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Focusing on two rural cities in Minnesota, this paper analyses ways in which these communities have gone about providing information technology to their citizens. This paper will explain why one city has chosen to take an entrepreneurial approach to networking and the other city has chosen a more collaborative approach, promoting equal access for its citizens. Based on interviews, focus groups, and surveys in the two cities, we find that these divergent approaches are related to fundamental cultural differences in the two communities. One city seems to have a more pronounced reservoir of social capital, meaning that people in this community tend to be more trusting, have more cohesive social ties and are prone toward collaboration. Cooperation and social trust, particularly among community leaders, seem to have played large roles in triggering the development of a community electronic network. Moreover, we discover that political engagement and interpersonal trust among the citizenry in this city seem to be pivotal in sustaining and perpetuating the community endeavor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The regulation of American cinema during the Progressive era was an exercise in governmentality with multiple spatial rationalities operating through networks at multiple scales. Although produced and distributed nationally, moving pictures were consumed locally. The National Board of Censorship governed movie content from New York, where most major film producers were headquartered at that time, yet it was dependent upon the activities of social reformers and officials in cities across the country in monitoring manufacturers' compliance with its decisions. But as those correspondents often regarded the image on the screen as intimately associated with other aspects of the movie-going experience, local efforts to regulate film often went further, depending upon local concerns about spectators. This paper explores how cinema was problematized in Atlanta and Minneapolis, two regional centers with different sexual and racial politics. It does so by building on recent discussions of spatial rationalities of moral reform efforts, and in this case, how tensions between generative and vitalist spatial rationalities conspired to produce a variable geography of cinema regulation that was networked and multi-scalar, and how these experiments in regulating a new medium of visual communication began to articulate a distinctive perceptual rationality of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water allocation systems are challenged by hydrologic droughts, which reduce available water supplies and can adversely affect human and environmental systems. To address this problem, drought management mechanisms have been instituted in jurisdictions around the world. Historically, these mechanisms have involved a crisis management or reactive approach. An important trend during the past decade in places such as the United States has been a shift to a more proactive approach, emphasizing drought preparedness and local involvement. Unfortunately, local capacity for drought planning is highly variable, with some local governments and organizations proving to be more capable than others of taking on new responsibilities. This paper reports on a study of drought planning and water allocation in the State of Minnesota. Factors facilitating and constraining local capacity for drought planning were identified using in-depth key informant interviews with state officials and members of two small Minnesota cities, combined with an analysis of pertinent documentation. A key factor contributing to the effectiveness of Minnesota''s system is a water allocation system with explicit priorities during shortages, and provisions for restrictions. At the same time, the requirement that water suppliers create Public Water Supply Emergency Conservation Plans (PWSECP) clarifies the roles and responsibilities of key local actors. Unfortunately, the research revealed that mandated PWSECP are not always implemented, and that awareness of drought and drought planning measures in general may be poor at the local level. From the perspective of the two cities evaluated, factors that contributed to local capacity included sound financial and human resources, and (in some cases) effective vertical and horizontal linkages. This analysis of experiences in Minnesota highlights problems that can occur when senior governments establish policy frameworks that increase responsibilities at the local level without also addressing local capacity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]