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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Urban Design Essay

Essay on Urban Design and Urbanism

"The Present City and the Practice of City Design" in Everyday Urbanism by John Kaliski
Urban design is study of the arrangement, appearance and functionality of urban areas, including the shaping and uses of urban public space. The theory of urban design deals mainly with the design and management of public space, the way they are seen and used. Public spaces are streets, squares, alleys. Boulevards and parks – places that we see every day. One of the main goals of urban design is to improve urban environment, make it more enjoyable and useful.

Urban planning is the integration of the disciplines of land-use planning and transport planning in order to explore a very wide range of aspects of the built and social environments of urban areas and communities. Regional planning deals with larger areas then urban planning, at a less detailed level. One of the main functions of urban planning is urban renewal, using urban planning methods in order to revive existing cities suffering from long-term infrastructural decay.
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We can draw a city on a map, plan the streets and buildings, however, the feeling of a city we can received only by experiencing it, walking on the streets, living its life, meeting its people. John Kaliski writes that despite of the professional efforts of the urban designers, the city lives its own everyday life.
 
The author starts the article with the words that we need the plan in order to look in the future. Later in the article, he mentions with some degree of disappointment, that many designers are behind the time and not in front of it. The designers should be ahead of their time, guessing the tendencies of city development and progress of society.
 
Most of the famous urban designers of the twenties century tried to create a conceptual city and wanted to create utopic cities, like for example, Le Corbusier, many designers wanted to create a city of order. This was characteristic to the designers of the early twentieth century. This trend has passed in the 50s, after the World War II. One of the greatest inventions of the postwar times is shopping mall. It was developed by Victor Gruen, whose childhood passed in Vienna. In the shopping mall, Gruen tried to recreate rich urban life of European cities, with its busy main streets and crowded sidewalks.

Jane Jacob, one of the key figures in American urban design, criticized the urban renewal policies of the fifties. In her famous work The Death an Life of Great American Cities she pointed out that when designing urban areas not the impression they give, but how people use things, she protected the traditional city blocks and proposed new principals of urban renewal. 
 
Edmund Bacon and Jonathan Barnett talked about architect as about “urban policy-makers.” Surprisingly enough, not the architectures and urban designers influence the appearance of the streets, but rather the officials who either approve or disapprove the design proposals. These people have power and authority to shape the way our cities look. Bacon and Barnett, for example, left greater contribution as government officials and not as individual designers.
 
Christopher Alexander thinks that designers and citizens should act collectively and residents should part in their community design together with professionals. He goes as far as suggesting that each time a new project is proposed, citizens and designers should come together and discuss the directions of the project. At the same time Alexander stresses that each time when a new building or object is planned, the next step of development should be also considered, just like a next step in a game of chess.
 
Denise Scott Brown is among the most influential architects of the twentieth century. She criticized urban designers and planners for not being able to catch up with the time and the changes. Her projects often incorporate the needs of every day city life as well as conceptual design.
 
In the United States throughout the 1990s emerged an urban design movement, new Urbanism. The goal of the movement is to change some aspects of real estate development, renewal and urban planning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist neighborhoods are designed to be walkable and interesting from the designers’ point of view.
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Warning!!! All free online essays, sample essays and essay examples on Urban Design and Urbanism topics are plagiarized and cannot be completely used in your school, college or university education.

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Thursday, November 22, 2012

Essay on Business Marketing

Essay on Business Marketing

Originally Canadian agricultural enterprise Agrium, world’s third large company in the industry (Pugh, 2010), is a wholesale producer of main agricultural nutrients working through a network of retail distributors in the world market, emphasizing primarily on North and South America (Agrium Inc, 2011). The strategy of the company lies in the integrated solutions for the whole production process – from extracting the raw materials to coming up with the ready-made product. Agrium uses own certified technologies increasing the efficiency of the products and dividing the company into three business units, which develop production facilities, sales, and technological innovations. The company now expands into Africa, Asia, and Australia by acquisitions of local companies in the same sector (Pugh, 2010) and building plants for its own production (Donville, 2011). The company reacts to the global competition from the strategic perspective and is making positive contributions from the governmental perspective by investing into the economies of foreign countries.
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Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc., or PotashCorp, is the multinational company from Canada, the leader in the fertilizer industry, the competitor of Agrium. In Canada, the company is in the 100 Top local businesses, so it is recognized from the governmental perspective as a valuable employer and appreciated business. Potash is the main product and the focus of company’s business. The global presence is provided due to the operations in North and South Americas, Middle East, and Asia (PotashCorp, 2011). The strategy is based on the unique relationships with the stakeholders who are the consumers of the company’s products at the same time. PotashCorp emphasizes on the environmental approach in regard to all humanity and the planet identifying itself one of the key enterprises in promoting the world agricultural business, the main source of food on the planet.

