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This paper applies Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) to understand the diverse behavior of municipal governments in Ecuador to find common elements that influence the well-being of citizens in the short and long term. Information gathering was conducted in two stages: in the first one, a group of 16 national experts was consulted to develop the initial FCM; in the second stage, local experts from 220 municipalities were interviewed to collect information on the general validity of initial FCMs and specific values given to concepts and relationships in their municipalities. Results show the importance of certain concepts for long-term municipal performance, such as the need for a competitive entrepreneurial sector, improving human resources in the municipality, and, particularly, having a competent mayor with leadership skills and a forward-looking vision that enables the development of municipal projects required to reach an efficient and equitable coverage of goods and services throughout the city. Through the application of genetic algorithms, the FCM was calibrated to ascertain the long-term dynamics of municipal development and the optimal values of the concepts that would optimize the attainment of the set objectives. The derived outcomes suggest the desirability of the maintenance of, in principle, unwanted structures like financial transfers from the central government and the need to exploit natural resources to attain urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighbourhood groups are a feature of municipal politics across Canada yet are understudied in mid-sized cities. They are often portrayed as a mechanism for allowing residents to be more engaged in decisions affecting their neighbourhoods and to improve municipal decisions by incorporating the lived experience of municipal residents into that decision-making. It is therefore important to examine the formation of neighbourhood groups, whether they influence municipal decisions, and whether they are representative of their neighbourhoods. This article examines these issues through a case study of four neighbourhood groups in Windsor, Ontario. Using interview data as well as analysis of primary and secondary sources, it examines the top-down and grassroots forces that shaped these groups and their involvement in council decisions relating to vacant buildings in the city. The conclusions reached are that there were clear limits to the influence that they exerted on municipal decision-making. These groups did represent the interests of their communities and, when provided with external resources to develop their institutional capacity, they did help promote municipal policy change. This was, however, incremental change at the margins of the policy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the judgments of the British Court of Appeal in the cases, R (Campaign to Protect Rural England, Kent) v. Dover District Council and Oakley v. South Cambridgeshire District Council. In both the cases, the court concluded that the local planning authorities had acted unlawfully with failure to provide legally adequate reasons. In both the cases, a local planning authority was placed under a common law duty to offer reasons for grants of planning permission.

This paper analyses the policing strategies of private security companies operating in urban space. An existing literature has considered the variety of ways that territory becomes of fundamental importance in the work of public police forces. However, this paper examines territory in the context of private security companies. Drawing on empirical research in Cape Town, it examines how demarcated territories become key subjects in private policing. Private security companies are responsible for a relatively small section of the city, while in contrast the public police ultimately have to see city space as a whole. Hence, private policing strategy becomes one of displacement, especially of so-called undesirables yielding a patchworked public space associated with private enclaves of consumption. The conclusions signal the historical resonances and comparative implications of these political–legal–security dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article challenges previous interpretations of the Manchester Committee of Trade, and examines interest alignment among its subscribers. Its origins have close interrelation with the contemporaneous chamber of commerce in Liverpool, and between its business leaders: Manchester’s Thomas Butterworth Bayley and Liverpool’s John Dobson and Benjamin and Arthur Heywood. Earlier claims that Manchester’s Committee collapsed owing to divisions between sectors are demonstrated to be overstated. Instead, demise seems to have occurred by being smoothly supplanted by other initiatives, lack of engagement with members, and difficulties of getting them to pay. The most profound divisions between subscribers were personal — arising from religion, and divisions between ‘reformers’ and ‘loyalists’. These were early examples of the ‘King and Country’ conflicts that became critical in the 1790s. However, despite tensions, in the 1770s and 1780s Manchester business leaders generally drew together after disputes, sharing a common ground that supported a cautious ‘reform narrative’: seeking street improvements that were resisted by the local Manor, dissatisfaction with the Westminster Board of Trade, and discontent with government policy to make business interests subservient to political objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Calcutta Improvement Trust was set up in 1911 well after the plague scare of 1896, which indicated that there were many overlapping concerns that could not be immediately resolved. The autonomous nature of the