A new revolution in homeownership and living has been sweeping the booming cities of China. This time the main actors on the social stage are not peasants, migrants, or working-class proletariats but ...middle-class professionals and entrepreneurs in search of a private paradise in a society now dominated by consumerism. No longer seeking happiness and fulfillment through collective sacrifice and socialist ideals, they hope to find material comfort and social distinction in newly constructed gated communities. This quest for the good life is profoundly transforming the physical and social landscapes of urban China.
Li Zhang, who is from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, turns a keen ethnographic eye on her hometown. She combines her analysis of larger political and social issues with fine-grained details about the profound spatial, cultural, and political effects of the shift in the way Chinese urban residents live their lives and think about themselves.In Search of Paradiseis a deeply informed account of how the rise of private homeownership is reconfiguring urban space, class subjects, gender selfhood, and ways of life in the reform era.
New, seemingly individualistic lifestyles mark a dramatic move away from yearning for a social utopia under Maoist socialism. Yet the privatization of property and urban living have engendered a simultaneous movement of public engagement among homeowners as they confront the encroaching power of the developers. This double movement of privatized living and public sphere activism, Zhang finds, is a distinctive feature of the cultural politics of the middle classes in contemporary China. Theoretically sophisticated and highly accessible, Zhang's account will appeal not only to those interested in China but also to anyone interested in spatial politics, middle-class culture, and postsocialist governing in a globalizing world.
Slums Birch, Eugenie L; Chattaraj, Shahana; Wachter, Susan M
03/2016
eBook
Large numbers of people in urbanizing regions in the developing world live and work in unplanned settlements that grow through incremental processes of squatting and self-building.Slums: How Informal ...Real Estate Markets Workshows that unauthorized settlements in rapidly growing cities are not divorced from market forces; rather, they must be understood as complex environments where state policies and market actors still do play a role. In this volume, contributors examine how the form and function of informal real estate markets are shaped by legal systems governing property rights, by national and local policy, and by historical and geographic particularities of specific neighborhoods. Their essays provide detailed portraits of individuals and community organizations, revealing in granular detail the working of informal real estate markets, and they review programs that have been implemented in unconventional settlements to provide lessons about the effectiveness and implementation challenges of different approaches.
Chapters explore the relationships between informality, state policies, and market forces from a range of disciplinary perspectives and on different scales, from an analysis of the relationship between regulations and housing in 600 developing world cities to an ethnographic account of the buying and selling of houses in Rio de Janeiro's favelas. While many of the book's contributors focus on the emerging economies of India and Brazil, the conclusions drawn illustrate dynamics relevant to developing countries throughout the Global South. The diversity of perspectives combines to create a rich understanding of an important, complex, and understudied topic.
Contributors:Arthur Acolin, Sai Balakrishnan, Eugenie L. Birch, José Brakarz, Shahana Chattaraj, Sebastian Galiani, David Gouverneur, Yvonne Mautner, Paavo Monkkonen, Vinit Mukhija, Janice E. Perlman, Lucas Ronconi, Bish Sanyal, Ernesto Schargrodsky, Patrícia Cezário Silva, Susan M. Wachter
A two-step strategy is developed for real-time trajectory planning of a hypersonic vehicle (HV) in the reentry phase. The first step generates the optimal trajectory for the HV using a recently ...proposed fuzzy multiobjective transcription method. In the second step, the optimally generated trajectories are utilized to train a deep neural network (DNN), which is then acted as the optimal command generator in real time. A detailed simulation study is carried out to verify the effectiveness and real-time applicability of the proposed integrated design. The DNN-driven controller is further compared against other optimization-based techniques existing in relative works. Moreover, extension works on the real-time trajectory planning of a six-degree-of-freedom HV model are performed. The results confirm the feasibility and reliability of applying the proposed method for the planning of the HV entry flight path in real time.
