John A. Sorrentino

Suitable Housing Placement: A GIS-Based Approach

The intent of this paper is to operationalize some aspects of local sustainability in a suitable development scenario and to compare its energy-use and environmental impacts to trend development. After a discussion of suburban sprawl, local sustainability, and the current state of the Pennypack Creek Watershed in the Philadelphia metro region, these residential location scenarios are presented. The latter were created using geographic information systems software and are based on projections from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. The impacts of the scenarios on energy use, air emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, water quality, and biological integrity were estimated with very few data, and the effect on the value of generic ecosystem services was assessed. The suitable development scenario was 29% better in terms of energy use and air and greenhouse gas emissions, 2.4% worse on water quality, and 2.6% better with respect to biological integrity. Given its net beneficial results, recommendations for policies to engender suitable development are made, and an outline of an implementation plan is proposed. Thoughts regarding refinements of the present work and the applicability of the methods used here to other watersheds conclude the work.

Successfully Preserving a Farm as Open Space: What Values Were behind the Giving?

Successfully Preserving a Farm as Open Space: What Values Were behind the Giving? Open space preservation has become increasingly as important as urbanization has crept into suburban and exurban areas. The problem of disappearing open space in the suburbs of a large US city was addressed in this work. The goal was to associate responses to a retrospective survey of donors to a successful farm-to-open-space campaign in the Philadelphia metro region to the donations that people actually made.

An "effluent" charge approach to aircraft noise abatement

Abstract This paper is concerned with the control of aircraft noise. Some brief remarks are made on the relationship of aircraft noise problems to the theoretical approaches to externalities. We note in particular that an effluent charge is the most practical way to deal with the problem. A linear programming technique is used to find the bundle of noise-reducing options that minimizes the cost of achieving noise reduction goals, given an upper limit on service reduction. A rate-of-return criterion is imposed on the l.p. solution. Shadow prices are used to generate charges on the airlines. This provides a stimulus for abatement without dictating actual methods. Implicit in the cost parameters are prices of aircraft fuel. We assess the attractiveness of the abatement options with increasing fuel prices. The mechanics of the actual implementation of the charge in the airline industry is examined. We conclude that the institution of a plan such as the one proposed here will provide control of aircraft noise in a socially efficient manner.

The economic implications of recycling exhaustible natural resources: The case for crude oil

Abstract Regardless of whether the bulk of decision-making in an economy is done by a central unit or by decentralized smaller units, the government can act to propose guidelines to individual agents. This is of particular importance when the activities of the latter cause aggregative or social problems which are not directly acted upon by the smaller agents. The purpose of this paper is to set up a model by which a central authority can make choices in the presence of two pressing social problems, namely, a diminishing domestic supply of an exhaustible resource and the contamination of the environment through discharged waste materials. The model itself takes the form of an integer-linear programming problem which runs through discrete time to a finite horizon. Besides the traditional modes of “virgin” exploration and production and/or importation from abroad, society is also given the choice of recycling. Society will choose combinations of the above three to minimize the costs of satisfying fixed (projected) oil product demands in the future. The costs include those for increasing exploration for virgin refineries; for collection, refining and transportation for refineries and for the cost to society of discharges of waste-oil into the environment. The constraints include process flow restrictions, import quotas, capacity limits and discharge restrictions as well as fixed demands. An effort was made to keep the model as general as possible. Although no numerical solution is obtained in this paper, we feel that the policy implications of some presumed solution (possible through the use of a well-known algorithm for mixed variable problems) are worth examining. They revolve around the model itself, citing the potential attractiveness of recycling as the other two alternatives become increasingly expensive, and as development of alternatives to oil progresses at an alarmingly slow rate. Also mentioned are problems relating to the potential demands for recycled versus virgin oil products, balance-of-trade problems, and the mutability of social and economic institutions in the crisis of economic adjustment that much of the world is now facing.