Urban Governance最新文献

Cities are more and more embedded in information flows, and their policies are increasingly called assessment frameworks to understand the impact of the systems of knowledge underpinning local government. Encouraging a more systemic view on the data politics of the urban age, this paper investigates the information ecosystem in which local governments are embedded. Seeking to go beyond the ‘smart city’ paradigm into a more overt discussion of the structures of information-driven urban governance, it offers a preliminary assessment across ten case studies (Barcelona, Bogotá, Chicago, London, Medellín, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mumbai, Seoul and Warsaw). It illustrates how both internal and external actors to local government are deeply involved throughout information mobilization processes, though in different capacities and to different extents, and how the impact of many of these actors is still not commonly assessed and/or leveraged by cities. Seeking to encourage more systematic analysis the governance of knowledge collection, dissemination, analysis, and use in cities, the paper advocates for an ‘ecosystem’ view of the emerging ‘informed cities’ paradigm.

This article argues that developments in the spheres of the state, the market, and the community have changed their boundaries, affecting volunteering in urban governance. Shifts in the division of tasks between the state and community have led to a new form of manufactured volunteering, while technological developments have made it easier to bridge trust gaps, resulting in platform volunteering. Moreover, business organizations pursuing public goals and using public resources have created a new form of economic volunteering. Thus, three illustrative cases are used to explore these new forms of volunteering and their main strengths and weaknesses. These new forms challenge traditional conceptions of volunteering work and the ideal-typical role model of “the volunteer.”

As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, urban governance has attracted more academic attention. There have been some review articles on the state of urban governance research, as they are in the form of selected themes by the authors, it is difficult to gain a systematic understanding of the field.

This review article conducts bibliometrics and domain knowledge map analysis of 1280 papers on urban governance. It produces a comprehensive picture of the intellectual structure, the evolution and trends of the research topics on urban governance. The findings show scholars from three disciplines covering three subfields of urban governance: urbanity, publicity and technology. USA, UK and mainland China are the main contributors to urban governance research. University College London, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Amsterdam, and the University of Sheffield are key players in international collaboration. However, the international research collaboration network is rather weak. There are nine highly researched topics: citizenship, urban monitoring and evaluation, global south development and challenges, urban mobility and sustainable development, institutional concept and challenge, technological change and governance transformation, metropolitan governance and innovation, urban politics and intergovernmental relations, and urban governance in China. Based on highlighted words in the research themes, urban governance research gradually moves from the connotation and theoretical basis to the subject and practice model of urban governance, and then to the influencing factors and evaluation of urban governance as well as the innovation and challenges of urban governance.

The COVID 19 pandemic continues to cause a lot of uncertainty around the world. At the onset of the pandemic, governments responded with policies and programs to curb its devastating effects on citizens, and Ghana was no exception. Although the Ghanaian government introduced various stop-gap measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, the inadequacies of the extant social welfare system was badly exposed. Consequently, as the pandemic seethed on, there were calls for reform of the existing social protection system and the introduction of new programs, especially for those in the informal sector. In response, the government introduced a new National Unemployment Insurance Scheme (NUIS). How did this happen? What led the government to accept tentatively the need to reform and transform the social welfare system after years of policy padding and the dragging of feet? Drawing on Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework, we argue that the pandemic created a policy window, which enabled policy enntrepreneurs to push the unemployment insurance idea to reform the existing social welfare system. The introduction of a NUIS, is seen as a paradigm shift in social protection and more broadly in social policy. The objective of this paper is to examine how the NUIS got on government's agenda, and whether the NUIS is a game changer in social protection in Ghana. We sourced information mainly from secondary sources.

This article contributes to research into new forms of participatory urban governance aimed at creating more sustainable cities. Focused on food security, which has, like ‘sustainability’, economic, ecological and socio-political dimensions, our research examines how urban agricultural initiatives have been promoted in Lisbon and how connecting and integrating them in urban planning strategies could contribute to the progressive transformation of the city into a more sustainable one. This integration is viewed as a complex, ‘wicked’ problem in that it encompasses various interdependent problems that are hard to solve due to the conflicting goals of involved actors. For this reason, we suggest that Design Thinking could help urban planners in addressing it, since it offers flexible, iterative and participatory ways of generating development insights based on users’ needs and contexts. The way this methodology is used is illustrated here to carry out the literature review on these issues in Lisbon. From this, the centrality of food systems in concerns related to urban sustainability emerged, as well as suggestions on ways to adjust urban planning so that it takes better account of them in the future. Our research aligns with recent studies on the use of Design Thinking in urbanism, some of them dealing with the food-energy-water nexus, and provides, through urban agriculture, a practical focus of study that urban citizens might feel more capable to comment and participate on.

As digital technologies and smart city development continue to grow, the threats of cybercrime and scams have become increasingly salient for city managers, businesses, and citizens worldwide. With a less effective data privacy protection, the number of new types of scams that precisely target victims is increasing. We collected 6,871 crawl fraud cases from news reports and local websites between October 2018 and December 2021 in Mainland China and Hong Kong. We generated 2,747 messages from news and open-source message datasets on GitHub. Based on these novel datasets, we conducted a comparative analysis of cyber telecom scams between Mainland China and Hong Kong and identified victim profiles using adata technology and target group index analysis. Furthermore, we developed a message-classifier scam alert model using data mining and machine learning algorithms. Our study provides valuable insights and essential implications on how data analytics can support future antifraud initiatives and help cities build safer urban hubs.

Nepal is the least urbanized country in South Asia with approximately 28% of Nepalese living in urban areas, while it is also the fastest urbanizing country in with an annual urban population growth of 6%. Urban areas suffer from municipal physical and information infrastructure deficits and are at high risk from earthquakes, floods, fires, and landslides. Development and transformation into Smart Cities would be a new avenue in Nepali development trend. However, this is relatively new and is still in its early stages of development. The objective of this research is to assess the evolution, the emerging trends and future prospects of Smart City in Nepal. A literature review with qualitative method along with structured key informant interviews were conducted to obtain data. This study revealed that the concept of Smart Cities in Nepal is centered around the integration of technology and innovative solutions to address the challenges facing urban areas and improve the quality of life for citizens. The concept is driven by the rapid pace of urbanization, the increasing need for sustainable and resilient cities, and the growing recognition of the role that technology can play in addressing these challenges. Nepal has emphasized on sustainability, the integration of Smart City initiatives, and the use of smart technologies with the country's broader development goals. Smart City indicators have been developed to track the progress, yet they are not flexible. This study recommends that i) the indicators need to be kept flexible with adequate room for revision of resilience-related indicators, ii) appropriate focus should be given to interconnected components of Smart Cities and iii) development of a more transparent and accountable approach to Smart City thereby providing better opportunities to enhance quality of life and unlock economic growth potential.