The world?s population reached more than 6.9 billion people in July 2011. It is expected that the population growth during the next 40 years will take place mostly in low-income countries and the population increase will be 2.3 billion people during 2011-2050. A rapid urbanization is also expected to result in 57.7 per cent of Africa?s population living in urban areas in 2050.

This is a Minor field study addressing the current situation in Vientiane, Laos where focus lies on the green structures past, present and future. The city of Vientiane is growing rapidly and as a result of this there is a increasing development. The once peaceful capital known for it?s lush and green environment is standing in a crossroad where important decision must be made to preserve valuable areas. During 8 weeks inventories and observations where made resulting into a proposal for future development. The proposal is divided into three parts. The urban fringe and surrounding landscape are still quite undeveloped and have a great potential of green wedges etc. The city of Vientiane and the green network linking important recreational, commercial and cultural places. Detailed proposal over certain green objects such as parks and squares..

AbstractTitle: Accounting firms´ view on the (new law) in joint-stock companiesCourse: Business Administration, Financial Accounting in Corporations and Groups, Ad-vanced Course, 15 ECTSAuthors: Mikaela Uveby, Shadi Nourbehesht, Almira DizdarevicAdvisor: Kent TrosanderProblem: During the last few years, more importance and emphasis has been put on auditors and accounting in general due to a number of company and business scandals on both national and international levels. The United States as well as the EU consid-ered it a necessity to make regulations stricter when it comes to auditing and ac-counts in order to increase the public trust to accounting. At January 1st, 2007, Sweden also changed its law concerning accounting firm challenges. The new law states that as soon as someone of the auditor?s co-workers assists a client with some part of the basic bookkeeping, the main bookkeeping or the drawing-up of the an-nual account, the challenge situation becomes a fact.Purpose: The purpose of the essay is to examine and inquire into how the renewed law con-cerning accounting firm challenges, that was established and put to action at Janu-ary 1st, 2007, has affected accounting firms.Method: The writers have chosen to complete qualitative interviews in order to get a deeper insight to and an understanding of the topic.Conclusion: One year after the renewal of the law, the writers have reached the conclusion of that the new law has not had a great impact on the accounting firms.

Outdoor recreation habits in metropolis and rural areasThis study aims to examine the perception of nature and outdoor recreation habits from an urban-rural prospective. The urbanization process continues in Sweden and the populations of the cities are growing continuously. Trends to build more compact and ?climate smart? reigns and with this a risk that green areas and areas where outdoor recreation can be practiced are situated further and further away from the urban population. Analyzing the responses from a survey made by the research program Friluftsliv i förändring 2007 we have examined if and which differences exists between urban and rural areas regarding their perception of nature, outdoor recreation habits and factors influencing the practice of outdoor recreation.

The effect of climate change places demands on how we build cities. Cities have to be built denser to meet the objectives of sustainability but as a result of this densification city green areas are at risk of exploitationand disappearing. The question this raises is whether there has to be an opposition between a dense and a green city?Urban trees are playing a very important role in cities. They stand as the major part of the vegetation in citieswhich are otherwise dominated with concrete and stone.

The title Urban furniture for young people reveals that this paper handles two central phenomenon in landscape architecture; the form and content of the urban spaces, respectively the users and their need for an appropriate outdoor environment in the city. In this paper youth is referred to as 15-18 year olds and the paper is based on theories of their physical use of the city?s outdoor environment. Urban furniture refers to equipment and components in the public room which becomes furniture when people takes them in to claim and gives them a meaning and a function that is useful for the moment. The starting point is that the users, in this case youths, defi nes urban furniture as something signifi cantly more than traditional park furniture, bicycle racks and waste baskets. This paper aims to investigate how the city?s furniture can be developed to meet the youths need to see each other, move and make their marks in the public room. The theories about how youths uses the city are presented in the Theory chapter.

This paper is about the facades and the streets impact on theexperience of the city and how architects can create cities forthe human kind with simple tools that makes a hugh difference forthe experience of urban space.As the cities are growing in a faster rate and as more people moveto the cities, they will also affect more people. The differentstructures that can be found in the cities therefore gets moreimportant and giving design to city structures also gets morecomplex because of our higher demands on urban functions andcontent. It?s difficult to evaluate the ultimate city structuresince all people experience their city in different ways, butarchitects still should be able to create urban spaces thatis suited for the human kind, just as we can create differentbiotopes for flora and fauna. Therefore there must be generalideas of what the human being experience as good or bad and theseshould be guidelines when designing urban space.Since urban space is something that most people experience everyday it doesn´t always have a clear impact on them.

