Archive for August, 2011
The Professional Urban and Regional Planner
INTRODUCTION
Most countries particularly the developing ones like Nigeria are faced with the enormous challenges of urban planning problems which in turn affects the economic development. Urban growth for instance has a number of impacts on the environment and human well-being. Apart from the few impacts, almost all major cities of the country are increasingly plagued by environmental problems. In other words, there is a great threat to health and safety in most Nigerian cities (Egunjobi, 2000 and Kessides, 2006) courtesy of unguided urbanization and ineffective planning (Mabogunje, 2001; Ogunsanya, 2002 and Egunjobi, 2000). There are several schools of thoughts and insights into the causal factors, and government’s attempts tame towards alleviating the situation. One of such factors is overlapping of professional practices that greatly affect the functionality of our environment and the society at large. For Instance, in Nigeria, overlapping of professional practice per-se is not the only factor affecting effective functionality of the society.
The paper argued that, much as professional overlaps might be an issue in most developing countries, lack of adequate focus on planning as a profession, and the actions of quacks have contributed significantly to the worsening urban problems. Specifically, this paper espouses on professionalism, and highlights the responsibilities of planning to different segments of the society as it emphasises the need for proficiency among planners through continuous training and re-training programmes, such as seminars, workshops and refreshers courses.It suffices to ask the question as to who is a professional Urban and Regional Planner? What are their responsibilities to sustainable livelihoods and development of a nation? The underlying motivations of this paper relates to the dynamic nature of professionalism as a concept, and the essence of competent practitioners in our society. This is more pertinent as technological revolution is impacting on diverse facets of human endeavour. In addition, geographical zoning has tended to vary the practice of Urban and Regional Planning from nation to nation.
Tags: competent practitioners, enormous challenges, nigerian cities, regional planner, sustainable livelihoods
Of low-carbon economy and new energy entangled relations – a low-carbon economy, new energy, low-carbon technologies – Electrical industry
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Low carbon economy is the international background dictates, in China, meaning a low carbon economy and building a resource saving and environment-friendly society and the new path of industrialization and other content are similar. Low-carbon economy should be based on “low power”, “clean”, “low emissions” as an integrated feature of the new economy, low pollution produced, emissions and low Energy Consumption and low greenhouse gas emissions are both essential components. We are often easy to think of low carbon and renewable energy together, but we need to be clear, the development of low carbon economy is not equal to that of the development of new energy, sometimes there is not energy reduction, low carbon and high pollution. For example, solar energy is a low-carbon, but the solar panels produced by the high pollution is undeniable low-greenhouse-gas emissions and low pollution emissions are sometimes contradictory, we can not order a simple, low-carbon and low carbon, not at a loss.
Held in Copenhagen last year, the World Climate Conference, Premier Wen Jiabao to Prime Minister as a responsible big country, a solemn commitment to the world by 2020 carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP than in 2005, down from 40% to 45%. This commitment means that China has now entered a low-carbon age. Copenhagen’s meeting ended, the game was far from over, the next 10 years, China will embark on the road the whole low-carbon transition. China must proceed from the actual development of low-carbon economy, for example, energy efficiency, carbon-based fossil fuels, developing renewable energy sources; to develop national low-carbon economic development strategy, first experimental demonstration; ability of independent innovation, develop low-carbon technologies, low-carbon products; active use of policy instruments to promote low-carbon system innovation and legal system, these are a great improvement and development of space, take great efforts to do a good job.
Tags: carbon dioxide emissions, economic development strategy, greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy sources, world climate conference