Trust indicated that the colonial government distrusted Indians in the elected municipality. But state intervention also brought into focus the question of funding improvements pitching imperial and local governments against each other. The theme of the unhygienic Indian body was prominent among the non-official Europeans in the city and built a consensus for authoritarian reform linking the regulation of spaces to the regulation of bodies in the discourse about Calcutta's planning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A recurrent dichotomy of nineteenth-century urban politics is the frequent failure of popular democracy to 'persuade' civic elites to address fundamental matters relating to the urban condition. This article addresses the case of Grimsby which retained an abysmal record in dealing with such issues despite being, by 1900, the largest and wealthiest town in Lincolnshire. Since its exponential growth and economic development occurred substantially after 1860, a period commonly associated with democratic progress and increasing public accountability, this clearly raises questions regarding political hegemony and the legitimacy of urban governance. This article seeks to address some of these questions by considering the ways in which the town's lengthy history as an incorporated borough, and particularly the enduring influence of its enrolled freemen, might have affected the nature and evolution of political relations in the borough in the latter half of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1970s, an era of increasing fiscal austerity and deindustrialization, cities across the United States sought to arrest the spread of urban disinvestment. In 1974, faced with similar concerns, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, implemented a two-part planning programme. First, planners conducted the Relative Residential Status (RRS) evaluation to assess, classify, and map neighbourhood health. The RRS map delineated three types of neighbourhoods: healthy, threatened but savable, and unsavable. Second, Preservation Planning prescribed policies and resources based on the RRS neighbourhood types, concentrating resources in the neighbourhoods classified as threatened but savable. The paper examines the implementation of RRS and Preservation Planning. I argue that RRS/Preservation Planning functioned as urban triage by seeking to bolster the housing market in moderately healthy, white neighbourhoods as it prescribed market-determined, inevitable death for less healthy, African-American neighbourhoods. The main point supporting this argument is that planners borrowed and recalibrated RRS/Preservation Planning to officially and systematically redline neighbourhoods that would have been judged savable in other US cities. In doing so, this form of urban triage exacerbated urban decline and racial injustice instead of arresting the spread of urban disinvestment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Municipal Sanitary Commission (Commisione sanitaria municipals) was founded in Fiume (Rijeka) at the end of the 19'h century. The well known physician of the municipal hospital, Dr. Antonio Grossich was its first president. In his inaugural speech he pointed out the mortality within the city during the last decade as 28 ‰. Based on the monthly reports from the municipal physicians, Dr. Giovanni Benzan evaluated the mortality within the city as 25,9 ‰ in 1900. Mortality of children under age of five accounted for almost half of the estimated mortality (11,4 ‰), while contribution of tuberculosis was the second (5,8 ‰). Feeding with cow milk caused considerable mortality among small children, thus pointing to the necessity for milk control in the market. He also proposed destruction and resettling the population from the inner city area with poor sanitary conditions. In his opinion, municipal authorities' duty was to educate the population to promote hygiene, e.g. disinfection of homes and cloth, in order to prevent tuberculosis. Dr. Benzan complained about hygiene in the old inadequate school buildings, with technical faults. He proposed the systematic check-up of school children. He pointed out the importance of the new water supply system, that led to eradication of typhus in the city. The problem of dusty roads though remained, and his solution was to wash the streets. He promoted food control, hygiene in public places and disinfection of sewage water. His plans included building up of the new municipal hospital, waste incinerator, crematorium, public and sea-side bath, new hostel for workers immigrating into the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of street vendors has become a problematic issue in many countries. Despite various arguments that either support or reject their presence in urban environments, street vendors generally have been accused of disrupting the order of the environment and therefore should be removed. The arguments in this paper reconsider the position of street vendors in Indonesian cities, drawing on Mary Douglas' theory of 'out of place'. Such a reassessment of street vendors as the 'out of place' urban elements offers a theoretical basis for the practice of urban design and planning in dealing with certain unwanted elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience against an array of traditional and unconventional terrorist threats is increasingly important to the way towns and\ cities are designed and managed and how built environment professionals attempt to enhance levels of community safety. This is particularly the case with regard to crowded public places and transport systems such as light rail or trams, which are seen as particularly vulnerable to terrorist attack. This paper argues that contemporary terrorist threats and tactics mean that counter-terrorism in urban areas