Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous materials constructed from modular molecular building blocks, typically metal clusters and organic linkers. These can, in principle, be assembled to form an almost unlimited number of MOFs, yet materials reported to date represent only a tiny fraction of the possible combinations. Here, we demonstrate a computational approach to generate all conceivable MOFs from a given chemical library of building blocks (based on the structures of known MOFs) and rapidly screen them to find the best candidates for a specific application. From a library of 102 building blocks we generated 137,953 hypothetical MOFs and for each one calculated the pore-size distribution, surface area and methane-storage capacity. We identified over 300 MOFs with a predicted methane-storage capacity better than that of any known material, and this approach also revealed structure-property relationships. Methyl-functionalized MOFs were frequently top performers, so we selected one such promising MOF and experimentally confirmed its predicted capacity.

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In spite of its potential value to governments, detailed information as to how land prices vary spatially within Third World cities is usually lacking. This paper discusses the distribution of land prices in Jakarta using information provided on a neighbourhood basis by experienced real estate brokers. Appraised prices were given for different types of residential plot distinguished by tenure and infrastructural provision. Analysis of the data in Jakarta shows the relative importance of infrastructural provision and tenure (land title) for land prices. Examination of such data over time makes it possible to test whether and where there has been a spiralling of land prices, and in the case of Jakarta it is found that recent price increases have been consistently greater in suburban areas and in informal-sector plots, arising from the massive demand from low-income households for affordable housing. The paper concludes by drawing out policy implications.

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Economic reforms in China have significantly changed both the processes of urban development and the practice of urban spatial planning. Changes in these aspects of urbanization, however, have not occurred in concert. The reassertion of planning as a profession has resulted in a reintroduction of a form of master planning, while the state's virtual monopoly over urban investment and decision making has steadily eroded. In Chinese cities, the practice of urban planning may have passed from irrelevance under the command economy of the past to gross ineffectiveness in the socialist market economy of today. In this paper I review major urban trends arising from Chinese economic reforms and discuss the problems and prospects of a planning response to these trends.

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Critical writing on ‘new town’ developments on the edge of Asian cities emphasizes such negative effects as increased social segregation and exclusion, fragmentation of urban services, upward pressure on peri-urban land prices and loss of productive farmland. While not disputing such critical perspectives, this paper seeks to understand the position of one of Indonesia's pre-eminent developers and new town builders in the overall context of Indonesian development and the ongoing internationalization of real estate development in the region. The developer, known as Ciputra, has long been regarded as a pioneer in the development of Indonesia's real estate industry in general and new town development in particular. This paper examines how Ciputra's work as a developer intersects with the developmentalist goals and efforts of the Indonesian state and how many of these projects, which are commonly understood as exclusive enclaves, may be interpreted as a form of development which may be described as ‘market modernism’. Pursuing this analysis, the paper then looks at Ciputra's efforts to internationalize this work and considers where it might fit with notions of national development elsewhere and how it may or may not engage with the transborder expansion of capitalist relations and the increasing commoditization of the Asian city.