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In this article we visit a car junkyard in the small Arnhem Land outstation of Nalawan in the top end of Australia’s Northern Territory. Using both a mobilities paradigm and recent theorizing of waste from the global south, we will argue through our ethnographic observations that the wrecked cars become mobile, reassembled, and reconceptualized in a range of surprising ways. Though now immobile, the stories they encapsulate continue to circulate and reverberate with the complexities and tensions of Indigenous mobilities.

Markets, whose creation needs heavy investment, are seen as centres for economic and financial transactions. To this effect, they play an important role in the survival of city dwellers as well as the embellishment of the city. In 2006, Nsam market was created in the Nsam quarter Yaounde with little financial concentration. Over the years, this market has outlived its usefulness to the extent that its present functioning is an eyesore. Amongst the causes to this are the facts that, the market was created following no predefined standards, the city has grown and the market can no longer handle the dependent population. From field observations, this study aimed at proposing a complete renovated plan for the Nsam market in Yaounde, Cameroon. The study relied on secondary and primary sources of data collected and treated following some pre-set standards. These data enabled an analysis of the diagnosis of the situation prevailing there where it led to the conclusion of a complete renovation of the market. This renovated market is expected to better the working conditions of traders, create more jobs which will boost revenue collection and embellishment of the city amongst others.

Once hailed a triumph of mechanical ingenuity and the largest and handsomest depot in the world, Grand Central Station was showing its age by the beginning of the 20th century, despite numerous improvements and renovations. Once at the northern edge of New York City, as the metropolis grew around it, the great rail yard had become an eyesore. The burgeoning steam-driven rail traffic in the tunnels to the north belched smoke, cinders, and steam that were not only increasingly offensive but also deadly.

Kakilima, i.e., generic informal urban economy, has been both an urban problem and a blessing in Indonesia. They are omnipresent and an 'eyesore'. They are part of the structuration process of the society in which they are produced and reproduced including its economy. The research is to disclose economic behaviour and activities in spatial terms. The findings suggest that they are convoluted both in kinds and may embed within the formal one.

Graffiti on buildings and bridges are oftentimes an eyesore. Those on road symbol signs can even pose safety risks to motorists. Not only is graffiti cleaning costly, it also disrupts normal traffic. Graffiti is a widespread problem in many cities in the U.S. This paper proposes a machine learning approach to unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) graffiti detection and removal. Our solution builds on the smart city framework. The proposed solution is expected to lower graffiti cleaning cost and minimize impact on city traffic.

Decaying boats are a common sight in the coastal zone and yet the practice of abandonment appears to be exempt from any clear or enforceable regulation. In the present study we surveyed two estuaries in eastern England hosting an abundance and variety of abandoned vessels. An inventory of items and materials associated with or adjacent to each boat was recorded in order to gain an insight into the hazards and pollution risks related to abandonment. Materials most commonly observed were paints, plastics, timber,expanded-extruded polystyrene and masonry, while items logged included ropes, tyres, canisters, electronic equipment and a variety of metal objects that were either fixed to or contained by the boats. As well as representing an eyesore and inhibiting access to the shore, decaying boats are a hazard to human health and safety and are a source of pollution (e.g. plastics, heavy metals, oil-related hydrocarbons) to local sediment and interstitial waters. Recommendations to deal with the problem of boat abandonment include compulsory boat registration, making boaters aware of (and providing incentives for) safe disposal, and providing authorities and landowners with clear information on existing or new agencies and legislation.

Forty years ago, I contributed my first independent article to Volume 1 ofByzantine and Modern Greek Studies, ‘The lament of the Virgin in Byzantine literature and modern Greek folksong’. For this fortieth anniversary issue, dedicated to A. A. M. Bryer, I have, as in the closing words of Theodore Prodromos’ seventh letter to Aristenos (Πεϱὶ Γλώττης), nothing to offer but μικϱαῖς ἀντιδεξιοῦσα σταγόσι, καὶ ταύταις θολεϱαῖς (‘meagre and murky drops’),1further sullied with speculation on possible meanings of a single rare word:skordapsos. Does it mean ‘gut-knot’ or ‘eyesore’? Is it a vulgar form ofchordapsos, an affliction of the intestines (attested in early medical texts)? Or is it a later vernacular term for ‘eye disease’, for which garlic (skordo) was, and remains, a known curative? And does it matter?

Urban blight is not only an eyesore for city residents, but also a threat to health, psychological well-being, and safety. It not only represents substantial economic decline, but also spreads through urban space. As well as the loss of personal property value, urban blight also harms public interests in the public domain. This study finds that danger and age are the two main factors of urban blight. Ignoring these two factors causes housing prices to fall. The decline in population due to long-term economic stagnation and the exodus of residents and industries, coupled with the long-term decline in income and spending on maintenance of old houses, has led to major visual and physical economic blight. This investigation adopts the hedonic model to analyze the correspondence of house prices with urban blight, based on real estate prices and related township variables announced by the government in Taiwan in 2017, and applies the spatial regression model to investigate the direct and indirect effects of real estate prices. The following conclusions can be drawn from the analytical results. 1. The spatial lag model finds that urban blight has a spatial spillover effect. 2. The government must not disregard the blight, due to its detrimental effect on housing prices and spatial diffusion effect. 3. The factors that affect the blight are age of residents, age of buildings, poverty, and danger.

