Urban Governance最新文献

Amidst the global discourse on the provision of low-income housing, there has been a growth in studies to assess the governance issues related to the sustainability of housing delivery. Despite housing policy and legislative frameworks existing in developing countries, several governance issues have limited the sustainability of housing delivery mechanisms. Therefore, this study aims to unpack housing delivery approaches through the lens of governance. Adopting an exploratory approach, this study seeks to understand strategic and operational approaches used by government institutions to promote collaborative strategies in the planning and delivery of housing projects. Empirical data is used to understand mechanisms, processes and systems involved in the planning and delivery of low-income housing projects, using the Gauteng City Region as an area of study. The findings reveal there is that there is a limited understanding of the concept of governance within public sector institutions. Additionally, the institutional arrangements of the three spheres of government (national, provincial and local) have an impact in the delivery processes of low-income housing projects. A shift is important in the understanding and application of governance principles in housing policy and programme implementation to realise the value of governance. This study concludes with implications for policy and academics highlighting the role of stakeholder participation, transparency, and accountability.

The success of river chief system is spurring more types of chiefs in Chinese cities. This trend of chiefdomization can be viewed as a case of institutional borrowing: institutions in one field borrowing power from those in another field. In an authoritarian country, institutional borrowing often takes the form of imposing bureaucracy on natural resources and public goods, a change from open institutions to public institutions. It is argued that conditions for successful change include a collective “bad” being produced and severe mismatch between its consumer and producer. Several characteristics of the city make the institutional change difficult: people's high mobility, little mismatch between consumer and producer, difficulty in controlling open access as well as no physical collective good being produced. The case of chiefdomization in China illustrates the above analyses. Despite all the problems of chiefdomization, the trend may continue as long as bureaucracy remains a powerful institution in the country.

The right to inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable suburbs is an aim of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, with a particular focus on addressing race, disability, class, gender and age inequality and injustice by the year 2030. Despite supranational interest in creating inclusive sustainable cities and communities, we still know little about what this means for disabled people¹. In this article, we address this gap ––through participatory qualitative research study – Planning Inclusive Communities, involving 97 people (9-92 years of age) of which over 50% identified as disabled people from two Australian regions - Tasmania and Queensland. The research revealed five core interrelated elements - “The Makings of Inclusive Communities” .These five elements reinforce the importance of interconnected social, economic, and built environment structures and systems in facilitating inclusion, and that inclusion happens in place and movement through everyday experiences. The empirical findings offer important new insights that help expand the inclusive cities and communities’ discourse through the voices of disabled and non-disabled people, around issues of equity, access, and inclusion. Furthermore, the research helps lay the foundations to guide future urban policy and research on planning inclusive cities and communities from the position of disability justice and human diversity.

While the impact of the house purchase restriction (HPR) policy on the housing market in China has been deeply examined, there is still little known about how the housing market varies when such policy is abandoned. To fill this gap, we first theoretically propose two hypotheses concerning the relationship between abandoning HPR policy and housing price and transaction based on the housing literature. We then examine the hypotheses by taking Jinan, China as empirical case that offer an excellent policy setting of some districts having discarded the policy while the other remains. The results derived from Synthetic Control Method (SCM) showed that the cancellation of the HPR policy plays a vital role in increasing the transaction volume, but it fails to promote house prices. The findings remain reliable after a series of placebo and robustness tests. This article adds new insight to the debate on efficacy of government intervention via more granular quantitative data, and further contributes to policy implications regarding housing market development.

Participation is often employed by authorities as a unilateral tool for gathering data from citizens, informing them about processes, and obtaining legitimacy and accountability, rather than truly empowering or collaborating with citizens. However, many scholars emphasize the vital role of civic consciousness and collective intelligence (CI) in addressing chronic issues and global crises related to shared interests and values. To achieve this with effective participatory design and planning (PD&P) processes, it's essential to understand citizens' perspectives rather than imposing ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches.

We explored how citizens evaluate existing PD&P mechanisms in three capital cities: Ankara, Bogota, and Madrid, representing developed, developing, and least-developed countries. Through collective experiments using conjoint analysis, we conducted citizen interviews based on the CI genome consisting of key dimensions and attributes of PD&P for public spaces. Crowdsourcing applications were integrated to enhance field studies. Additionally, chord diagrams and scatter charts visually depict interrelations among the grouped and ranked genome attributes. Our analysis explores variations and commonalities across cities and includes reflections from students.

The results show that PD&P is perceived as significantly important, while top-down political decisions are perceived as dissatisfactory by most respondents. Notably, Madrid stands out positively in certain dimensions, including the willingness for active participation, multi-functionality as a capital, and diversity of initiatives. In addition, the political culture, respondents' education, age, and attachment to the city have significant influences on preferred methods, prioritized issues, and attitudes. Despite its limitations, conjoint analysis holds promise as a method to understand citizens' demands and design robust PD&P settings for deeper and broader involvement.

Historically, many national governments of Sub-Saharan African countries, including Ghana, have devolved the responsibility of environmental sanitation to local government authorities to enact bye-laws within their catchment areas. Sanitation bye-laws are context-specific rules of the game aimed at shaping human-environment relationships at the local level. Yet, few studies have assessed their effectiveness in addressing environmental sanitation problems in Ghana. Through a comparative analysis of four local government authorities, this study evaluated the effectiveness of sanitation bye-laws in Ghana by drawing data from key informant interviews. It was revealed that the effectiveness of local government authorities sanitation bye-laws, was compromised by political interference, funding, lack of a proper sanctioning system and the lack of awareness of these bye-laws. The depoliticization of environmental sanitation and the establishment of environmental tribunals are necessary for environmental governance. This would enable local government authorities put developing countries on the right trajectory towards sustainable development at the local level.