Urban Systems最新文献

The U.S. Government has recently completed its first year under ZBB. Their experience is serving as a catalyst for local and state governments, as well as other countries, to adopt a ZBB system. This paper describes and summarizes the government's initial experience with ZBB, providing insight into the pitfalls and problems which can be expected with the use of this technique. These findings will be of particular interest to individuals involved with the design and implementation of budget systems in various types of governmental units.

The use of case studies in local government research is viewed with mixed emotions by political scientists. They readily admit that case studies often provide refreshing, thought provoking insights about real people making real decisions. However, political scientists also point out that case studies are not additive. Each study remains a unique statement of a behavioral event as subjectively interpreted by the researcher. This paper contends that case studies can be made additive by using new research tools to analyze how decision makers perceive themselves, community issues and the outcomes of their actions. These tools consist of appreciative data gathering techniques and nonmetric multidimensional scaling and preference mapping. The results, while quantitative, are clearly consistent with policy typologies developed through traditional methods of case study research [1].

Applicability of remote sensing technology to urban analysis is reviewed. The general consensus is that remote sensing could aid in urban planning and policy; however, only limited uses of the technology have been made to date. Reasons for limited acceptance are both technological and administrative, with the latter the major deterrent.

Current methods for providing analytic support for public policy choices provide a severely limited basis for decisions by the legislative branch. The executive branch currently dominates the system in that it employs most of the analytical talent, maintains data bases, and determines the alternatives to be analysed. In this paper, two alternative models designed to correct this deficiency are defined and illustrated—i.e. (1) an independent legislative analysis model, and (2) a joint executive-legislative analysis model, and the three alternatives are compared. The conclusion reached is that the joint analysis model is preferable. Two alternative institutional arrangements—an in-house bureaucracy and contracts with outside consultants are also compared with the conclusion that a mixture of the two institutional arrangements is desirable.

This paper presents a broad, current assessment of the use and impacts of computers and electronic data processing in the larger municipal and county governments of the United States. It is based on extensive data gathered by a major research project which has involved both case-studies in forty cities and a large census survey of urban local governments in cities with greater than 50,000 population and counties with greater than 100,000 population. Three general themes arc explored: (1) the current ‘state-of-the-art’ of computer technology in local government, including general profiles of the governments using EDP, the characteristic administrative arrangements for providing the EDP function, and the types of uses to which EDP has been applied; (2) the impact of computers on local governments, particularly in the areas of operational performance, coordination and control, and local planning; and (3) critical issues currently facing local government in the effective utilization of EDP, including development and management of computer technology, technology transfer and privacy protection.

An important development in municipal (and other) budgeting is the use of budget simulations. These simulations receive as their inputs (1) proposed policy variables and (2) parameters that are assumed to be fixed, and they produce as their outputs pro-forma financial statements and other information useful in budgeting. The simulations contain mathematical descriptions of the components of the urban system and they use these descriptions to calculate the variables appearing in the output as a function of the policy variables and parameters.

Although budget simulations may be used to predict the financial state of an urban system. their principal purpose is to facilitate sensitivity analyses. The purpose of this paper is to present a method, called heuristic modelling, for performing sensitivity calculations with budget simulations. The sensitivity estimate is an estimated first derivative of an output of the simulation with respect to a decision input. It is useful because it allows a decision maker to estimate after each simulation, the consequences of a marginal change in the input. Heuristic models make it possible to perform sensitivity analyses after one or a few simulations, thus giving insights into the sensitivity properties of the components of the simulation, and reducing the number of simulations needed to arrive at appropriate budget decisions.

Urban information systems technology is reviewed, with emphasis on geoprocessing, segmented-oriented files and their application to urban data requirements, Implementation is assessed in terms of appropriate preconditions (governmental organization and data availability), detailed systems specifications and phasing. Four cities in India are then presented as examples of places where information systems technology may be beneficial but is hampered by lack of appropriate preconditions.

Though block grants from the Federal Government to the State and local governments were widely touted as solutions to the problems incident to Federal paperwork, the expectation exceeded the practice. For selected cities and urban counties. paperwork costs in Community Development Block Grants ranged between 1 and 10% of program costs. Thus. though the ‘federal paperwork’ problem may not be as vast as some assert, it nonetheless amounts to several billion dollars annually.

This paper is the result of an eighteen month effort to develop a short-term demand forecasting model for bituminous coal and lignite. The work reported in this paper was developed under contract from the Federal Energy Administration by a team from Arthur Young & Company and the University of Florida. However, the opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent any official opinion of any agency of the Federal Government or Arthur Young & Company.