Egypt: The state,foreign aid and community participation in urban shelter projects

The interplay between international policies and the interests and internal pressures of the state is examined in the context of project‐based community participation in urban shelter provision in Egypt. Three contrasting upgrading projects are used. Using the concept of interest mediation, the paper argues that, whilst the state may be receptive to external pressure for community participation, this reciprocity is constrained by the extent to which external agendas fit domestic needs and the social contract between the state and various class interests. The paper shows how the well‐recognized malleability of the concept and the limitations to effective implementation, cannot be explained by conventional project evaluation methodology and technical or bureaucratic factors. Instead, a method is used which links macro‐level international interests (such as aid agendas, geostrategic objectives) to micro‐level grass‐roots variables. Despite the growing centrality of the urban sector and modes of community participation in the changing paradigms of development, local outcomes are primarily influenced by decisions made in the broader context of the political economy—not by the specific objectives of housing sector policies or methods of community involvement in their implementation.     

Planning history in Australia: The state of the art

Over the last two decades, planning history in Australia has firmed as both a specific research field and pragmatic endeavour geared to planning practice. The emergence of an identifiable planning history strand across the borders of such disciplines as planning, political science, human geography, and history in the mid‐1970s gained much of its rationale from other developments at this time, including the academic legitimation of urban studies and urban history, an unprecedented level of governmental interest in urban and regional development, reassessment and reaction to traditional land use planning, and the benevolent imprimatur of the British Planning History Group. From the vantage point of the early 1990s, a substantive literature can now be critically surveyed. Diverse if not fragmented, parochial and sometimes quirky, the general nature of this body of work partly reflects the spatial isolationism and parochialism that have been hallmarks of Australian cultural and political development. Beyond the straitlaced general surveys of state, city and metropolitan planning, several established lines of inquiry are evident, notably colonial town layout, civic design, the impact of planning movements, evaluations of metropolitan planning, political conflict, and federal urban policy. The links with cognate fields such as housing, landscape architecture and, increasingly, environmental studies, are close. Alongside these general themes have come more distinctively Antipodean preoccupations like the planning of Adelaide and Canberra as well as the work of Walter Burley Griffin. Future challenges lie in more original research, integration, theory development, and policy relevance.     

Empowering the community through participation and action in historic neighbourhood conservation planning

This paper presents an attempt to initiate community empowerment within the participatory neighbourhood upgrading context of the Şengül Hammam Neighbourhood (İstiklal). We adopted the Participatory Action Research methodology, which aims to generate knowledge meaningful for the community towards upgrading and revitalizing the neighbourhood. Respectively, a series of workshops, focus groups, and community activities were implemented in parallel processes with different neighbourhood groups. In order to change the situation in the neighbourhood, the inquiry began by mobilizing neighbourhood stakeholders and planning the future with primary school children. Later, this gained the active support of parents, women, the municipality, local leaders, and civil associations, and led them to take collective action over garbage collection, cleaning up the neighbourhood and building a playground-park. The mayor at the time of the research showed interest in İstiklal but did not or could not give any financial or political support to upgrade the physical setting as a whole. The lack of support from the municipality in that regard and the neighbourhood being left to its own destiny caused a gradual dilapidation and loss of historic and cultural values.     

试论城市化进程中聚落建设的社会参与

一、各级设计人员要转变观念 1、专业设计人员要积极投入村镇规划。 目前,村镇的规划编制是由专业规划人员负责的。但是由于基层技术力量的匮乏,规划编制人员主要来自于三方面:一是大中城市的规划院所或大专院校的专业人员;二是上一级建设系统管理人员中熟悉规划业务的人员;三是乡镇政府自己拥有的专业人员,他们往往只接受过短期培训,独     

居住区绿地规划设计与公众参与

通过对居住区绿地规划设计及绿化功能的分析，提出目前存在的问题，结合公众参与机制，得出促进我国公众参与居住区绿地规划设计的建议和适合公众参与居住区绿地规划设计的决策方法。     

Landscape planning and community participation: Local lessons from Mullaghmore,the Burren NationalPark,Ireland

