Suchergebnisse

This paper examines the agency of non-government organisations as liberal peace agents and power players in Mindanao—a hybrid political community in the southern Philippines with a legacy of protracted armed conflict. The paper focuses on the mechanisms employed by development NGOs in managing and engaging with formal and informal power-holders, brokers and gatekeepers in conflict-stricken communities. This is an original study that utilises first-hand information gathered through intensive field research in different communities in the southern Philippines. Robust interviews with experts were conducted among local, intermediate and international NGO workers, officials of the Philippine Government, leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, university academics, military leaders, donor agencies and traditional local leaders in Mindanao. Semi-structured interviews were used, most being conducted in Manila and major cities of Mindanao. Ethnographic field observation was also carried out to produce a thick and rich description of the current situation in conflict zones. The paper presents a power map to illustrate the hybrid nature of the socio-politico regime, preserved by longstanding conflict. The map sketches the nodes and intensities of power that highlight the dominance of warlord clans in Mindanao

Animal Metropolis brings a Canadian perspective to the growing field of animal history, ranging across species and cities, from the beavers who engineered Stanley Park to the carthorses who shaped the city of Montreal. Some essays consider animals as spectacle: orca captivity in Vancouver, polar bear tourism in Churchill, Manitoba, fish on display in the Dominion Fisheries Museum, and the racialized memory of Jumbo the elephant in St. Thomas, Ontario. Others examine the bodily intimacies of shared urban spaces: the regulation of rabid dogs in Banff, the maternal politics of pure milk in Hamilton and the circulation of tetanus bacilli from horse to human in Toronto. Another considers the marginalization of women in Canada's animal welfare movement. The authors collectively push forward from a historiography that features nonhuman animals as objects within human-centered inquiries to a historiography that considers the eclectic contacts, exchanges, and cohabitation of human and nonhuman animals. With Contributions By: Kristoffer Archibald, Jason Colby, George Colpitts, Joanna Dean, Carla Hustak, Darcy Ingram, Sean Kheraj, William Knight, Sherry Olson, Rachel Poliquin, and Christabelle Sethna

With rapid economic development, the Chinese government expenditures at various levels have increased sufficiently. At the same time, the environmental pollution in China has deteriorated significantly. In this study, the city-level panel data of 106 Chinese cities over the 2002-2014 period are utilized to investigate the impacts of government expenditure on the emissions of three typical pollutants. Specifically, the total effects are divided into two types: direct effects, through which government expenditure affects pollution directly; and indirect effects, which refer to the indirect influences of government expenditure on environmental pollution through its impacts on GDP per capita. To control for potential endogeneity and introduce dynamics, the generalized method of moments (GMM) method is utilized. The estimation results indicate that the total effects of government expenditure on these three pollutants are very different: for sulfur dioxide (502), soot and chemical oxygen demand (COD), the total effects are decreasing, inverted-U and U-shaped, respectively. Furthermore, the indirect effects dominate the direct effects. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This anthology is the proceedings publication from the 2015 NAF Symposium in Malmö, Sweden. The aim of the 2015 NAF Symposium "Urban Mobility – Architectures, Geographies and Social Space" was to facilitate a cross-disciplinary discussion on urban mobility in which the juxtaposition of different discursive perceptions of the concept would foster greater insight into and understanding of both the challenges and potentials that it represents. It focused on some of the key themes currently facing cities and the urban: the transformation of the city and our built environment; migration; rural decline; the interaction between city, architecture, and inhabitants; the role of architects and architecture in the creation of democratic and sustainable urban contexts; the city and its representation; the politics of intervention; and the actions of governing and developing. This proceedings publication from the symposium collects six articles written by authors who all presented papers at the event. Contributing authors: Ditte Bendix Lanng, Ole B. Jensen, David Pinder, Magnus Rönn, Jani Tartia, Anne Tietjen, Anne Elisabeth Toft, Even Smith Wergeland, Simon Wind

В статье анализируются практики местного самоуправления в одном из регионов Российской Федерации Нижегородской области, связанные с уходом от прямых всеобщих выборов руководителей муниципальных образований к их избранию из состава депутатского корпуса, от модели «сильный мэр» к модели «сити-менеджер». Делается вывод, что городская политика в отношении локальных социумов является инструментом реализации жизненно важных интересов населения и при грамотном руководстве способствует смягчению диспропорций в социальном и экономическом развитии городов, ориентирует граждан на потребности их обустройства. ; The paper discusses practices of local government in one of the regions of the Russian Federation, the Nizhny Novgorod Region, associated with the transition from holding direct general elections of municipal heads to their election from deputies corps, from the "strong mayor" model to the "city manager" one. The conclusion is drawn that the urban policy on local societies is a tool for the implementation of the vital interests of the population and, with proper leadership, helps to mitigate the imbalances in social and economic development of cities, focuses citizens on the needs of their arrangement.

Recent findings have indicated that both in-country trafficking (trafficking of individuals from rural areas to relatively affluent towns and cities) and external trafficking (trafficking of individuals from a given country to foreign countries) are prevalent in Ethiopia. In 2012, the government acceded to the Protocol to Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (The UN Trafficking Protocol, here after). With a view to giving effect to the requirements of this instrument, the government passed in to law Proclamation No. 909/2015 (The Prevention and Suppression of Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants Proclamation), which is the most comprehensive of all laws adopted in Ethiopia to deal with human trafficking. Taking in to account the fact that human trafficking is exacerbated by the absence of regulatory framework on the employment of Ethiopian nationals in foreign countries, the govern-ment has also brought in to practice Proclamation No. 923/2016 (Ethiopia's Overseas Employment Proclamation). This article has examined whether the above-mentioned laws of Ethiopia comply with international standards in dealing with prevention strategies.