Dumping of solid waste on landfills is one of the waste disposal options, mostly utilized in Ghana. Inappropriate siting of landfills poses risk and danger to the environment, residents and the economy. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of Ghana and other international organizations have formulated guidelines for the selection of landfill site, albeit, it is hardly followed because of the copious requirements. Significant numbers of existing landfill sites in Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) are eyesore. The factors used for appropriate landfill siting in this research are elevation of the site, slope, proximity to urban areas, peri-urban areas, towns, major roads, minor roads, lakes, lagoons, rivers, railway, forest reserve, airport and military bases, soil-type and rainfall pattern. With the help of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) tools, an appropriate landfill site was identified in the Adenta Municipality in GAMA.

"This paper looks at the development of a community based amenity through the application of adaptive design thinking, cleverness in material reuse, and the tactical deployment of heterodoxic assembly methods as significant facets of a well-comprised architectural education. Strategies for how one may engage and enable a community to participate in the design and construction process, through means other than unskilled voluntary labor or simply making a donation, were uncovered and refined through this undertaking. The SuperUse Pavilion at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum, located in northeaster Mississippi in the small city of Starkville, Figure 1 outlines the location and context for the project’s development."

On the western edge of the former brown coal mines in Søby, an area in central Jutlandin Denmark that is now protected as a natural and cultural heritage site, a public eyesore hides behind dirt mounds and fences: the waste disposal and recycling facility known as AFLD Fasterholt. Established in the 1970s, when prevailing perceptions were that the entire mining area was a polluted wasteland, the AFLD Fasterholt waste and recycling plant has since changed in response to new EU waste management regulations, as well as the unexpected proliferation of non-human life in the area. Based on field research at this site—an Anthropocene landscape in the heartland of an EU-configured welfare state — this article is a contribution to the multispecies ethnography and political ecology of wastelands. We argue that “waste” is a co-species, biopolitical happening — a complex symbolic, political, biological, and technological history. We combine ethnographic fieldwork, social history, wildlife observation, and spatial analysis to follow what we call “undomestication,” the reconfiguration of human projects by more-than-human forms of life into novel assemblies of species, politics, resources, and technologies. Waste landscapes, this article argues, are the result of unheralded multispecies collaboration that can be traced empirically by attending ethnographically to multispecies forms of “gain-making,” the ways in which humans and other species leverage difference to find economic and ecological opportunity.

Electric scooters are a nightmare: they clog up pavements and are an ungainly eyesore. But we still need them, says Donna Lu

Brownfield sites are a common eyesore on the edges of many cities; the abandoned, decaying hulks of industrial or commercial structures sit rusting and forgotten while they leach harmful chemicals such as asbestos, solvents or heavy metals into the soil. Some brownfields lie virtually untouched for years because it is often cheaper to expand cities into virgin territory than to demolish large structures or engage in the costly clean‐up of contaminants. But in many urban areas in developed nations, especially in Europe, land has become increasingly scarce around cities and brownfields have become more attractive economically for new development. > Today, governments increasingly distinguish brownfield sites on the basis of their conservation value. But though city planners have been idle, Mother Nature has not. While brownfield sites were once widely regarded as being of no ecological value and fit only for redevelopment, that view has been changing over the past few years, as scientists have discovered that these abandoned sites harbour rich and sophisticated ecosystems that often provide space for rare or threatened species (Figs 1 and 2). Today, governments increasingly distinguish brownfield sites on the basis of their conservation value. In the UK, for example, the government has added some brownfields—described as ‘open mosaic habitats on previously developed land’—to its list of priority sites listed in its Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 (NERC Act). This list has to be taken into account in planning for redevelopment. At the same time, molecular and ‘omics’ technologies are being used to further analyse and categorise the ecological value of brownfields and how they could be better exploited for conservation measures. Figure 1. An ecological wasteland Planting maize in furrows in spring in El Puerto de Santa Maria in Cadiz, Spain. © Blanchi Costela / Getty Images. Figure 2. Nature is slowly reclaiming a brownfield Blast furnaces at the former ironworks in Volklingen, Germany. The …

To the government, the squatter settlement on the ex-military site in Treasure Hill was an eyesore that should be removed to make way for a park. To the social activists, including academics and students, the spatial organization and the consequent social cohesion found in the settlement were valuable knowledge on use values of the evolving lived space. Mastering this knowledge and capitalizing on the wider socio-political opportunity of the new mayor's emphasis on cultural development, the social activists have succeeded in developing a co-living discourse, arguing for the merits of having artists-in-residence, welfare housing tenants and youth hostel sojourners to co-develop a sustainable, creative learning environment in the historic architecture of the squatter huts. In order to materialize this ideal, they even became the contractual party in implementing the project. The case nevertheless highlights the fragility of organic lived space. While the co-living concept allowed residents the option to sta...

This article examines the events leading up to, surrounding, and following UNESCO’s controversial removal of Germany’s Dresden Elbe Valley from the World Heritage List in 2009. At the heart of the controversy lay the construction of a new four-lane bridge, the Waldschlößchen Bridge, that would cut through scenic meadows, destroying long-protected vistas and changing the city’s cultural landscape. Although supported by German court decisions and local public opinion polls, the bridge has been denounced by many as an eyesore and an affront to the ideals of World Heritage. Yet despite the bridge, Dresden supposedly maintains World Heritage worthiness, even if it no longer enjoys that title. The author attempts to make sense of these contradictions in order to discover lessons applicable to the World Heritage program as a whole.

