Urban Governance最新文献

As the scale and intensity of disasters continue to increase, building and enhancing resilience to disasters has become a critical policy and governance issue. This topic is crucial to urban infrastructure resilience because infrastructure systems support the continuity of operations of governments and businesses, and are essential to the economy, health, and public safety. This paper proposes and applies a network governance perspective to examine interdependent infrastructure systems, such as water (wastewater), electric power, transportation, and telecommunication. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of interdependent infrastructure systems in enhancing urban infrastructure resilience to disasters. The paper also highlights the need to leverage collaborative leadership and organizational capacity to develop robust and connected community networks to enhance urban infrastructure resilience to disasters.

The implementation of urban sustainability policy efforts often require collaboration across multiple semi-independent units within a single government organization. The settings where representatives from relevant units interact, provide a potential mechanism for mitigating functional collective action (FCA) challenges, yet little research has examined how different venues shape the collaborative behavior of administrative units within a single government entity. Using detailed unit-level data collected from Kansas City, Missouri's government, this paper advances research on intra-organizational collaboration by applying methods of network analysis to examine the role that different types of venues play in facilitating cross-departmental interaction and the resolution of FCA problems. Results suggest that co-participation in structured decision institutions and informal policy arenas are both associated with increases in units’ collaboration around sustainability initiatives. However, variation in the size and robustness of impact is evident across venues, providing initial insights for how they may be structured to maximize collaborative effect.

Mushrooming new city developments have occurred in many developing countries in the past two decades, which generate profound socio-economic, environmental, and politico-institutional consequences. This article examines how neoliberal planning facilitates and shapes new city projects in the Global South. In particular, this article focuses on three key mechanisms of neoliberal planning that promote new cities: deregulation, authoritarian state intervention, and public-private partnerships (PPPs). The findings suggest that neoliberal planning has been widely employed as a critical tool in developing new cities across the Global South, which has generated detrimental consequences such as social exclusion and inequality, spatial fragmentation, and environmental deterioration. It also finds that deregulation, authoritarian state intervention, and PPPs can work hand in hand in complex and dynamic ways to foster new cities. Although this article does not argue that neoliberal planning is the only mechanism that facilitates new city building, pervasive and variegated neoliberal planning warrants further attention to the interactions between neoliberal planning and new city building. In addition, further research is needed to decipher how neoliberal planning coexists and interacts with non-neoliberal ideologies and practices in new city developments, which is critical for promoting sustainable development.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked the world due to its pronounced mortality rate, rapid worldwide spread, and profound socioeconomic effects across all societies. As the spearhead of urban policies, local governments play an important role in crisis management during the pandemic. In the context of smart cities, innovative solutions have been required, especially to improve the local government's capacity to manage health crises. This study asks whether smart cities perform better in governing the COVID-19 pandemic. This article focuses on how urban governance impacted cities’ performance in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a city-level data set from Indonesia, we constructed a COVID-19 response performance index using principal component analysis that is used in an empirical strategy with quasi-experimental cross-sectional methods to minimize the influence of unobserved covariates and selection bias. This study concludes that smart city status does not have a statistically significant impact on the COVID-19 performance index. We offer three possible accounts based on expert insights, previous empirical studies, and digital upshots on data monitoring and reporting cases. Both theoretical and practical implications can be drawn, thus highlighting the lack of effective integration of technological dimensions into health and urban governance systems in the context of a public health crisis.

Urban parks across Africa are reported to have significantly declined over the years; a notable cause being their rezoning to other uses. This notwithstanding, there is little empirical data on the factors that result in the rezoning of parks, which consequently lead to their decline. This study addresses this gap using 16 parks across 6 communities within the Kumasi Metropolis from a political ecology perspective. The results showed significant changes in lands zoned for parks mainly due to the politics of land ownership and administration as well as other social factors. Approximately 14 of the16 parks studied have either been rezoned to residential or commercial use or encroached upon by other uses. The rezoning of parks was gradual, unapproved, unplanned, and occurred at the ‘blind sight’ of local planning authorities. Existing land tenure arrangements and laxity in the enforcement of laws are some of the reported barriers affecting park development and management in the city. The study posits that the strong traditional land ownership arrangements and sociopolitical conflicts between the traditional and state authorities are critical for Kumasi's park development and management. The study concludes that enforcing legal frameworks, and institutionalizing parkland ownership can contribute significantly to the development, management, and protection of parks.

The ‘smart city’ represents a core feature of modern urban development. The appearance of numerous smart city indices, which claim to successfully evaluate and compare smart city performances, is the manifestation of the concept's growing popularity. The central objective of this paper is to address the integrity and quality of the existing smart city indices, and identify those ones which are fit for international comparison. We propose a method for evaluating the integrity and quality of the existing smart city indices in terms of five criteria – Credibility, Reliability, Methodology, Versatility, Precision. The article critically evaluates six smart city indices and concludes that the Cities in Motion Index from the IESE Business School has the best overall performance. To improve the versatility of the existing smart city indices, this paper proposes a new approach based on respecting three main criteria: refining the types of indicator, defining the smart city domains and adopting context-sensitive measurements. These elements are deemed to be essential for any smart city index.

Social accountability for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services is a critical component to realising child rights to WASH services by the urban poor, more so in childcare centres. Despite the existence of discrete social accountability mechanisms (SAMs) in informal settlements, informal SAMs rarely form part of strategic approaches to addressing social accountability challenges in access to WASH services in childcare centres. The main objective of the study was to explore informal social accountability mechanisms for WASH in childcare centres in Korogocho and Viwandani informal settlements in Nairobi City County, Kenya. This qualitative study was an ethnography, where we administered governance diaries to 24 participants (parents and childcare managers) for 4 months. Data generated were analysed using a framework analysis derived from a principal-stewardship framework. Parents and centre managers, who are key actors for WASH services in childcare centres in informal settlements, relied on using informal SAMs. We identified three SAMs; (i) discretionary behaviours (rewards and sanctions, interpretation of rules and guidelines and peer mentorship); (ii) norms and values; and (iii) facilitative behaviours. The SAMs were interrelated and operated in synergy for access to WASH service by children in childcare centres. The SAMs for WASH used by parents and childcare owners in childcare centres encountered the following challenges; unrealistic expectations, negligence, conflicting expectations, conflicting agenda and administrative cultures, and tensions over performance standards and monitoring. Identified strategies for strengthening the SAMs included consistency in adhering to rules and guidelines for WASH service provision, and collaboration with strong WASH actors. Data from this study suggest it is valuable to examine and understand SAMs as this then offers clear pathways to mitigate problems and enact change in the WASH service delivery for improved global agenda of SDG 4 and SDG 6. Further, there is potential for joint advocacy for improved WASH services throughout the informal settlement. While SAMs are often conceptualised as a formal process or an intervention, this study shows that existing daily informal SAMs play an important role in promoting or maintaining WASH service delivery. Therefore, WASH stakeholders need to revisit, co-develop and evaluate informal SAMs for WASH service delivery.