Search Results

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. There is no doubt that, at a time when Delhi’s urban transport problems were getting more and more complex, the bold decision to have a metro in the city has made a big difference. There are various landmarks which the Delhi Metro has been able to achieve: Phase I was completed ahead of time; work was completed within estimated completion costs; the unit cost of construction remained one of the lowest; it is the first metro to get ISO 14001 certification for Environmental Management System and the first metro to earn carbon credit. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s success is attributed to an innovative company structure, a unique work culture, and organizational values reflected in a lean but effective organization, punctuality, professional competence, a quick decision-making process, and the sufficient delegation of powers.

This chapter discusses the development of the metro rail system in Delhi. It details the various phases of the project from proposal to implementation. Implemented by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) as a joint ownership by the Government of India and Government of Delhi, the Delhi Metro completed 65 km of Phase I in record time. By September 2010, it became a 186 km network with a cost of around Rs 29,800 crore. The metro has been making operational profits from the first day and it has set benchmarks for project execution quality and delivery within cost and time as well as in operations and maintenance.

This chapter talks about Mêtrô in Herodas' Mimiamb 7, who made clear contact with Kerdôn and is on equal intimate footing with him. It analyses the line on Kerdôn selling shoes to Mêtrô's companions, which hints at his more intimate products for Mêtrô's benefit. It also elaborates the moments when dildoes appear to be alluded to in the practice of using them orally, which on the surface level references to nothing but shoes. The chapter discusses how Mêtrô is so concerned about having her cover blown by Kerdôn that she ostentatiously tries to preserve outward respectability in front of her friends. It examines how Mêtrô adopts a guise of imperiousness, which at times turns into irony and sarcasm.

This chapter demonstrates how the potential for collaboration was developed in Denver and Atlanta and how it is proving appropriate and effective for both internal and external strategies of social reform. Membership size of churches in both cities varies widely; many—49% of churches in Denver and 52% in Atlanta — have between 100 and 500 members. There is a strong tendency in both cities for black churches to own their buildings rather than rent them. In addition, a majority of churches in both cities conduct at least one nonreligious community outreach program. Metro Denver Black Church Initiative was launched in Denver to improve conditions in low-income black neighborhoods through the local churches. Furthermore, the outreach to the community in Atlanta is described.

Capellani joined the Metro Picture Corporation in late 1917. This period was to be the most fruitful of his American career. He directed prestigious productions with famous stage actors such as Katharine Harris Barrymore in The House of Mirth (1918) and above all the great Alla Nazimova in three of her greatest successes, which made her a star of the silent screen.

The production of The Red Lantern (1919) with Nazimova was a showcase of Capellani’s talents; he became involved in the writing of the script with June Mathis, in the preparation of the sets (recreating Peking), and in directing the huge crowds of extras as well as the stars. It was the only film Capellani directed in Hollywood, following the flu epidemic of 1918 that moved production from the East to California.

In this chapter, Michael Wortmann examines European retailing and its global expansion. Within the European Union, retail markets are still highly fragmented in many respects. The national retail systems in Europe are significantly different from one another, not only because of differences in consumer preferences, but also because of variations in regulations affecting retailing. Although now slowed by recession, the most rapid transformation in retailing has occurred in Eastern Europe, with West European retailers in many cases playing a leading role. Many of the changes in Europe mirror those in the USA, with the development of self-service, larger store size formats, horizontal expansion, and retailer-led efficiency gains in the supply chain. However, in no European country are these changes as advanced as in the USA. The higher level of regulation not only hampers these changes, but modifies them, leading to new and successful innovations in some cases. Wortmann focuses on retailing in four major countries. In France and the UK, retailing regulation has been relatively weak, so many of the trends have materialized to a much greater extent than in Italy, which has very rigid regulations. Germany is somewhere in between, attempting to limit store size, but not merchandising practices, which has led to the growth of small-store hard discounters, such as Aldi, the owner of Trader Joes in the USA. In part because of the limited opportunities to expand domestically, some of the major European retailers have been leaders in the global expansion of retailing. The chapter includes short case studies of some of the major European retail innovators, such as Carrefour, Aldi, Metro, and Tesco.

Hermes Pan moves to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to choreograph The Barkleys of Broadway with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland but is released at Garland’s request after the completion of the “Shoes With Wings On” routine. He contracts with Mike Todd to choreograph As the Girls Go on Broadway and joins composer Jimmy McHugh, lyricist Harold Adamson, and director Howard Bay at Todd’s Irvington Estate to begin work. After five weeks of rehearsal the show opens in Boston with costumes by Oleg Cassini on 13 October 1948 to devastating reviews. After three weeks of reworking, the musical opened in New Haven to excellent notices anticipating a triumphant premiere in New York City on 13 November.

Born into a lower-class Jewish Orthodox family in Imperial Russia, Louis B. Mayer rose to become the most powerful man in Hollywood.At the same time, he built one of the most successful racing stables in the nation, breeding horses whose influence is still evident today. As chief of production at MGM, he oversaw the most glittering stable of movie stars the world has ever seen: Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, JudyGarland, William Powell, and Gene Kelly, to name a few. With Mayer at the helm, MGM won five best picture Oscars and dominated Hollywood through the 1930s and early 1940s. Mayer then devoted most of his energies to developing his racing stable, efforts that led to his horse Busher being named 1945 Horse of the Year. Financial pressure, a failed marriage, and pressure from the studio forced him to sell most of his horses, but Mayer never abandoned his love affair with horse racing.