Issues relating to community participation in landscape management, as well as the manipulation of the community for political ends, are addressed. It is argued that the current fashionable participatory model of development and policy formulation requires closer scrutiny and may be unrealistic in certain contexts. A case-study approach is adopted, whereby the role of the community in attempts to construct a visitor interpretative centre at the foot of Mullaghmore Mountain, within the Burren National Park, Ireland, is analysed. The complexity of the term community is exposed, and important questions about who speaks for the community are raised. It is concluded that local development, including ecosystem and landscape management, is best approached neither from a ‘top-down’ nor a ‘bottom-up’ developmental model. It is suggested that insights from adaptive co-management models, which promote a multi-level management approach, whereby local knowledge and experience are incorporated within enabling local and extra-local institutional structures, may provide a viable alternative. Finally, it is argued that human–environmental interaction in a specific place, including the management of common pool resources, needs to be situated within the historical, ecological and cultural narrative of its human ecology.     

Landscape planning and community participation: Local lessons from Mullaghmore, the Burren NationalPark, Ireland

Issues relating to community participation in landscape management, as well as the manipulation of the community for political ends, are addressed. It is argued that the current fashionable participatory model of development and policy formulation requires closer scrutiny and may be unrealistic in certain contexts. A case-study approach is adopted, whereby the role of the community in attempts to construct a visitor interpretative centre at the foot of Mullaghmore Mountain, within the Burren National Park, Ireland, is analysed. The complexity of the term community is exposed, and important questions about who speaks for the community are raised. It is concluded that local development, including ecosystem and landscape management, is best approached neither from a 'top-down' nor a 'bottom-up' developmental model. It is suggested that insights from adaptive co-management models, which promote a multi-level management approach, whereby local knowledge and experience are incorporated within enabling local and extra-local institutional structures, may provide a viable alternative. Finally, it is argued that human-environmental interaction in a specific place, including the management of common pool resources, needs to be situated within the historical, ecological and cultural narrative of its human ecology.     

Metropolitan growth and community disparities: Insights from the state of New Jersey in the US

An increasing concern among regional growth policymakers who aim to promote balanced growth is the widening economic disparity among the communities in metropolitan areas. But the causes and consequences of such disparities have not been fully addressed in planning and public policy literature. Using the longitudinal data (1970–2009) for 566 municipalities in the State of New Jersey in US, this study shows that overall metropolitan economic disparity is attributable to interjurisdictional economic disparity. The inter-jurisdictional economic disparity arises from the disproportionate distribution of human capital and minority populations across municipalities. Our study also confirms that housing market constraints, municipal taxes, and public expenditures play a significant role in inter-jurisdictional economic disparity and polarization. Since narrowing interjurisdictional disparity is imperative for community stability and regional economic competitiveness, we discuss the policy implications for reducing inter-jurisdictional disparity within metropolitan areas.     

Local associations and participation in place: change and continuity in the relationship between state and civil society in twentieth-century Britain

This paper uses a review of evidence relating to the history of local civic associations to address the temporally and geographically variable relationship between state and civil society. We focus particularly on the historical development of participative practices, thus also contributing to contemporary debate about the potentials of increased community involvement in place-making. The paper has three primary purposes. First, we assess the role that local associations have played in advancing planning and conservation agendas. Second, we discuss the differing modes of participation that are most visible in the work of local groups. Third, we use a focus on the discussions of participation that took place in the late 1960s, which raised explicit questions about the relations between local state and civil society, to explore a series of problematics relating to the promise and the practice of participation. We argue that in seeking to understand both the past and the present of local associational involvement in place-making and management it is important to recognize that local groups have variable professional and social resources that lead to differences in their ability to engage in local governance. We also argue that this sphere of voluntary activity exhibits continuities with longer term practice, rather than the paradigm shift that is sometimes described in accounts of the development of participation.     

Developing local government policy and processes for community consultation and participation

Abstract

This paper documents the development of a local government community consultation and capacity building vision and strategy. A central argument is that traditional government perspectives on community consultation must be reconsidered to include greater opportunities for informed community participation in planning and decision making processes for a sustainable community.     

Developing local government policy and processes for community consultation and participation

This paper documents the development of a local government community consultation and capacity building vision and strategy. A central argument is that traditional government perspectives on community consultation must be reconsidered to include greater opportunities for informed community participation in planning and decision making processes for a sustainable community.     

