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Illegally Built
Illegal construction (also known as illegal building or illegal housing) is construction work (or the result of such) without a valid construction permit. Besides the potential technical hazards on uncontrolled construction sites and in finished buildings, illegal building activity can be a major environmental violation when the works encroach upon preserve areas like nature reserves. Likewise, illegal building can have serious political implications when it is practiced as landgrabbing or for illegal settling in foreign territories (see e.g. International law and Israeli settlements). Illegal building can be the consequence of a combination of urbanization, overpopulation, homelessness and poverty in which case expanding slums, Shanty towns or similar will result. On the other hand, illegal building activity may be due to profitable speculation with and exploitation of valuable real property. Demand for mass tourism accommodation (hotels, etc.) as well as its counterpart, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Profit (economics)
In economics, profit is the difference between revenue that an economic entity has received from its outputs and total costs of its inputs, also known as surplus value. It is equal to total revenue minus total cost, including both Explicit cost, explicit and implicit cost, implicit costs. It is different from accounting profit, which only relates to the explicit costs that appear on a firm's financial statements. An accountant measures the firm's accounting profit as the firm's total revenue minus only the firm's explicit costs. An Economists, economist includes all costs, both explicit and implicit costs, when analyzing a firm. Therefore, economic profit is smaller than accounting profit. ''Normal profit'' is often viewed in conjunction with economic profit. Normal profits in business refer to a situation where a company generates revenue that is equal to the total costs incurred in its operation, thus allowing it to remain operational in a competitive industry. It is the mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Landslide
Landslides, also known as landslips, rockslips or rockslides, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, mudflows, shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environments, characterized by either steep or gentle slope gradients, from mountain ranges to coastal cliffs or even underwater, in which case they are called submarine landslides. Gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, but there are other factors affecting slope stability that produce specific conditions that make a slope prone to failure. In many cases, the landslide is triggered by a specific event (such as heavy rainfall, an earthquake, a slope cut to build a road, and many others), although this is not always identifiable. Landslides are frequently made worse by human development (such as urban sprawl) and resource exploitation (such as mining and deforestation). Land degradation freque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sack Of Palermo
The sack of Palermo is the popular term for the construction boom from the 1950s through the mid-1980s in Palermo, Italy, that led to the destruction of the city's green belt and historic villas to make way for characterless and shoddily-constructed apartment blocks. In the meantime, Palermo's historic centre, severely damaged by Allied bombing raids in 1943, was allowed to decay. The bombing condemned nearly 150,000 people to live in crowded slums, shantytowns, and even caves.Schneider & Schneider (2003). ''Reversible Destiny'', p. 14-19 Background Between 1951 and 1961, the population of Palermo had risen by 100,000, caused by a rapid urbanization of Sicily after World War II as land reform and mechanization of agriculture created a massive peasant exodus and rural landlords moved their investment into urban real estate. This led to an unregulated and undercapitalised construction boom from the 1950s through the mid-1980s that was characterised by the aggressive involvemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organized Crime
Organized crime is a category of transnational organized crime, transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a form of illegal business, some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, terrorist groups, rebel groups, and Separatism, separatists, are politically motivated. Many criminal organizations rely on fear or terror to achieve their goals or aims as well as to maintain control within the organization and may adopt tactics commonly used by authoritarianism, authoritarian regimes to maintain power. Some forms of organized crime simply exist to cater towards demand of illegal goods in a state or to facilitate trade of goods and services that may have been banned by a state (such as illegal drugs or firearms). Sometimes, criminal organizations force people to do business with them, such as when a gang extorts protection racket, protec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beautification
Beautification is the process of making visual improvements to a town, city, or urban area. This most often involves planting trees, shrubbery, and other greenery, but frequently also includes adding decorative or historic-style street lights and other lighting and replacing broken pavement, often with brick or other natural materials. Old-fashioned cobblestones are sometimes used for crosswalks; they provide the additional benefit of slowing motorists. Beautification projects are often undertaken by city councils to refurbish their downtown areas, in order to boost tourism or other commerce. Often, this is also spurred by broken sidewalks, which pose a safety hazard for pedestrians and potentially insurmountable obstacles for wheelchair users. These projects are frequently part of other larger projects such as construction, especially in conjunction with ones for transit, such as streets and roads and mass transit. The Laurel Hill Association of Stockbridge, Massachusett ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Murambatsvina