Using a mixed methods design, data from Uganda’s capital city and 21 other major towns, we examine the experience of children in street situations and their encounters with police officers. This happens when these children are in conflict with the law or when the police treat them as an eyesore in the community. Whereas the police aim at enforcing the law, sometimes they orchestrate violence against the children instead of protecting them. The article challenges law enforcement agencies and other duty bearers to find creative approaches to dealing with children and ensure their protection while at the same time enforcing the requisite national security laws.

Films based on India often end up in the Dharavi slums, a suburb in the shadow city of Mumbai. Sprawling across 1.75 km2 in the heart of Mumbai, Dharavi is a stark contrast to surging urban society, reminding the world about the dark side of the metropolis. The largest and most populous democracy in the world, India is often symbolized by the wide-angle panoramic shots of Dharavi and the close-up frames of huddled huts and shabby starving faces of Dharavi residents. As a visually iconographic medium, its portrayal of spectacle and escapism depicts an image bank that is far removed from the daily struggle of most moviegoers. A significant feature of Bollywood’s imagery is the focus on exotic locations that often encompass foreign destinations such as Mauritius, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, New Zealand, Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, and Switzerland. However, when these films do consider the misery, agony and violence of Indian society, the lens is always upon the suburbs. Dharavi formed the thematic backdrop of many films at different times, including Deewar (1975), Bombay (1998), Parinda (1989), Footpath (2003), Black Friday (2004), the Sarkar series (2005–2008) and Traffic Signal (2007). The trend had been fairly shifted to International or foreign productions on India, for instance, Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008). However, a significant difference can be seen in the way Dharavi has been used as a backdrop in Indian productions and foreign collaborations. The portrayals of this suburb in foreign productions become problematic, or at least induce curiosity when they consider Dharavi as a landscape rather than a social system, thereby treating it as an embarrassing eyesore in the financial hub of India. These films, however, fail to acknowledge that these slums are a crucial site for new forms of social identity and mobility in a highly urbanized society.

Landfills are the common method of waste disposal. A closed landfill site can be an eyesore land and cause environmental hazardous impacts on surrounding areas. A sustainable solution for redevelopment of a closed landfill site, returns the land to an attractive and beneficial after-use. This study aim to identify potential sustainable solutions and factors in the redevelopment of closed landfill sites. The paper critically reviews the literature regarding vital understanding of the redevelopment process. The study also analyzed the successful landfill redevelopment projects in a wide range of time and locations to suggest the best end-use option. Additionally, the study offers an approach for integrating the social, economic and environmental benefits through the sustainable redevelopment solution contributing to the universal sustainable development and green built environment.

Vacant land is a significant economic problem for many cities, but also may affect the health and safety of residents. In order for community-based solutions to vacant land to be accepted by target populations, community members should be engaged in identifying local health impacts and generating solutions. We conducted 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews with people living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city with high vacancy, about the impact of vacant land on community and individual health and safety, as well as ideas for solutions to vacant land. Participants described a neighborhood physical environment dominated by decaying abandoned homes and overgrown vacant lots which affected community well-being, physical health, and mental health. Vacant land was thought to affect community well-being by overshadowing positive aspects of the community, contributing to fractures between neighbors, attracting crime, and making residents fearful. Vacant land was described as impacting physical health through injury, the buildup of trash, and attraction of rodents, as well as mental health through anxiety and stigma. Participants had several ideas for solutions to vacant land in their community, including transformation of vacant lots into small park spaces for the elderly and playgrounds for youth, and the use of abandoned homes for subsidized housing and homeless shelters. A few participants took pride in maintaining vacant lots on their block, and others expressed interest in performing maintenance but lacked the resources to do so. Public health researchers and practitioners, and urban planners should engage local residents in the design and implementation of vacant land strategies. Furthermore, municipalities should ensure that the health and safety impact of vacant land helps drive policy decisions around vacant land.

To compensate for the untoward environmental effects of one of its projects, the Maryland Port Administration is undertaking a series of steps to improve conditions within Masonville Cove, an area of open water and uplands along the Patapsco River in Baltimore. By addressing past contamination, stabilizing shorelines, controlling erosion, improving substrate, and creating reefs and wetlands, the project is transforming Masonville Cove from a neglected eyesore to a valued urban refuge.

Vehicles fuelled by hydrogen (H2) have attracted increasing attention because of their potentially enhanced environmental profiles. Their penetration into the vehicle stock will be influenced by the spread of refuelling facilities. This study investigates local attitudes towards the proposed installation of H2 storage facilities at existing refuelling stations throughout London. Using multinomial logit analysis, we identify the determinants of attitudes. Results suggest that residents living very close to a proposed H2 facility are less likely to be opposed than residents living 200–500 m away. Opposition appears to be determined by a lack of trust in safety regulations, non-environmental attitudes, and concerns about the existing local refuelling station. The social cost to local residents of a local H2 storage facility was estimated using a method developed by Atkinson et al. [2004. ‘Amenity’ or ‘eyesore’? Negative willingness to pay for options to replace electricity transmission towers. Applied Economics Letters 11(4), 203–208], which elicits the amount of time respondents are willing to commit to oppose a new facility development. Using the leisure rate of time, the social cost is estimated at just under £14 per local opposed resident. Add to this the WTP to support opposition efforts by a local group, and the value comes to just under £25 per opposed resident.