should increasingly seek to hybridise hard and soft engineering solutions in order to design and manage the built environment in ways that can reduce the occurrence or impact of a terrorist attack. In particular, it is argued that for counter-terrorism to be successful, inter-professional solutions are required for a wide range of public, private and community stakeholders that are (or should be) involved with the planning, design, construction, operation and management of public places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To achieve a world-class city capable of attracting business in a competitive global market, the municipal government of Cape Town, South Africa, like many cities of the global North, has adopted a model of urban revitalization popularized by New York City: business or city improvement districts (BIDs or CIDs). By examining CIDs in city center Cape Town, the paper casts light on the socio-spatial relationship facilitating the neoliberal post-apartheid regime and its governance. Analyzing discursive and spatial practices of Cape Town Partnership, the managing body of downtown CIDs, from 2000 to 2006, the paper reveals its difficulties in stabilizing the socio-spatial relations of a transnationalizing urban revitalization strategy and rejects the view of CIDS as simply a global roll-out of neoliberal urban policies. It highlights how CIDs are challenged from both within and outside of their managing structures by contentious local issues, and in particular by vast social inequalities and citizens' historical struggle for inclusive citizenship and the right to the city. Whether and how CIDs' inherent limitations can be overcome to address socio-spatial inequalities is an open question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a case study of Montreal's Pointe Saint-Charles neighbourhood, this article examines the impact that welfare state changes are having on the ground in a community known for its rich activist tradition. Drawing from a series of 23 semi-structured interviews with leaders of community organizations and with users of services, I explore how the role and character of community organizations are being redefined in this neighbourhood and draw out some of the implications for how we understand the impact of welfare state restructuring in local contexts. In particular, the paper asks whether we are witnessing a subtle but significant shift from a model of community ‘run’ organizations to community ‘based’ organizations, the latter a watered-down version of citizen involvement in which communities and their respective organizations are mobilized to prop up the saving legitimacy of governments but not given the requisite power or resources to effect meaningful change. Moreover, these organizations are increasingly being called upon to navigate a complicated maze of government policies and practices in order to qualify for state support. Not surprisingly, in this newfound vision, which privileges organizations with a service mandate, there are concerns that the space is shrinking for old-fashioned advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on Barnes and Ledebur's injunction that federal government policies should be ‘opened up to voices that speak for and about’ urban-centred regions. The study investigates an attempt to provide national government support for programs to alleviate homelessness while avoiding central-government dictation of community priorities. Such ambitions were implicit in the organization of the Canadian Federal government's 1999 National Homelessness Initiative, in which the federal government set a broad policy objective, to alleviate homelessness, and made funding available in pursuit of it, allowing apparently substantial scope for local determination of how the goal might be best met in each community. One component of the National Homelessness Initiative, the Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative (SCPI), appeared, at first glance, to offer a particularly promising example of this approach. A community-written plan supposedly guided funding priorities and program goals. The mandate of the SCPI, however, was written to address the problems of such centres as Toronto and Vancouver, growth magnets with hot housing markets. The conditions of funding proved too narrow for slow-growth Winnipeg, precluding the types of solutions that are most likely actually to alleviate homelessness there. The priorities identified by community members and stakeholders were largely ignored, first in the creation of the community plan, and then in deciding which programs would receive funding. We find that the federal government recognizes the importance of local initiative in theory, but has in practice been reluctant to relinquish control, and conclude by offering some practical suggestions for letting go. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey on private streets in Canada indicates that many municipalities lack ready access to information about the extent of building on private roads, or are unable to provide such information on short notice. Some communities report considerable development on private streets and admit concerns about the implications of this urban form. The study illuminates the growing trend of development on private streets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented discussing civic engagement between the higher education community and the city government in Omaha, Nebraska. Details are given outlining the work of the author as mayor since 2001 towards fostering better cooperation between the university populations and the city-wide community. Initiatives such as the Omaha Neighborhood Scan, the Omaha Community Partnership, and the Omaha Hate Crimes Project are examined, citing their use of academic resources for urban development.