most insidious results of conventional development is that every community ends up looking the same. Our heritage sites and our virbrant town centres are often the first victims of sprawling development patterns.

Fortunately, there is a smart growth alternative: building compact, complete communities. Benefits include:

• improvements to our health by providing safe and attractive ways to get around on wheels (bike, rollerblades, wheelchair) or on foot;
• mitigation of climate change by providing shopping, schools, and other services within easy walking distance, thereby reducing our dependency on vehicles;
• protection of our farmland by keeping the town in the town and the country in the country;
• reductions in the costs of servicing (and therefore taxes) by extending infrastructure over shorter distances and are shared by more people through densification;
• diversification of the local economy by allowing people to work from vibrant, mixed-use neighbourhoods that attract and keep residents;
• more time with family as commuting times are reduced, which in turn allow neighbours and to get to know one another better and the social fabric of the community to strengthen.

Strategies for the Creation of Compact Communities

• establish and adhere to urban and rural containment boundaries;
• offer housing diversity for all ages through affordable housing strategies and homes of all sizes for all stages of life;
• limit service provision (no servicing above a certain elevation or outside the containment boundary). This includes roads, sewer and water lines, fire protection and policing;
• allow natural places to continue to provide recreation, aesthetic, and health benefits by protecting them from urbanization.
  
  
  

Goverments Can

• Request a Smart Growth BC workshop for staff and elected officials to familiarize yourselves with smart growth principles.
• Define and adopt a containment boundary around your community as a part of the long-term community visioning process.
• Use Smart Growth BC's policies when undergoing reviews of Regional Growth Strategies and Official Community Plans.
• Utilize Smart Growth BC research publications for decision-making.

Citizens Can

• Request a Smart Growth BC Community Assistance Program (CAP) workshop in your community.
• Get involved with community groups that are concerned with community or sustainability issues – or, form a new one.
• Advocate for an urban or rural containment boundary in your community's land use planning documents.
• Support appropriate levels of densification and mixed-use initiatives in your neighbourhood and recognize that often the alternative to densification is sprawl on the outskirts of town.
• Talk to your neighbours and friends about smart growth.
• Write a letter to the local newspaper or call a local radio talk show.
• Question your politicians and candidates at election time.

Human Development Trends 2007/ 2008

http://hdrstats.undp.org/indicators/10.html

http://diversitydata.sph.harvard.edu/profiles.jsp?ma=5160

WEEK EIGHT - Ethnicity

Focus on issues related to ethnicity this week

CIA - The World Factbook

The link below is a list of ethnic groups listed on the The World Factbook of the CIA. Along with each country, there is a list of ethnic groups (%), and a link at the top of the page for reference maps. When you click on a country, information about the geography, the people, the economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues, among other facts, are given.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2075.html

Ethnic Records in the US

Since ethnicity is identity with a group with cultural similarities it is often confused with religion that are or are not ethnic. This post is of a evangelical Christian group called Joshua Project who is keeping record of the ethnic groups in the US for missionary purposes. The attached page is the records of all the different ethnic groups living in the US, their population, and their primary religion.

http://www.joshuaproject.net/countries.php?rog3=US

Mandarin Chinese

Did you know that there are two, very different types of Chinese language?
Mandarin (traditional Chinese: 官話; simplified Chinese: 官话; pinyin: Guānhuà; literally "speech of officials" or simplified Chinese: 北方话; traditional Chinese: 北方話; pinyin: Běifānghuà; literally "northern dialect(s)"), is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and south-western China. When taken as a separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the Mandarin language has more native speakers than any other language. The "standard" in Standard Mandarin refers to the standard Beijing dialect of the Mandarin language.
Mandarin is also a general term describing any grade of nobility in the Chinese Imperial Court.
In English, Mandarin can refer to either of two distinct concepts:
In everyday use Mandarin refers to Standard Chinese or Standard Mandarin (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu), which is based on the particular Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing. Standard Mandarin functions as the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China, the official language of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and one of the four official languages of Singapore. ‘Chinese’ — in practice Standard Mandarin — is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.
In its broader sense, Mandarin is a diverse group of Mandarin dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China (Guanhua / Beifanghua / Beifang fangyan). This group of dialects is the focus of this article.
The latter grouping is defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of non-Standard Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Southwestern Mandarin or Northeastern Mandarin, and consider it distinct from ‘Standard Mandarin’ (putonghua); they may not recognize that it is in fact classified by linguists as a form of ‘Mandarin’ in a broader sense. Nor is there a common ‘Mandarin’ identity based on language; rather, there are strong regional identities centred on individual dialects, because of the wide geographical distribution and cultural diversity of its speakers.
Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is significant dispute as to whether Mandarin is a