Abstract:In order to achieve a sustainable urban environment, the increase of green space areas is commonly used as a planning tool and adaptation strategy to combat environmental impacts resulting from global climate change and urbanization. Therefore, it is important to understand the change of green space areas and the derived impacts from the change. This research firstly applied space analysis and landscape ecology metrics to analyze the structure change of the pattern of green space area within the Taipei Metropolitan Area. Then, partial least squares were used to identify the consequences on microclimate and air pollution pattern caused by the changing pattern of green space areas within the districts of the Taipei Metropolitan Area. According to the analytical results, the green space area within Taipei Metropolitan Areas has decreased 1.19% from 1995 to 2007, but 93.19% of the green space areas have been kept for their original purposes. Next, from the landscape ecology metrics analysis, in suburban areas the linkages, pattern parameters, and space aggregation are all improving, and the fragmentation measure is also decreasing, but shape is becoming more complex. However, due to intensive land development in the city core, the pattern has becomes severely fragmented and decentralized causing the measures of the linkages and pattern parameters to decrease. The results from structural equation modeling indicate that the changing pattern of green space areas has great influences on air pollution and microclimate patterns. For instance, less air pollution, smaller rainfall patterns and cooler temperatures are associated with improvement in space aggregation, increasing the larger sized green space patch. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2014, 6 8828

The literature of new growth theory regards Research and Development (R&D) as a crucial factor in economic growth. This is because R&D not only improves production technology, but also because of its significant externality (spillover) effects on other firms. This paper employs the model developed by Berliant et al. (J Econ Theory 104:275-303, 2002) to examine the externality of R&D within industries closely associated with the spatial distribution pattern of firms in Taiwan's Metropolitan Areas. Both the mean travel time (to represent the distances) and an overall dispersion are incorporated in this examination of the externality effect. The paper also employs quantile regression techniques to estimate the effects of agglomeration at various quantiles of production value. Based on the data collected by the Taiwan Area Industrial Census for 2001, this research considers all manufacturing industry and two-digit standard industry classification data of manufacturing industries to analyze the R&D spillover effect for various metropolitan areas. The paper analyzes the manufacturing industry as a whole. The electrical and electronic machinery industries, a representative of high-intensity R&D industry, and the apparel and accessories and 123 520 H.-L. Liu et al. leather industries, as representatives of low-intensity R&D industry, are also considered. This research concludes that there is an externality (spillover) effect of R&D in each metropolitan area for all three categories. Moreover, the research suggests that the medium and large a firm's scale the higher the spillover effect it receives will be. JEL Classification

Taiwan has a Subtropic to Tropical climate, but its precipitation varies widely in response to seasonal effects and weather events such as Typhoon and Meiyu systems. Precipitation must be held back in reservoirs to provide and regulate sufficient water supply. Balancing the irregular precipitation and increasing water demands generates tremendous pressure on water resources management for the water stored in the Shihmen Reservoir, which is the major unitary water supply system in the Greater Taoyuan Area. Such pressure will be significantly enlarged due to the huge 17 billion USD Taoyuan Aerotropolis Project. In earlier days many small artificial ponds (a common terminology in this article), including irrigation ponds, fishery ponds and others, were built to cope with water shortages in Taoyuan County. These small storage ponds provided a solution that resolved seasonal precipitation shortages. Unfortunately, these ponds have been vanishing one after another one due to regional industrialization and urbanization in recent decades and less than 40% of them still remain today. There is great urgency and importance to investigating the link between vanishing ponds and water resources management. Remote sensing technology was used in this study to monitor the environmental consequences in the Taoyuan area by conducting multi-temporal analysis on the changes in water bodies, i.e., ponds. SPOT satellite images taken in 1993, 2003, and 2010 were utilized to analyze and assess the importance of small-scale ponds as water conservation facilities. It was found that, during the seventeen years from 1993-2010, the number of irrigation ponds decreased by 35.94%. These ponds can reduce the burden on the major reservoir and increase the water recycling rate if they are properly conserved. They can also improve rainfall interception and surface detention capabilities, and provide another planning advantage for regional water management.

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