Few people could have written this book. Perhaps even fewer would have. Gregory Hutchinson has mustered his encyclopaedic mastery of Classical literature and unleashed a magnum opus. Like all such monuments, readers will either stand transfixed, or resent an eyesore encroaching into valuable peripheral vision. Like it or lump it - notice it you must.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Chinese social and political concepts began to change, partly as a result of exposure to ideas and policies imported from Western countries. One example of this was the attitude toward beggary, a regrettable yet legitimate pursuit in late imperial times, which was now considered by states as a “problem,” a threat to social order, an antimodern eyesore, a hazard to national pride and the reputation of the Han race, and an outright illegitimate activity. This changed attitude was clearly apparent in Nanjing, the capital ofthe new Nationalist-led Republic of China, where a municipal government was established for the first time in 1927. At the beginning, municipal politicians wished to simply remove beggars from the streets, preferably into Western-style institutions, so as to protect the capital’s—and thus the nation’s—image. Several years later, when the numbers of mendicants drastically mounted as a result of disasters, adding an anxiety over the future of the national economy to the existing concern for “face,” officials began promoting vocational training as the main solution for mendicants’ problem, wishing to turn them from “useless beings” into “useful members of society.”

A frequent scenario in public decision-making is that of choosing between a number of proposed changes from the status quo. In such a case, stated preference surveys, such as the contingent valuation method, are often undertaken to assess the size of the benefits associated with each proposed change. For certain undesirable options, respondents may prefer the status quo; however, it may not be credible to directly elicit negative willingness to pay or willingness to accept to endure the change. This study, using contingent valuation, outlines an indirect means of measuring negative willingness to pay – for the problem of visual disamenity arising from alternative electricity transmission tower designs – based on the elicitation of indicators of how inconvenienced respondents would feel if a less preferred option were to replace the status quo; that is, the time and cost respondents were prepared to commit to opposing the change. The results show that taking account of negative willingness to pay matters a...

It is the purpose of this paper to study the significance of the physical setting of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily". The two main geographical settings are Jefferson Town and the Grierson's house . The researcher will show how Faulkner's treatment of the details of the house (the microcosmic geographical settings) which include the upstairs bridal chamber, the crayon portrait, the front door, and window frame leads to a better understanding of Miss Emily's motivations and actions, and gives us insight to her lonely isolated life. At a certain point, Emily's decaying smelly house is refuge from the modernised outside world to which she does not belong. Furthermore, the house is the source of Miss Emily's power. Inside the walls of the house, she is a strong woman, a killer; yet a woman falling in love. Nevertheless, Faulkner presents another horrifying image of Emily's house. It harbours death and decay. In this sense, the house is closer to dark setting we read about in Gothic Romance. On the other hand, the town is the macrocosmic setting. It is a fallen legacy as it becomes a symbol for the fall of the old South which Emily's house still harbours.

In Indonesia, especially Jakarta have a lot of garbage strewn that can be an eyesore and also cause pollution that can carry diseases. Garbage strewn can cause many things, one of her dues is bins are overflowing due to the full so it can not accommodate the waste dumped from other people. Thus, the author created a new method for waste disposal more systematic. In creating new method requires a technology to supports, then the author makes a prototype for waste volume monitoring. By using the internet of things prototype of waste volume monitoring may give notification to the sanitary agency that waste in the trash bin needs to be disposal. In this study, conducted the design and manufactured of prototype waste volume monitoring using LinkItONE board based by Arduino and an ultrasonic sensor for appliance senses. Once the prototype is completed, evaluation in order to determine whether the prototype will function properly. The result showed that the expected function of a prototype waste volume monitoring can work well.

Presents findings from a case study looking at African medicine vendors in Durban, South Africa. Compares the culturally repressive apartheid period with the post‐apartheid explosion of self‐realization of the African population. Shows that street vending is still seen as an eyesore and a problem but still plays an important role in the post‐apartheid era as a form of resistance to simplistic African policies.

