The benefits of combining these tools may allow planners and policy developers to effectively predict impacts on open space and environmental quality. The findings will attempt to address the technical challenges inherent in policy development and analysis, while enhancing the usability of these tools. Although little explored in the United States, informal housing is a growing phenomenon of interest to urban planners and policymakers concerned with homelessness and affordable housing. Cities across the country are reporting increases in informal housing such as illegal conversions and boarding houses-units that are constructed, altered or simply occupied outside of formal market regulations. Using comparative case studies of neighborhoods in San Francisco, this research examines the forms, structure and operation of informal housing, the conditions under which it occurs, and its relationships to public sector policy and regulation.
Regional sustainability implies balance among ecological, social and economic systems.
Diversity is a critical component in attaining sustainability. Upland Communities in the Lao PDR Upland tribal communities in Laos are under increasing ecological and political pressure to abandon traditional means of shifting cultivation in favor of irrigated wet-rice cultivation. The hypothesis is that the development of such institutions is a function of the availability of productive land resources relative to the population in a given community. The unabated growth of informal settlements is an intractable problem facing land managers in the developing world. Recent literature advocates developing community-based institutions that adapt existing informal institutions as a strategy for managing urban land.