Operation Murambatsvina (''Move the Rubbish''), also officially known as Operation Restore Order, was a large-scale Zimbabwean government campaign to forcibly clear slum areas across the country. The campaign started in 2005 and, according to United Nations estimates, affected at least 700,000 people directly through loss of their homes or livelihood and thus could have indirectly affected around 1.4 million people. w2.unhabitat.org/documents/ZimbabweReport.pdf "UN report on Zim. government" ''Report'', 17 June 2005. Robert Mugabe and other government officials characterised the operation as a crackdown against illegal housing and commercial activities, and as an effort to reduce the risk of the spread of infectious disease in these areas. However, the campaign was met with harsh condemnation from Zimbabwean opposition parties, church groups, non-governmental organisations, and the wider international community. The United Nations described the campaign as an effort to drive o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bribery
Bribery is the corrupt solicitation, payment, or Offer and acceptance, acceptance of a private favor (a bribe) in exchange for official action. The purpose of a bribe is to influence the actions of the recipient, a person in charge of an official duty, to act contrary to their duty and the known rules of honesty and integrity. Gifts of money or other items of value that are otherwise available to everyone on an equivalent basis, and not for dishonest purposes, are not bribery. Offering a discount or a refund to all purchasers is a rebate (marketing), rebate and is not bribery. For example, it is legal for an employee of a Public Utilities Commission involved in electric rate regulation to accept a rebate on electric service that reduces their cost of electricity, when the rebate is available to other residential electric customers; however, giving a discount specifically to that employee to influence them to look favorably on the electric utility's rate increase applications would ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greenfield Land
Greenfield land is a British English term referring to undeveloped land in an urban or rural area either used for agriculture or landscape design, or left to evolve naturally. These areas of land are usually agricultural or amenity properties being considered for urban development. Greenfield land can be unfenced open fields, urban lots or restricted closed properties. They are kept off limits to the general public by a private or government entity. Greenfield sites offer a high degree of freedom for a developer, compared to sites with existing developments. For example, a greenfield site is a welcome opportunity for a cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ... operator to choose equipment based on cost and aesthetic parameters, without considering migration iss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shopping Mall
A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, it began to be used as a generic term for the large enclosed shopping centers that were becoming increasingly commonplace. In the United Kingdom and other countries, shopping malls may be called ''shopping centres''. In recent decades, malls have declined considerably in North America, partly due to the retail apocalypse, particularly in subprime locations, and some have closed and become so-called "dead malls". Successful exceptions have added entertainment and experiential features, added big-box stores as anchors, or converted to other specialized shopping center formats such as power center (retail), power centers, lifestyle centers, factory outlet centers, and festival marketplaces. In Canada, shopping centres have frequently been repl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a refrigerator, and other kitchen facilities, upholstered chairs, a television, and en-suite bathrooms. Small, lower-priced hotels may offer only the most basic guest services and facilities. Larger, higher-priced hotels may provide additional guest facilities such as a swimming pool, a business center with computers, printers, and other office equipment, childcare, conference and event facilities, tennis or basketball courts, gymnasium, restaurants, day spa, and social function services. Hotel rooms are usually numbered (or named in some smaller hotels and B&Bs) to allow guests to identify their room. Some boutique, high-end hotels have custom decorated rooms. Some hotels offer meals as part of a room and board arrangement. In Japan, cap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass Tourism
Tourism is travel for pleasure, and the commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. UN Tourism defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic (within the traveller's own country) or international. International tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments. Between the second half of 2008 and the end of 2009, tourism numbers declined due to a severe economic slowdown (see Great Recession) and the outbreak of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. These numbers, however, recovered until the COVID-19 pandemic put an abrupt end to the growth. The United Nations World Tourism Organization has estimated that global international tourist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
