Suchergebnisse

Chinese municipalities have developed a large stock of capital assets during a period of rapid growth and urbanization, but have yet to modernize asset management practices. Cities face challenges such as premature decline of fixed assets and spiking liabilities related to operating and maintaining assets. This paper evaluates the asset management practices in three selected small cities and towns in China, using a benchmarking assessment tool followed by an in-depth field assessment. The paper finds that overall performance is below half the international benchmark for good practice in all three cities. Management practices are considerably more advanced for land than for buildings and infrastructure. Key deficiencies in data availability and reporting, governance, capacity, and financial management indicate increased risks for local government finance and the delivery of public services. For small cities and towns where public revenues are often uncertain and limited, urban public services will be at risk of deterioration unless good asset management practices are put in place. The paper recommends strategic actions for upper and lower levels of government, to advance local asset management practices and facilitate the reform agenda.

The majority of European countries share challenges related to demographic change. A decline in the total population size and population aging have already spread from rural to some urban areas. The case of Serbia is no exception. The focus of this article is the parameters of demographic change analysed particularly for larger (cities) and smaller (towns) urban settlements - population size, birth rate, rate of natural increase, average age of first-time mothers, total fertility rate, share of the young and elderly population, average population age, and developing demographic trends. The paper also stresses the necessity to use other definitions for a "city" than the one used in legislation or statistical reports, by showing the extent to which results might differ depending on the chosen definition. One of the definitions used in this paper relies on a slightly adapted division of settlements used in statistical reporting, while the other is based on the Law on Local Self-Government (2007), the Law on the Territorial Organization of the Republic of Serbia (2007) and functional urban areas defined by the Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia. Cities and towns are observed from the perspective of their spatial distribution; therefore, each parameter is considered at the settlement, regional and district level.

"Andrew Manshel portrays, from an insider's perspective, the revitalization of Bryant Park -- New York's town square. Transformed from a seedy, drug-infested symbol of urban decay to the jewel of midtown Manhattan, Bryant Park became a symbol of New York City's rebirth in the 1990s. Manshel's work in Bryant Park demonstrated how public spaces could be safe, and proved that cities could not only be managed, but were vital, interesting and even exciting places to be. The creation of Bryant Park as a center of social activity helped to reestablish the social importance of American cities and demonstrated their attractiveness to both the global elite and young creatives"--

Book: v, 42 p., digital file ; The Healthy Cities project is a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative through which municipal governments and citizens can collaborate to devise and implement strategies for improving quality of life. In Canada, a project known as the "Canadian Healthy Communities Project" has similar objectives; it has been used to strengthen the economic and social wellbeing of many municipalities in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. Cities and towns of other jurisdictions have had variable success. This work is intended as a resource for non-Quebec Canadian municipal governments that have not established Healthy Cities projects as such, but which may want to develop initiatives based on principles consistent with WHO's Healthy Cities. It is a "companion" to L'Obsession du citoyen, vade mecum pour villes et villages ou if fait bon vivre, written by Roger Lachance and Martine Morisset and published in 1995 by the Reseau quebecois de villes et villages en sante. That guide also is a resource, specifically for municipalities within Quebec which do not have Villes et villages en sante (Healthy Cities) projects, but which may want to develop initiatives based on the principles central to the movement. The Lachance and Morisset book is a rich source of ideas: The authors identify sound management philosophies and practices of municipal government; they describe some initiatives which relate directly to the healthy cities concept and others which relate indirectly, which save money or in other ways free the administration to realize "healthy city like" initiatives within their municipalities. ; University of Saskatchewan

The industrial towns of northern England have been largely overlooked during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This article examines newspaper advertising, directories, public building and improvement in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield and identifies a middling, consumerist society, where urban culture was firmly rooted in the localities in which it developed. The nature of this culture challenges simplistic understandings of metropolitan dominance and questions the utility of national models of consumerism and 'politeness' that ignore the importance of regional variation and provincialism.

Chapter 1: 'The Mere Scope of it is Immense'. London and its Asylums in Context -- Chapter 2: The Politics of Administration -- Chapter 3: The Politics of Finance -- Chapter 4: The Politics of Innovation -- Chapter 5: The Politics of Architecture -- Chapter 6: The Politics of Difference -- Chapter 7: Conclusions.

Chapter 1: Doctrine -- Chapter 2: Social Criticism -- Chapter 3: Libertarian Habits -- Chapter 4: Tactics -- Chapter 5: Evolution and Revolution -- Chapter 6: Violence -- Chapter 7: Freedom and Authority -- Chapter 8: Philosophical-Literary Essays -- Chapter 9: Iconoclastic Ideas -- Chapter 10: Morals -- Chapter 11: Sociological Topics -- Chapter 12: Pedagogy -- Chapter 13: Spanish Life -- Chapter 14: Representative Men -- Chapter 15: Polemical Works -- Chapter 16: Readings.

