Shared Ownership and Affordable Housing: A Political Solution in Search of a Planning Justification?

Planners in England routinely include shared ownership (SO) housing in the affordable housing element of new developments. Government policies in a number of European countries have also backed intermediate housing market mechanisms as a solution to housing affordability. The rhetoric of such mechanisms makes claims about its social progressiveness, its role in facilitating socio-economic mobility and helping people move from rented accommodation into full owner-occupation. SO schemes in England have been justified on the grounds of being transitional tenures and planners have accepted SO on this basis. However, given the paucity of rigorous empirical work, there is a concern that this is a policy based on assumption rather than evidence. This paper delineates existing knowledge, clarifies dimensions of the intermediate housing market and highlights underlying policy issues based on a large data-set of shared owners in England. Our analysis indicates that SO may not be appropriately classified as affordable housing, and justifiable policy requires further evidence.     

Capacitated qualification management in semiconductor manufacturing

In semiconductor manufacturing, machines are usually qualified to process a limited number of recipes related to products. It is possible to qualify recipes on machines to better balance the workload on machines in a given toolset. However, all machines of a toolset do not have equal uptimes and may further suffer from scheduled and unscheduled downtimes. This may heavily impact an efficient recipe-to-machine qualification configuration. In this paper, we propose indicators for recipe-to-machine qualification management based on the overall toolset workload balance under capacity constraints. The models, deployed in industry, demonstrate that the toolset capacity must be considered while managing qualifications. Industrial experiments show how capacity consideration leads to an optimal qualification configuration and therefore capacity utilization.     

Actor-Relational Planning in Deprived Areas: Challenges and Opportunities in Luchtbal Antwerpen,Belgium

In this article, we report and discuss our experience with actor-relational approaches (ARA) in the regeneration of a postwar housing estate in Luchtbal, Antwerp, Belgium. ARA are informed by post-structuralist ideas of space, complexity theory, and actor network theory. Although ARA itself is not new, the application of ARA to deprived area's such as Luchtbal is novel. We report how the approach has been elaborated, its process and outcome. We conclude with our evaluation from an insider's perspective.     

Unequal Regionalism: Regional Planning in China and England

This paper responds to the revival of regionalism in the past two decades by showing that such a re-emergence is unequal. Comparing the practice of regional planning in China and England, this paper has demonstrated that the party-state in China and the liberal-democratic state in England have responded differently to this revival and developed different framework for regional administration and planning. These variations have not only elaborated planners' concern about planning practice in a ‘context of difference’ from social dimension to geographical variations, but also echoed geographers' affirmation that global trends take on different characters in local setting.     

New Spatial Concepts Between Innovation and Lock-in: The Case of the Dutch Deltametropolis

It is often proclaimed that planning concepts serve an innovative function in the political process. They are praised as powerful tools that carry new insights and understandings into policy arenas. By examining the emergence and development of a new planning concept in the Dutch national spatial policy-making process, the deltametropolis concept, this paper questions this position. It argues that new spatial concepts tend to lose much of their innovative capacities when they enter the political arena and become encased in the traditional urban–rural planning discourse, thus reaffirming established planning orientations. The Dutch case of the deltametropolis illustrates that new spatial concepts may entail potential for innovation as much as for lock-in.     

SafetiPin: an innovative mobile app to collect data on women's safety in Indian cities

Women's safety is a key concern of governments and civil society today. In India, the issue has become prominent in the wake of the gang rape and murder in 2012. One of the key elements in addressing the lack of safety in cities is identifying the causes. SafetiPin, a mobile app, is one tool that has been developed to collect data on safety in cities. Building on the international methodology of safety audits, SafetiPin has transformed it into a mobile app that crowd sources data and information on insecurity in cities. Using SafetiPin, data have been collected in seven Indian cities. This article examines some of the data to understand what factors lead to lack of safety and insecurity in cities, and discusses future plans for the project.     

成才规划设计对大学生成才的意义

本文通过对高等教育大众化阶段的学生素质、成才标准、就业方式变化的分析,阐述了成才规划设计对引导大学生健康成长、促进高校学风建设的重要意义,并具体提出了成才规划的基本模式、功能和原则.     

对优化“优势农产品区域布局规划”的探讨

入世以后，各地制定了优势农产品的区域布局规划，但普遍存在着以追求规模扩大和产量提高为主要目标、将本地区作为一个封闭系统来看待、对农产品的市场行情缺乏充分的研究和科学的预测、对规划发展的农产品项目优势缺乏精确界定以及缺乏具体的实施办法等问题。需要采取提高规划本身的质量水平、确立合适的目标和具体的措施和方案、加强对农户的指导、每年对规划进行评估和调整等措施，以达到更好的效果。     

Impact of having a high-risk pregnancy on future postpartum contraceptive method choice

BackgroundTo compare the knowledge and preference of preconceptional contraception to future postpartum contraceptive method choice in high-risk pregnancies.Research questionDoes a high-risk pregnancy condition affect future postpartum contraceptive method choice?MethodWomen hospitalised at the High Risk Pregnancy unit of a tertiary research and training hospital were asked to complete a self-reported questionnaire that included demographic characteristics, presence of unintended pregnancy, contraceptive method of choice before the current pregnancy, plans for contraceptive use following delivery and requests for any contraceptive counselling in the postpartum period.FindingsA total of 655 pregnant women were recruited. The mean age, gravidity and parity of the women were 27.48 ± 6.25 years, 2.81 ± 2.15 and 1.40 ± 1.77, respectively. High-risk pregnancy indications included 207 (31.6%) maternal, 396 (60.5%) foetal and 52 (7.9%) uterine factors. All postpartum contraceptive choices except for combined oral contraceptives (COCs) usage were significantly different from preconceptional contraceptive preferences (p < 0.001). High-risk pregnancy indications, future child bearing, ideal number of children, income and education levels were the most important factors influencing postpartum contraceptive choices. While the leading contraceptive method in the postpartum period was long-acting reversible contraceptive methods (non-hormonal copper intrauterine device Cu-IUD, the levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system (LNG-IUS) (40%), the least preferred method was COCs use (5.2%) and preference of COCs use showed no difference between the preconceptional and postpartum periods (p = 0.202). Overall 73.7% of the women wanted to receive contraceptive counselling before their discharge.ConclusionA high-risk pregnancy condition may change the opinion and preference of contraceptive use, and also seems to affect the awareness of family planning methods.     

高校辅导员职业发展阶段与职业规划有效性研究

对我国高校辅导员职业生涯规划影响因素和职业发展阶段进行了质性研究。采用扎根理论,通过半结构化深度访谈的调查方法,在全国辅导员骨干培训班采访了37名高校辅导员,根据他们对影响自身职业生涯规划的内容如本职工作特征、职业身份、工作模式以及工作中所能获取的资源和遇到的阻碍等,将影响因素归纳为四个主要方面,即主观因素、客观因素、决策方法以及职业发展阶段,构建了高校辅导员职业生涯规划的影响因素模型;并进一步将辅导员职业发展分为探索阶段,形成阶段,维护阶段和专业化阶段四个阶段,在此基础上探讨了职业发展阶段与职业生涯规划有效性的关系,最终形成了高校辅导员职业生涯发展路径突破的建议。