BHP Billiton, an Australian company with headquarters in London, Great Britain, is a portfolio business in the field of mining and procession of natural resources around the world (PotashCorp, 2011). Its core business sectors are tightly connected with aluminium and other metals, diamonds, ore, coal and many others. Their strategy is supported by the two marketing hubs in Europe and Asia, based on geographic and product diversification, and seeks for business broadening and production site expansion (Taylor, 2010). That’s why in 2010, the company made a bid for the acquisition of Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc. Having own potash development sites, BHP Billiton has seen a challenge in the expansion into the fast-growing industry of potash and crop nutrients.

Therefore, the strategy of BHP Billiton at present incorporates the purchase of the successful existing businesses, which is affordable for the company of such sizes. Similar acquisition can considerably maximize the profits and introduce the company into the new phase of relationships with the stakeholders, especially the governmental bodies. However, the bid is reported to be rejected by PotashCorp, which feels itself as a strong player in the market, and this means that BHP Billiton has to look for other opportunities in expanding into the relatively new sphere. The example of such giant as BHP Billiton proves the powerfulness of multinational corporations and its considerable impact on private businesses and government.
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Friday, November 9, 2012

Essay on Leaders

Essay about Leaders

It’s incredible! One of the most notorious leaders the world has seen, Moamar Khadafi, is facing an internal rebellion and has just learned that the world is ready to take military action against him and his corrupt regime. One of the largest economies in the world, the leader in technology, innovation, medicine, education and countless other fields is facing a catastrophe of biblical proportions. After being hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, Japan currently faces a number of melting nuclear reactors. This situation has the potential to turn parts of Japan into something worse than Chernobyl, Ukraine of 1986, which is still uninhabitable. So, where is the world going and where do I see myself and humanity in the next five, ten, fifteen years and beyond?
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Based on what history shows us, there has been conflict and internal strife within societies, communities, city- and nation-states. It has been an inevitable part of our existence, the constant warfare and bloodshed. Obviously some societies have seen less than others, but all in all, humanity has yet to cleanse itself of the need to harm itself. In essence the serious conflicts started when the hunter-gatherer tribes began settling into what would eventually become cities. Thus, territorial and resource conflicts prevailed, paving the way for male-dominated societies.  (Watson 2006) But there is hope. Since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment periods, humanity has learned again how to heal, much more than it learned how to kill. The evidence is in the population boom that is currently threatening the status quo of our planet. The greater need for resources and energy is pushing us to the limit. Nevertheless, we are more than capable of overcoming this.

In the past societies have encountered great obstacles, and have overcome them. The future does seem promising, although it might appear bleak to some. Great technological strides have been made in the fields of renewable energy, medicine and the sciences in general. The Western World has moved out of the Industrial Age and is slowly, but surely, progressing into the age of ideas. One of the leaders in predicting the future of science, Dr. Michio Kaku usually gives us an optimistic picture of the future. The great advances, previously mentioned, currently include invisibility cloaks, the ability to utilize the energy of the Sun very efficiently, as well as creating a new sphere of information sharing through teleportation.  (NPR Staff 2010)

Of course, it would be very cool to beam yourself from San Francisco to New York in a matter of seconds, but most importantly is that technology is paving the way for us to sustain ourselves on this planet, as well as save lives like never before imaginable. Scientists are in the process of creating devices that will build human organs from stem cells. Imagine, a person needing a new heart, can have it made within a matter of days, thus prolonging his life. But like always, we have great obstacles ahead of us, with wars, natural and manmade disasters, famine, diseases and much more. 

That is unfortunately inevitable, yet analyzing the past, we can also see that there is great hope in humanity, that we have overcame many impossible feats, and although we will stumble again, we will propel ourselves into a brave new world where the true utopian ideals will take shape.
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Warning!!! All free online essays, sample essays and essay examples on Leadership topics are plagiarized and cannot be completely used in your school, college or university education.

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