“I'm lost,” he sighed to himself. Then, just ahead he noticed the little postal truck idling under a timeless elm. A woman in a blue toboggan—all bundled up against the cold—hustled back to her truck. She'd just made a delivery. Pulling alongside, he rolled down the passenger's window. “Ma'am,” he said, getting her attention. “Can you tell me how to get to Gratitude Street?” She brightened. “Sure. You got a pen?” When he was ready, she spoke, pointing ahead. “So, at the end of this street, go left. That's Family. You'll know Family because every house is wildly different. You'd swear each one had a different Builder. But actually, the same Builder designed every house. It looks like a mess: there's a treehouse, an igloo, a tent, and a Victorian. Every house and every person on Family look so different they seem out of place. But here's the amazing surprise: despite all the differences, every house has some small elements exactly—and I mean exactly—the same as all the others. “Here's how they discovered it,” she said, warming up. “A long time ago, some angry owners—the homeowners association—drew up rules to make the houses look more alike. Some wanted the igloo removed. Move the teepee, said others. A group felt the treehouse was a terrible eyesore. Then, one day the igloo's heater just died. The Inuit went door to door: Do you have a part that looks like this? she asked. Before you know it, everyone on the street was in an uproar! Everyone's house had exactly the same heater! Exactly! House, teepee, igloo, tent: Whatever your house, it had that exact same heater. As they investigated their homes, they noticed other things were also exact copies. They realized that even with their differences, many things were the same. Nowadays, tourist vans go up and down Family, telling how two houses can be very different but in some ways are still just like each other. The Igloo's Heater is their favorite story. “It's a remarkable place,” she said, wistfully. She refocused. “Sorry, I do get off track. Back to your directions. Go 10 blocks on Family and then turn left onto Can't Do It Alone. Pay attention here or you'll get stuck. Whatever the time of day, people are doing things for others. Somebody's always on a ladder washing a neighbor's windows, or baking a shut-in a loaf of bread or chopping them firewood. Everyone is always helping somebody. Funniest thing, too. Once you're on Can't Do It Alone, you may end up staying! “Take Can't Do It Alone 1 mile. You turn right onto Unexpected just after the railroad tracks. Now, Unexpected seems kind of scary. Some houses are terribly beat up. You'll see folks just hanging out, lurking. Shady characters, you'd think. Lock your doors and windows, be respectful, and have courage. But, the thing about Unexpected is that just when you think the folks around there are all one thing, they aren't! “One time, a fella's car broke down on Unexpected in the worst place possible. He saw a man walking toward him. The man wore a big, long coat, the hood pulled up over his head. The traveler's heart started racing. The figure kept coming, determined. The stranded fella was filled with dread. Then, an insistent knock on his window. Then another, unrelenting. Finally, summoning all his courage, he barely cracked his window, hoping this crazy person couldn't get in.” The postal lady paused dramatically. “The hood came off the top of a head—just a little—revealing a grizzled Old Man. He spoke in a gruff but reassuring voice, ‘Stay out here any longer and you're going to catch your death of cold. Come on in, let's get you warmed up and on your way.’” Now, remember that. When you cross the tracks, Unexpected is just beyond. Unexpected can be scary: unfamiliar and unknown things usually are. But, trust me, the folks and experiences on Unexpected are often just what you need, just when you need it.” “After Unexpected, go about 13 blocks. Life is on your right. Turn there. Now, sometimes you think this Life ain't going to ever end. So far, this trip's had lots of surprises: so many twists and turns you feel utterly lost. Now, though, it seems every house is exactly the same. Same trees. Same hedges. Same roofs. You think, ‘Get me out of here! I don't want this. It's the same thing all the time.’ Will I ever get where I'm going? you wonder. I'm bored. You gotta look harder when you think like that. Trust me, I know. There are lots of little differences all along the way, small reminders to look and listen. Seriously. Keep your eyes open. Look real hard. Don't focus on the sameness. Anticipate surprise. Train your eyes to spot details you usually ignore. Believe me, that's the only way to get through Life. Don't give up, either. As soon as you think, That's it. I'm done. I can't take it anymore, you come up to a big Hill. It's really tough to get up that Hill. Just keep going. Eventually, at the very top, there's a Park. “When you get to the Park, take a break. Look around. It's the highest point in this here part of the world. It's so high, it's hard to catch your breath. But, let your senses steep in the beauty of your surroundings. The air is clear and crisp. The only sounds are birds, leaves rustling, and tree branches soothing one another. Soak it in! Trust me, every day after that, you're going to try to remember just how it felt. So, take your time. Make a picture in your mind. “Oh,” she paused. “When you make it up the Hill, it's tradition to leave a little reminder you were there. Maybe it's a special rock in a hidden place. Or, a paper tucked into a tree's hollow. Or, an initial in the dirt or sand. If you have time, do something like that, okay? From there on, you coast gently downhill until you intersect with the most beautiful spot there ever was. If you've followed my directions, you can't miss it. Right there is Gratitude.” With that, she bid farewell. “More holiday deliveries,” she said. What happened to the Lost Man who asked for directions? No one's quite certain. Once you've started following these directions, it's for sure you'll end up at Gratitude. But, it's unknown how many stops you'll make along the way.

Highway structures are public works facilities that are inherently accessible, to a certain degree, to the general public at all hours of the day and every day of the year. As a result, some highway structures are susceptible to graffiti. Graffiti on highway structures is a significant problem throughout the United States. Not only is graffiti an eyesore to the traveling public, it presents a hazard to the perpetrator and a liability exposure for transportation agencies because highway structures span high elevations and are in close proximity to motor vehicle traffic. The most common methods for combating graffiti include washing the surface of the structure with high-pressure water sprays, repainting the surface, and sandblasting. Although each of these methods can, in most cases, effectively remove the graffiti, the solution is often temporary; more graffiti is likely to appear in the future at the same site. Further, these measures can be quite costly, especially if they have to be repeated on numerous occasions to remove recurring graffiti. Results of a comprehensive survey of transportation agencies are presented and analyzed. The survey was designed to assess the nature and extent of the graffiti problem as well as to identify some solutions to the problem and identify various preventive as well as removal techniques. The study focuses on current graffiti prevention and removal policies and various other graffiti-removal techniques that are undertaken by different state departments of transportation to mitigate graffiti problems in their states.