Understanding how places, particularly cities and towns, are marketed to and consumed by tourists, is vital to anyone working in the tourism industry. By creating and promoting a unique branded destination, the successful marketer can attract new visitors to their city or tourism attraction. With the rise of social media, there is even more scope to explore how tourism marketers can use their own and other social media sites to communicate with today's tech connected traveler. In a new updated volume,?Tourism Marketing for Cities and Towns?provides thorough and succinct coverage of place marketing theory specific to the tourism industry. It focuses on clearly explaining how to develop the branded destination with special emphasis on product analysis, promoting authenticity and, new to this edition, the use of social media to create the personalized experiences desired by visitors. In addition, it contains a wide range of international examples and perspectives from a large variety of different stakeholders, alongside discussion questions and strategic planning worksheets. This book provides both practical advice with real-world application and a theoretical background to the field as a whole. Written in an engaging style, this book will be valuable reading for upper level students and business practitioners of Tourism, Marketing, Urban Studies, Business Management and Leisure Studies."

As all urban historians will know, the 1996 Consolidated Bibliography of Urban History is one of the main resources for those researching the history of cities and towns in Europe and the rest of the world. Analysis of its c. 20,000 entries is revealing. Just over 50 per cent concern urban population, physical, social and economic structure and a further 12 per cent are devoted to transport and communications and politics and administration. Only around 6 per cent of the citations refer to urban 'culture' in any form and virtually none concern music in towns and cities in pre-industrial Europe or indeed that of any time or place. In the light of this, it is clear that urban history still tends to be restricted largely to the 'essentially infrastructural' and is still considered to be mostly 'a matter of demography, distributive economics and consequential social arrangements and re-adjustments'.

This book focuses on urbanization as an attendant consequence of industrialization and sheds light on urban problems such as housing shortages and poverty of jobless people, and the housing and social policies implemented by central and local governments to deal with these problems. Through this book, the volume editor and authors convey the view that urbanization transformed economy and society spatially and in quality, and caused the change of central and local administration in the process of tackling various urban problems. The book features recent academic works on economic history of the city and housing, researched from an advanced perspective of comparative history in Japan. The aim of this book is to make works by Japanese scholars accessible to a wider readership throughout the world. This edited volume includes four articles (chapters) and four book reviews originally published in Japanese and subsequently translated into English. The first chapter analyzes the characteristics of the urbanization that occurred under the land readjustment projects implemented from the Sino-Japanese War to the reforms following World War II, by focusing on the conflict between landowners and peasants in Japan. The second chapter examines the construction of urban housing following Japan's defeat in World War II, focusing on the reconstruction of war-damaged housing from the perspective of the creation and distribution of private residential space under Japan's postwar regulatory regime. The third chapter examines the adoption of communal unemployment insurance systems in Wilhelmine Germany, focusing on the Genter system, in which the municipalities paid subsidies to the trade unions that provided their out-of-work members with unemployment benefits. The last chapter investigates the accumulation of the mechanical engineering industry in Paris region during the period 1939-1958, focusing on the role of the subcontracting system

Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, in both Western Europe and East Asia, towns and cities helped to shape the individual consciousness, against the background of a more traditional society in which collective values remained strong. Towns were centres of stimulus, challenge, and opportunity for residents and visitors, and the identity of the town itself, its character and history, became a strong theme in the formation of the individual. Writing and the circulation of texts played an important part in this process. Towns created artefacts, rituals, and memories that embodied their history and identity, but individuals positioned themselves and their families in the town histories as they wrote them. The seven essays in this volume range in focus from Renaissance Venice to nineteenth-century Edo (Tokyo), and from capital cities (Seoul, London) to provincial towns in France, England, and Japan. They explore the interaction of self, family, and social group and the construction of collective memory, examining autobiographies, letters and "exchange diaries", family narratives, and urban histories and collections. Together, they challenge the long-prevailing historiography that contrasts the emergence of the individual in European societies with the persistently traditionalist and collective character of East Asian societies in the Early Modern period

This book focuses on urbanization as an attendant consequence of industrialization and sheds light on urban problems such as housing shortages and poverty of jobless people, and the housing and social policies implemented by central and local governments to deal with these problems. Through this book, the volume editor and authors convey the view that urbanization transformed economy and society spatially and in quality, and caused the change of central and local administration in the process of tackling various urban problems. The book features recent academic works on economic history of the city and housing, researched from an advanced perspective of comparative history in Japan. The aim of this book is to make works by Japanese scholars accessible to a wider readership throughout the world. This edited volume includes four articles (chapters) and four book reviews originally published in Japanese and subsequently translated into English. The first chapter analyzes the characteristics of the urbanization that occurred under the land readjustment projects implemented from the Sino-Japanese War to the reforms following World War II, by focusing on the conflict between landowners and peasants in Japan. The second chapter examines the construction of urban housing following Japan's defeat in World War II, focusing on the reconstruction of war-damaged housing from the perspective of the creation and distribution of private residential space under Japan's postwar regulatory regime. The third chapter examines the adoption of communal unemployment insurance systems in Wilhelmine Germany, focusing on the Genter system, in which the municipalities paid subsidies to the trade unions that provided their out-of-work members with unemployment benefits. The last chapter investigates the accumulation of the mechanical engineering industry in Paris region during the period 1939-1958, focusing on the role of the subcontracting system.