This study evolves a model of the land development process which includes a new theory of land pricing giving special emphases to market structure, speculation, and taxation. It then applies the ...model to the first fully documented examination of the Toronto land market, presenting specific original data on ownership and land assembly.
Sustainable Real Estate in the Developing World offers a perfect and ideal synthesis of works that examine sustainability within various facets of real estate and urban development in the developing ...world. A must-read for academics, researchers, policy-makers and students in all the built environment disciplines.
"Professor Robert Rennie has been one of the most influential voices in Scots private law over the past thirty years. Highly respected as both an academic and a practitioner, his contribution to the ...development of property law and practice has been substantial and unique. This volume celebrates his retirement from the Chair of Conveyancing at the University of Glasgow in 2014 with a selection of essays written by his peers and colleagues from the judiciary, academia and legal practice. Each chapter covers a topic of particular interest to Professor Rennie during his career, from the historical development of property law rules through to the latest developments in conveyancing practice and the evolution of the rules of professional negligence. Although primarily Scottish in focus, the contributions will have much of interest to lawyers in any jurisdiction struggling with similar practical problems, particularly those with similar legal roots including the Netherlands and South Africa. As a whole, the collection is highly recommended to students, practitioners and academics. "
Purpose
There is a need to develop hybrid trial methodology combining the best parts of traditional randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and observational study designs to produce real‐world evidence ...(RWE) that provides adequate scientific evidence for regulatory decision‐making.
Methods
This review explores how hybrid study designs that include features of RCTs and studies with real‐world data (RWD) can combine the advantages of both to generate RWE that is fit for regulatory purposes.
Results
Some hybrid designs include randomization and use pragmatic outcomes; other designs use single‐arm trial data supplemented with external comparators derived from RWD or leverage novel data collection approaches to capture long‐term outcomes in a real‐world setting. Some of these approaches have already been successfully used in regulatory decisions, raising the possibility that studies using RWD could increasingly be used to augment or replace traditional RCTs for the demonstration of drug effectiveness in certain contexts. These changes come against a background of long reliance on RCTs for regulatory decision‐making, which are labor‐intensive, costly, and produce data that can have limited applicability in real‐world clinical practice.
Conclusions
While RWE from observational studies is well accepted for satisfying postapproval safety monitoring requirements, it has not commonly been used to demonstrate drug effectiveness for regulatory purposes. However, this position is changing as regulatory opinions, guidance frameworks, and RWD methodologies are evolving, with growing recognition of the value of using RWE that is acceptable for regulatory decision‐making.
The IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (TNS) is pleased to announce that Dr. Hideya Nakanishi has accepted an appointment as an Associate Editor for papers originating in the Real Time Conference.
Objective
We expanded the previous assessment of a mortality variable suited for real‐world evidence‐focused oncology research.
Data source
We used a nationwide electronic health record (EHR)‐derived ...de‐identified database.
Data collection
We included patients with at least 1 of 18 cancer types between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2017. Patient‐level structured data (EHRs, obituaries, and Social Security Death Index) and unstructured EHR data (ed) were linked to generate a composite mortality variable.
Study design
We benchmarked sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and ±15‐day agreement against the National Death Index (NDI). Real‐world overall survival (rwOS) was estimated using the Kaplan‐Meier method. We performed sensitivity analyses using a smaller patient cohort that underwent next‐generation sequencing testing.
Principal findings
Compared with the NDI across 18 cancer types (overall N = 160 436): sensitivity, 83.9%‐91.5% (17/18 cancer types had sensitivity ≥85.0%); specificity, 93.5%‐99.7%; PPV, 96.3%‐98.3%; NPV, 75.0%‐98.7%; ±15‐day agreement, 95.6%‐97.6%; and median rwOS estimates ranging from 2.8% to 12.7% greater. Sensitivity analysis results (n = 17 540) were consistent with the main analysis.
Conclusions
Across all cancer types analyzed, this composite mortality variable showed high sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, and ±15‐day agreement, and yielded median rwOS values modestly overestimated when compared to NDI‐based results.
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