Even with the releases through Metro and Film Booking Offices, in addition to First National, keeping the lot busy on a rental basis and collecting the payments due remained Ince's primary concern. In June 1923, the assignments of Beck's Baird productions The Destroying Angel and The Miracle Makers were made to the Bank of Italy for a $90,000 loan to the Ince Corp. The prior Beck movies Is Divorce a Failure?, Don't Doubt Your Wife, When Husbands Deceive, and When the Devil Drives were assigned to the Commercial National Bank as security for the notes received from Beck and endorsed by the Ince Corp. By the end of 1923, profound changes were under way throughout the Ince corporation. These took place against the backdrop of an industry panic that caused a number of companies to intimate that they would curb production radically, with Famous Players–Lasky closing its Astoria and Los Angeles studios until the spring.

Learning from the initial experiences of distribution beyond First National with Metro and Film Booking Offices (FBO), Thomas Ince shifted further toward distribution that offered possibilities for handling a variety of movies. Movies rolled off the lot under his supervision at a dizzying rate, and the remainder of 1924 was a time of frenetic activity. He continued to have close but uncredited creative and financial input on many films made at the studio, but he was increasingly selective as to which of the movies carried the prestige of the Ince name. Six Ince specials were to be delivered to First National, and there were four Charles Ray movies for Pathé, nine “smaller” productions for Hodkinson's Producers Distributing Corporation, and one Mrs. Reid film for FBO. In addition to this product of his own, three independent units had signed to produce four movies each on the lot, assuring a year of unprecedented activity.

This chapter explores urban aspirations and the governance of religions in Metro Manila, the Philippines. The management of religions is not a central role for the agencies governing Metro Manila, which is composed of sixteen cities and one municipality with their respective local government units. These units are coordinated by the Metro Manila Development Agency (MMDA), which is often relegated to short-term and problem-solving tasks concerning traffic management and flood control, for example. This chapter first considers how the state imagines Metro Manila as a global and religious capital and how religious diversification and the global religious movements that originate from it also enrich its global character. It then discusses a number of recent controversies and cases that highlight the different kinds of relationship between religions and the state in Metro Manila.

This chapter examines Herodas' technique of creating an interplay between Korittô and Mêtrô in the sixth Mimiamb, which is almost as important as his characterization of the two women. It cites Korittô, who is characterized as obsessed with sexual gratification. It also points out Korittô's lines that were mostly devoted to her narrative of her admiration for the dildo, which she dwells on in loving detail. The chapter discusses Korittô's outrageous comparison of Kerdôn's workmanship with that of Athene as the crowning hyperbole in her enthusiasm for the dildo. It describes how Korittô is being presented as almost paranoid in her concern with what people think of her alongside her obsession with sex.

This afterword discusses the metaphor of hybridity and its relevance for classical reception in Naples, with particular reference to the ongoing excavations for Naples’ underground Metro network. It recounts the foundation story of the city, and offers some psychological and philosophical perspectives on the myth of the Siren Parthenope. It likens the modern-day journey through Naples to Julio Cortázar’s literary ‘atemporal’ journey from Paris to Marseilles, and suggests that the new Metro system similarly has the potential to connect and combine the various layers of the city’s physical and temporal landscape, creating new hybrids which might accompany us towards the future.

More than a decade into the privatization of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) in Metro Manila, access to water remains a problem for the urban poor in the Philippine capital. The difficulties faced by water utilities in providing direct service connections to the poor have reaffirmed the importance of the informal sector in small-scale water provisioning. This chapter explores the dynamics of mobilization by the informal sector, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and local organized communities at the ‘edge’ of the regulatory state. The chapter is organized as follows. The first section develops the concept of regulatory mobilization to confer a more appropriate treatment of agency by organized citizens and consumers in politics of regulation. The second section presents the background to water privatization in the Philippines. The third section deals with a case study of community-based water service providers, and discusses how organized citizens and consumers, emanating from the informal sector, unexpectedly influenced local politics and the formal regulatory framework.

With a daytime population breaching the 12 million mark, Metropolitan Manila, capital region of the Philippines, presents itself as a sketch of urban anarchy to the casual observer. Despite successful drives in the last decade to tidy its main streets, squalor, din, and recalcitrant slum-dwellers remain ensconced in ill-defined spaces while the rush-hour surge of commuters vies with the tempo of Jakarta and Bangkok for most-gridlocked sprawl in Southeast Asia. Borrowing the approach of forest-canopy scientists, this study initially reframes the messy urbanism as a storeyed-mosaic. It describes the metropolis spatially and experientially, starting with street-level transgressions of hawkers versus pedestrians, through the infrastructure that forms its mid-rise entanglements, and up to the billboards and skyscrapers that hustle to hoard public views, swamping the popular imagination with media icons and subtle temptation. Amid increasingly effective attempts by government to sort out this city-hodgepodge, the author concludes that the forces of order and chaos seem to fall into a deeper pattern of cultural physicality. This alternative decoding of Metro Manila’s landscape resonates with a cosmological schema endemic to Austronesian communities, which suggests an impulse towards a distinct spatial hierarchy that emplaces citizens and artifacts in both the literal and figurative senses.