States that buildings may become unoccupied for a variety of reasons, and that some will be physically or functionally obsolete and may be beyond economic repair or adaptation. Explains that the best option in such cases will generally be complete or partial demolition and the redevelopment of the site. Shows that, for the vast majority of unoccupied premises, however, the best solution will be reuse, but until such time as a suitable use and occupier for the building can be found, the property must be properly managed. Presents a sensible approach to the inspection and evaluation of empty properties in order to formulate and implement an action plan to protect and maintain them in an appropriate condition suitable for future reoccupation. Concludes that without proper management, unoccupied buildings will deteriorate and become the target for theft, vandalism and arson. Apart from creating a potential eyesore, this will have liability implications for the building owner and wider implications for the environment.

The Bavarian town of Bamberg had a complex of old mills which had become an eyesore to its citizens. In the late 1970s, work was undertaken to rehabilitate the structures. The end result has been a successful case of adaptive reuse. This is not just another case of adaptive reuse to the extent that it has been innovative. This case is examined in the context of a theory of urban renewal which had been popular and prevalent during the period when Bamberg's most distinctive and distinguished section, Die Altstadt (Oldtown), had to face change.

Nowhere else in Pakistan is the urban rot more pronounced than in the waste-littered streets. Apart from being an eyesore, ill-managed solid waste in Pakistan is one of the primary causes of health and environmental problems, which costs the state and individual households hundreds of millions of rupees in healthcare costs and lost productivity. This paper focuses on the determinants of household solid waste generation in Rawalpindi Cantonment. Relying on a survey of economically-differentiated 118 households in six urban neighbourhoods, this paper has found substantial differences in household waste generation rates across various income groups. As expected, high-income neighbourhood residents generated more waste than their mid- and low-income counterparts. The total waste generated by household increased with household size. However, the waste per capita declined with the increase in the household size. The state of solid waste collection was found to be poor across all income strata. The two low-income and one mid-income neighbourhood did not have any municipal waste collection service. Fewer than 50% of the households in the high-income neighbourhood reported access to municipal solid waste collection service. The rest self-disposed household solid waste mostly in empty lots in the neighbourhood. More than 65% of the households sold recyclables to waste collecting street hawkers, while another 25% handed recyclables to domestic workers, who in turn sold recyclables in the market.

Building and construction is an ongoing process in urban landscapes given the available technology, obsolescence in buildings and the need to improve on the urban scenery. This activity is however accompanied by the generation of huge amounts of degradable and non-degradable wastes which if not well managed can constitute an eyesore and a potent danger to the urban population. Construction waste can also be of immense economic benefits to the population and the construction industry because it can be salvaged, recycled and reused. A random sampling of wastes generated at selected construction sites for ten neighbourhoods (two within the Central Business District (CBD) and eight at the periphery) in Bamenda town indicate that construction waste represents large amounts of material such as zinc, wood, iron rods, broken tiles, sand and plastic which is often illegally dumped by roadsides, river banks and building sites. Poor waste disposal/handling methods cause health and environmental problems such as flooding, and pollution in the municipality. While, such waste generate income and provide cheap equipment/material to the population and construction industry through informal recycling and reuse for other purposes, there is need for improved management as part of a growing movement toward sustainable city development due to increasing population and urbanization.

Ecology can be a daunting subject. Think of all the species in an ecosystem, of all the individuals in each species and of all the interactions among these organisms, not to mention the influences of the abiotic environment. Students like ecology because it involves organisms they can see and outdoor experiences they enjoy, but sometimes the technicalities of ecology can be overwhelming. When this happens, it's time to talk about a dead tree. This might not seem like a very attractive topic. "Dead" doesn't sound very upbeat, but in this column I'll try to convince you otherwise. I've been giving dead trees some thought lately, and I've come to the conclusion that they are an underappreciated resource, both in nature and in the classroom. Yes, a dead tree can be a nuisance or worse if it falls to the ground carrying electric power lines with it, or crashes into the side of a house. I live in an older neighborhood where many of the trees were planted well over 50 years ago and have seen better days. Owners of tree removal services make a fortune disposing of the hulking carcasses of once-flourishing but now moribund trees. Around here, a dead tree is a menace and an eyesore, something to get rid of, often at great expense; it is little more than a source of firewood, and even that doesn't mean much if you don't have a fireplace. I never really gave dead trees much thought until I read George Vukelich's (1987) North Country Notebook. Vukelich writes essays on nature for a number of Wisconsin publications, and this is a collection of his work. His style is casual, and he tells you as much about the people he travels with on fishing expeditions and canoeing trips as he does about the natural world. I found his predilection for storytelling annoying at times, but I must admit that his essays keep coming back to me and that a lot of what he wrote sticks in my mind. I particularly remember his essays on North Country naturalists of the past. Aldo Leopold is the best known of these men, and Vukelich writes of visiting the property Leopold wrote about in A Sand County Almanac (1949). Leopold's shack there has been preserved by his daughter and is surrounded by the wild land he loved. In another essay, Vukelich again discusses Leopold, and this is where the dead trees come up. In "The Secret of Diseased Trees," Vukelich writes of walking in the woods in winter and seeing

Graffiti are abundant in most urban neighborhoods and are considered a nuisance and an eyesore. Yet, law enforcement agencies have found them to be useful for understanding gang activities, and uncovering the extent of a gang's territory in large metropolitan areas. The current method for matching and retrieving graffiti is based on a manual database search that is not only inaccurate but also time consuming. We present a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system for automatic matching and retrieval of graffiti images. Our system represents each graffiti image by a bag of SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) features. The similarity between a query image and a graffiti image in the database is computed based on the number of matched SIFT features between the two images under certain geometric constraints. Experimental results on two graffiti databases with thousands of graffiti images show encouraging results.