The use of energy is an important question in today´s society, and a substantial part of the energy that is used today is used in our homes. To lower this usage is vital, and there are regulations in place both on the national and the local level, that say that new apartment blocks must be built to consume less energy, which in the end will lower the impact on the climate.One way to make the housing sector more environmentally sustainable, is to produce energy issions that are bad for the environment, for example to build wind turbines close to or even on the buildings, so called urban wind power. The scope for this report is to see if urban wind power could be a sustainable alternative for the residential area that Svenska Bostäder plans to build in Albano in Stockholm.There are extensive scientific theories regarding wind and wind power, and a literature study is made to investigate past knowledge in the area. Efforts have been made to find earlier trials with urban wind power and, both scientific research and trials where urban wind power actually has been installed. The theory chapter deals both with the wind itself and how electricity can be generated from wind.

Our everyday life is becoming more active and the activities we perform influence the way we dress. Due to an increase in activities undertaken in an urban environment, demands are changing and the need for active wear that meets the new demands follow suit. The four characters represented in the research can be seen as a reflection of the functional features needed, including base layer, mid layer/insulation and shell.Despite the increase in activities, most of our clothes are still constructed on static dummies or drafted on a table in 2D and the main developments within the active sportswear field is driven by material innovation. By creating garments on a body in movement, my aim is to develop new functions and expression in active sportswear through construction.Construction methods in active sportswear are examined and understood through observations and reconstructions and constitute the foundation of a study of movement for a design recovery.The movement and features required for leading an active urban life sets the direction of the development of new func- tional garments. A series of trial and error sessions and draping fabric on a live model in movement created the prototypes used in functionality tests to establish their feasibility.

This report is written in cooperation with Eskilstuna municipality public administration for urban planning. The reports purpose is to look into how other public authorities carry out public purchase of consultants and entrepreneurs in the urban planning area. The goal is to come up with suggestions of how Eskilstuna municipality public administration for urban planning can improve its purchasing process in this field in order to minimize the risk where a consultant or entrepreneur files an appeal against the decision of awarding a contract to another rival. The appeal can be filed to the county administrative court.The public administration for urban planning can do its purchases through the model of "lowest price" or "economically most favorable" for them. When using "economically most favorable", the department can value a number of soft parameters by giving them points and the offer which gets most points can be rewarded the right to sign a contract.

The report by Boverket (2004), Hållbara städer och tätorter i Sverige - ett förslag till strategi says that large and somewhat intact green areas are better than severalsmall. Linking rural natural areas with the city's green areas, improves the opportunities for recreation and biodiversity (Boverket 2004). To create this, there isneed for a green structure in the city and its surroundings. But how to create this structure and what are the problems with the green areas in the city today? Thescenario that more and more people choose to settle in urban areas is a trend which not appears to decline, and at the same time our green spaces in cities and ruralareas decreases (Boverket 2007).

Visby is a city that at first glance is of medieval origins. The popular image of scientists today is that the city was formed in the Middle Ages. According to some of the researchers Visby was formed during the Viking Age, it is based on the basis that the area has been used for a long period. Urban development in the Nordic countries is complex and there are different opinions as to why the Nordic cities emerge. It is important to shed light on the underlying process on why cities are emerging to provide clarity as to why Visby city is emerging.

In Sweden, the main responsibility for urban planning lies with the municipalities. The county administrative boards are responsible for clarifying the governmental interests for the municipalities. The main purpose of this essay was to study documents with descriptions of national heritage areas in order to examine whether certain problems within these documents are still present in the most recent ones. This was done by comparing old documents with new ones. The problem with these kinds of documents has been the lack of clarification of cultural values in national heritage areas.

User participation in the planning process of renewing the yards of existing residential areas was introduced in Sweden in the 1970s. It arose as a solution to many of the problems which became common in the residential areas built within the Swedish million program. The aim with the million program was to build one million homes within ten years. The same year as the million program was completed, in 1975, government subsidies to improve the residential yards were introduced. One of the conditions to get the subsidies was that the residents had to be involved in the planning process.

Projektet är en strategi för att stegvis uppgradera och förstärka offentliga delar av Holma i Malmö, i takt med att området byggs ut med nya bostadskvarter. Arbetet tar sin grund i vikten av spontana och planerade möten mellan människor, utgående från möjligheterna i strukturen av ett bostadsområde från senare delen av miljonprogrammet. Punktvisa ingrepp innefattar ett Folkets hus, en cykelpump, ett område för urban odling samt tillförsel av lokaler för publika funktioner i marknivå..