小议城市和谐社区公共设施的规划

介绍了和谐社区的含义,研究了社区公共设施配套建设的现状和问题,探讨了国外的先进理念及经验,提出了社区公共设施配套建设的规划策略,从而建设具有强烈归属感和凝聚力的社区环境。     

The rhetoric of community participation in urban South African water governance

The persistence of the water insecurity challenge has manifested in weak government financial systems, insufficient technical capacity, and ineffective water governance systems in the global arena. This paper is a contextual analysis of community participation in water governance in urban South Africa since 1994. Limited community participation in urban water governance results in persistent inequality in access to water and sanitation services. New strategies and effective mechanisms are needed to include communities in water governance and pricing.     

The effects of built environment on community participation in urban neighbourhoods: an empirical exploration

Attention to the physical characteristics of the urban environment is the fundamental aspect of urban studies. Despite the many theoretical contributions that explore the interaction between space and social phenomena from a theoretical point of view, we still find today the absence of a general empirical reflection on this issue. In this article the results of the doctoral thesis of the author will be presented, where the relationship between the socio-physical characteristics of the neighbourhood and community participation has been studied. The reason why we focused on the community participation lies on the need to explore the role played by urban environment in affecting the propensity by dwellers to participate to local activities. Since most of literature on community participation draw the attention only to the socio-demographics factors, we want to stress the impact of socio-physical variables in affecting the phenomenon here presented. The research has been carried out using the contribute of environmental psychology, from which we took the methodology in order to address the study of the interaction between humans and environments. Multivariate regression models show a high explanatory capacity of spatial variables on community participation and the effect of sociodemographic variables is in fact marginal. The results of the analyses show that the socio-physical characteristics of the neighbourhoods studied are not a passive background of the social phenomenon, but are variables that intervenes directly in. The research thus reveals the active role played by spatial factors in neighbourhoods when local participation processes occur In the neighbourhoods, improving the scientific debate on the community participation and urban studies.     

Public housing,home ownership,and community participation in Chicago's inner city

The impact of public housing on the motivation of its tenants to engage in action to prevent its deterioration has been a topic of recent debate. This discussion has led some to advocate the sale of public housing to tenants as a means of giving them a stake in their community, and, thus, the motive to prevent its deterioration. By using the Urban Poverty Family Life Survey, this paper estimates the effects of public housing and home ownership on rates of community participation. The results do not support those who claim that residents of inner‐city public housing are less likely to become involved in community affairs than inner‐city home owners. The results also suggest that factors other than housing tenure status, such as church attendance, family structure, and the number of families known in the neighborhood are responsible for variation in rates of community participation. Taken together, these results stress the need to look beyond the simple causal relationship between community participation and home ownership.     

亚洲城市主义——公共街道中住区生活的动态性之解读

针对亚洲文脉下的高密度城市环境,提出“亚洲城市主义”作为一种新的研究和设计模式,并提出“一席之地”的概念作为环境设计中的焦点。研究关注的是“街道社会生态”,特别是在某一时刻街道上循环的事物、活动和空间结构的一幕最小的互相依赖图景,称作“社会即景”,倡导为高密度城市环境作契合文化内涵的设计。     

Income distribution analysis at the state Planning Region level

This study examines the role of subnational governmental units in the “distribution branch” of the Musgrave conceptual fiscal frame-work. The study analyzes the size distribution of family personal income in the 19 county North Central Planning Region of Texas. The measure of inequality used is the Gini ratio (Lorenz curves are also presented) which is calculated for each county and for the region for the years 1950, 1960 and 1970. Multiple regression analysis is then used to explain the variation in distributional inequality among the counties. The variables tested in the regression for each year included: median family income, manufacturing employment, rural-farm residence, an index of inequality in the distribution of education, female labor force participation, race, female family headship and age distribution of the population. The explanatory power of the variables varied from year to year and only the best results are presented. The results indicated that inequality increases with (1) the proportion of non-whites in the population, (2) the percent of the population over 65 years of age and (3) the degree of inequality in the distribution of education. In light of the results, the authors conclude that subnational governments could play a positive role in the activities of the Musgrave “distribution branch.” National programs with greater distributional equality as their objective could be reinforced through the activities of such subnational governmental units as regional councils of government. The COG roles in regional manpower planning and regional transportation planning are suggested as areas where regional programs can influence in a positive fashion some of the factors explaining income inequality.