Some years ago Rem Koolhaas, the enfant terrible of architecture, proposed a hair-raising project: to take an entire district of Paris, the industrial area behind the Grand Arche de la Defense that had become an eyesore and a postmodern ruin of sorts, and demolish every building that was more than 25 years old. The process was to be repeated every five years, until the entire site had been—in Koolhaas’s words—“laundered,” “liberated,” and made available to an urban planner willing to conceive of new uses for the thousands of meters of empty space (1090–1096).

A shopping mall, new office towers, a convention center, an atrium hotel, a restored historic neighborhood. These are the civic agenda for downtown development in the last third of the twentieth century, a trophy collection that mayors want. Add a domed stadium, aquarium, or cleaned-up waterfront to suit the circumstances, and you have the essential equipment for a first-class American city. The showpieces on this list are useful as well as trendy. They help a city keep up with its competitors while also meeting some local need such as getting rid of an eyesore, saving a landmark, or creating a civic symbol. Although the projects rarely result from systematic forethought, they often fit together surprisingly well. Most serve a common function: restoring downtown as a center of economic activity. Baltimore illustrates the way a retail center links into a chain of projects spanning the decades. Its new downtown became an instant success with the opening of the Harborplace shops in 1980, but that success was 30 years in the making. Shoreline improvements around the Inner Harbor a new bulkhead, a landfill, marina, piers, public parks, and promenades date from a bond issue voted in 1948. Other projects that remade the core of Baltimore in stages include the 33-acre Charles Center office complex built in the 1960s; the Maryland Science Center, World Trade Center, and Convention Center in the 1970s; and the National Aquarium and Hyatt Regency Hotel that opened within a year after Harborplace. This was a costly series of projects, with the public sector bill along totalling more than $200 million. And although each has its special history, they feed off each other. The downtown agenda was more than a grab-bag of pet projects because of the steady interest of elected officials and business executives in strengthening the downtown economy. Business coalitions especially had a large stake in revitalizing the city center, and their support was unusually crucial for launching any large project. In deciding which projects to push, they usually threw their weight behind those that served an economic development purpose. The dozens of downtown retail centers built after 1970 were part of this total agenda, adding a fresh acrobatic act to a three-ring circus in the making. They thrilled the crowds, but their long-run impact at the box office is hard to separate from the rest of the show.

Today's familiar cry of "Not in my backyard!" is not new to property owners. In 1915 the familiar cry was raised by a number of homeowners and building associations as they fought to prevent a developer from constructing rowhomes in northwest Baltimore. On May 12, 1915, an opportunity for building developers arose to challenge the limits of acceptable building restrictions in Baltimore with the filing of a permit to build in a restricted area. In a time when cottage style homes were in vogue and suburbanization was the high style, the residents of Forest Park, Baltimore saw the filing of this permit to build a group of rowhomes in their neighborhood as an invasion, an eyesore, and the antithesis of everything they had striven for as a community. For these residents, the sanctity of their quiet suburban cottage community was about to be destroyed solely to meet a growing need for housing. The residents feared the urbanization of their quiet community. The residents of Forest Park were able to breathe a temporary sigh of relief when on May 14, 1915, Mr. Clarence Stubbs, Inspector of Buildings, rejected the application for the permit to build. However, this was only a stay of execution for their cottage community. In less than one year, the idea that a community could shape itself through building type restrictions would disappear. The rationale behind the disagreement between the city with the residents of Forest Park and the Maryland Realty Co. may have been simply due to an overwhelming interest in preserving the continuity of the community and retaining the suburban quality of the area. However, a discriminatory intention may have underpinned the arguments of the residents and the city in favor of preserving the ordinance barring rowhomes in Forest Park. Byrne was not a case about discrimination, but rather, a case of perceived societal improvement through the restriction of the use of land using aesthetics as the key limiting factor. Byrne was about the tension between the owner's property rights and the power of the city to control development. At its most basic, Byrne was a case of dollars and cents, the value of the property to the residents of the quiet suburban community weighed against that individual right of the developer to do whatever he wished with his property.

The achievement of technologically efficient solutions for energy generation, distribution and usage represents a crucial need of modern society, both for environmental and economic reasons. An important role in tackling future energy challenges is played on one hand by the replacement of the electrical energy production from conventional fossil based (coal, natural gas, and oil) sources to renewable energy sources (among which wind power still plays a key role) and on the other hand by the usage of highly efficient and reliable power electronic converters to optimize production, distribution and final use systems. Furthermore, the process of energy market deregulation has nowadays opened new perspectives based on a distributed green energy generation. In the modern world energy landscape, wind power has indubitably become an economically attractive option for commercial electricity generation and can count installations in more than 70 countries all over the world. But if large wind farms have become a common sight in many locations worldwide and public attitudes towards the visual impact of wind turbines are changing, the penetration of small-scale wind generators has been characterized by a much slower development. Besides technical factors, their acceptance and integration in the urban landscape has not at all reached a full level of maturity. As observed by A. Ross [1], “satellite dishes on the sides of houses were once viewed as an eyesore. Now, they are so common we hardly notice them. Will micro wind turbines be viewed in the same way?”. It is worth nothing that in the common practice there is not a clear definition neither of what is classifiable as small scale wind energy, nor of the concept of micro wind turbine. As an example, RenewableUK (formerly named British Wind Energy Association – BWEA), the UK's leading renewable energy business organization, uses the term “micro wind” to describe a wind turbine whose size is under 1.5 kW (with a total height between 10 and 18 meters), the term “small wind” to refer to wind turbines whose size is between 1.5 and 15 kW (with a total height between 12 and 25 meters), and the term “small-medium wind” to refer to wind turbines whose size is between 15 and 100 kW (with a total height between 15 and 50 meters). The standards 61400 of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) define

