This timely and fascinating book illustrates how applied geography can contribute in a multitude of ways to assist policy processes, evaluate public programs, enhance business decisions, and contribute to formulating solutions for community-level problems. The book showcases studies by applied geographers from across the globe collaborating with the public sector, businesses, NGOs and communities to demonstrate how geography Ð with its space and place perspective and its explicitly spatial methods and tools Ð has been employed to address significant real-world issues. The 20 case studies have been conducted at a variety of levels of scale and situational contexts, and employ a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches including spatial and statistical modelling, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), impact analysis and action research. This enlightening and informative book will prove an invaluable reference tool for academics, students and practitioners with a specific interest in applied geography and spatial analysis.

The Texas Department of Transportation's (TxDOT's) statewide transportation program has been planned to meet projected transportation needs across the state. However, available financial resources are not sufficient to fully fund the desired program. The 2003 legislature created additional tools and funding. One of the major untapped potential sources is local funding. TxDOT seeks to increase local funding participation in its projects. TxDOT desires to attract local partners - both public and private sector - to participate in its projects by demonstrating economic and other benefits of major transportation projects to local areas. This project has developed lists and examples of a variety of transportation project partnerships. It has also identified economic and other benefits that result from major transportation projects, estimation methods to quantify the economic and other benefits, and existing and innovative funding sources for local entities. In addition, it produced guidebooks to promote project partnering and to select methods to estimate economic impacts of major transportation projects. Supporting brochures, a presentation, and sample project prospectus components were also produced. This research report summarizes the background information developed for this project. It is accompanied by other reports, including "Guidelines for Transportation Project Partnering: Promoting Local Participation on Transportation Improvement Projects" (0-5025-P5) and "Guidebook for Economic Benefit Estimation" (0-5025-P1).