Here is a new book, one in the Practical Astronomy series edited by Patrick Moore. It is a must for anyone contemplating building a domestic or small research observatory and will offer rewarding insights to any reader interested in astronomy. I found this book delightful and hard to put down. The secret of its success is firstly the number and variety of contributions - 25 in all from across the globe - but also the personal style of the writing, which gives insight into both astronomical and human problems to be solved when wanting to construct a home for your telescope. Chris Plicht and his wife were so taken with the idea of a dome of their own after a honeymoon visit to Mount Palomar that Chris decided to first build his own house in a suitable location and then add the observatory afterwards. Alan Heath's simple rotating observatory in Reading needed to avoid being an eyesore for his neighbours and so it stands as a garden shed which mysteriously rotates at night. And if you want ideas for building an observatory on a sloping hillside Lawrence and Linda Lopez have cracked this one for you. I built my first and only observatory in a garden in Hounslow in 1979. It had a lift-off roof which literally did just that one night in a strong wind, to be found later in three pieces in a neighbour's garden. Some of the authors in this book have had similar experiences and offer solutions to all the design problems associated with such a venture, from nesting birds and winter winds to supporting wheels for the rotating or sliding roof. Many of the articles include line drawings showing specific design features and there are plenty of photographs of interiors and exteriors of working domestic and research observatories. There will be a design here for you, and if not a complete design then enough parts of designs for you to be able to create something to suit your particular needs. What this book is not is a complete guide to how to build one particular observatory. Whilst different locations and instruments require different designs, I think the book would have been improved if a synthesis chapter had been produced which offered a summary of the major design considerations and solutions. I would like to know who in the UK supplies fibreglass domes and if there are any suppliers of sturdy steel pillars for a permanent telescope mounting. It would also have been helpful to be able to contact the contributors or even visit their observatory to take a closer look before embarking on a design of my own. Such contacts are missing. But these would only serve to make a good book even better. As it stands, Small Astronomical Observatories is a much needed beginner's guide and a valuable addition to the library of any aspiring amateur astronomer. I have already started to sketch designs for my next observatory, confident that even another 'great storm' will not blow the house down. But first I need to move out of London....

Few economic analyses exist of aesthetics regulation, an important tool for land-use planning. This paper uses simple geometry to calculate the Pareto-efficient height of an eyesore as well as its efficient distance from areas frequented by viewers. The paper provides a formula for a two-part Pigouvian tax to control eyesores as well as guidelines for its calculation. A tax is often more likely than conventional zoning instruments to enhance efficiency in the control of smoke plumes, signs, high-rises, and towers. As a more politically attractive alternative to the full compensation that eyesore laws mandate today, the paper recommends lump-sum compensation.

A review of Waddington's collection brought additional evidence to light that is entirely consistent with the previous discussion about sixth-century temple conversions and the survival of cult in Djebel Hauran and the Ledjā.The temple of an unnamed god evidently existed at Busr el-Hariri, but no one had come forward with the funds necessary to demolish or modify the eyesore until Elias seemingly made this dying request. The monies evidently came out of the latter's heritable property. It is quite possible that the temple was not demolished, for while the inscription affirms that Fl. Chrysaphios built the church. Whatever the case, a temple conversion at this time would have been consistent with events taking place at Zorava, where a temple of Theandrites was demolished to make way for an octagonal martyrion in 515. The ecclesiastical structure at Busr el-Hariri was well established by 517/8.Keywords: Busr el-Hariri; Church; Djebel Hauran; Elias; Fl. Chrysaphios; Ledjā; temple conversions

The energy harnessed by onshore wind farms has grown enormously over the last decade. They now generate more than 10% of all electricity in certain regions, such as Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein in Germany and Gotland in Sweden. But this expansion has not been without its problems. Some people regard wind farms as an eyesore, with recent plans to build a wind farm on the Isle of Skye in the UK facing stiff opposition from some local residents. Resistance of this kind also occurs in other countries.

New Scientist went to boot camp to learn the tricks and tips for making 3G movies that are eye-popping, not an eyesore

This paper presents a social efficiency analysis of mandatory deposits on beverage containers. Five kinds of resource effects are identified, evaluated and added up: (1) litter (both pickup and “eyesore” costs); (2) solid waste collection; (3) container costs; (4) production and distribution costs; and (5) consumer convenience. It is shown that the desirability, on efficiency grounds alone, of mandatory deposits is not indisputable; it depends critically on one's evaluation of (1) the average value of the time it takes consumers to return empty containers and (2) the average value of the “eyesore” benefit of a dramatically reduced (i.e., by around three-fourths) volume of beverage container litter.