Environmental concerns and potential social-economic impacts associated with fossil fuels have turned cities into indispensable entities for supporting energy transitions in China. Pursuing a transition towards a sustainable energy system has become a major policy concern for the Chinese central government. In response, and on the basis of a top-down and conformance-oriented system of policy implementation and evaluation, the Chinese central government has launched various policies and targets on energy efficiency and production that lower levels of government have to follow. However, the translation of top-down targets and the measurement of conformance-based targets have both proved to be problematic. This paper investigates Chinese state policy on energy efficiency through four empirical case studies. It identifies how policy design of target setting and evaluation is both impacting and driving the implementation of energy efficiency at the local urban scale. We demonstrate how local authorities are faced with constraining barriers that can inhibit the implementation of centrally issued targets and policies. These barriers may even undermine local performance in the pursuit of ambitious energy efficiency goals, resulting in potentially harmful consequences.

Since the 1980s, a long historic and social process has transformed Rio de Janeiro, the so-called "Marvelous City"that enchanted the world in the 1940s, '50s and'60s, into a city presented in the international media as one of the world's most violent. How was this possible? What took place for this transformation to occur and produce effects that remain until today, more than thirty years later? The objective of this article is to examine some hypotheses for the advance of violence based on the use of firearms in Rio de Janeiro. These hypotheses are combined in the conception of a "social accumulationof violence,"which the author has been developing in his work [1-5]. This process began in Rio de Janeiro and has spread to all large or medium Brazilian cities from the Brazilian South to Northeast, although recently there are important inflections in some Southeastern states. In the past twenty years, nearly one million people have been murdered in Brazil, most of them young. A diffuse violence accompanies these deaths, migrating from city to city, from one region of the country to another, with no significant decline in the national statistics.

Tras una breve presentación del colectivo OPOVOEMPÉ, que ha presentado trabajos en los escenarios y calles de diferentes ciudades y países desde hace más de diez años, su directora, Cristiane Zuan Esteves, repasa a lo largo de una conversación su trayectoria como artista, el histórico de investigaciones y presentaciones del colectivo, estableciendo paralelos entre uno de sus últimos trabajos, dedicado al recuerdo de la Batalla de María Antonia, que ocurrió en 1968, durante la dictadura militar brasileña, y las cicatrices dejadas abiertas en el imaginario nacional frente a sus muertos, desaparecidos y torturados. ; After a brief presentation of OPOVOEMPÉ, a group that has been active in stages and streets from different cities and countries for over ten years, its directress Cristiane Zuan Esteves talks about her trajectory as artist, about the group's history of research and presentations, and establishes parallels between one of their last works –dedicated to the memory of the Battle of Maria Antonia Street, which took place in the brazilian military dictatorship– and the scars left open in the national imaginary by the ones who died, disappeared and were tortured.

Africa is rapidly urbanizing: it is the most important structural transformation under way in the region. By 2050, almost regardless of government policies, its urban population will have tripled. But the consequences are critically dependent upon policy choices: successful urbanization requires active and far-sighted government. At its best, urbanization can be the essential motor of economic development, rapidly lifting societies out of mass poverty. At its worst, it results in concentrations of squalor and disaffection which ferment political fragility. To date, African urbanization has been dysfunctional, the key indication being that cities have not generated enough productive jobs. If urban policies remain unchanged, future urbanization is likely to result in similar outcomes. This paper sets out how changed policies can unlock the potential of urbanization for prosperity. Primarily, it sets out the economic forces underlying this potential, and the specific policy actions they require. But policy actions do not just happen: they are generated by political processes that confer authority and capacity on public institutions. The paper concludes with a discussion of how politically urban policy-making might be improved.

[spa] El Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya vivió, a partir de los años setenta, un profundo proceso de renovación ideológico y organizativo en el que el ejemplo del Partido Comunista Italiano jugó un papel importante. El PCi, se convirtió en un modelo en cuanto a cultura política y producción teórica se refiere, pero fue sobre todo la experiencia de gobierno de los comunistas italianos en ciudades y regiones importantes lo que constituyó un ejemplo práctico en el cual los comunistas catalanes se inspiraron para trazar sus propuestas para la construcción de la democracia en Catalunya y sus municipios. ; [eng] The Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya lived, from the seventies, a deep process of ideological and organizational renewal in which the example of the Italian Communist Party played an important role. The PCI became a model in terms of political culture and theoretical production, but it was above all the experience of government of the Italian communists in important cities and regions that constituted a parctical example in which the Catalan communists were inspired to trace his proposals for the construction of democracy in Catalonia and its municipalities

'Heritage' is a term that is ambiguous in the best of circumstances; however, it becomes even more so in urban environments where conflicts of identity and culture are pivotal, as in Israel's mixed Israeli-Palestinian cities. In this paper, I examine the recent redevelopment of the Jaffa port, Israel. Jaffa's ancient port has had a significant role in facilitating industry, commerce and social ties in the area, and it has recently been remodelled by the city as a cultural and entertainment hub. Through interviews with key stakeholders and observations, I examine the role of heritage in the redevelopment using two broad categories: heritage of the built environment and cultural heritage, including the practice of fishing. I argue that while efforts have been made to conserve the waterfront's heritage, the redevelopment has resulted in an artificial space that does not speak to the local culture of Jaffa as it is interpreted by the port community, including the fishermen. The Jaffa case study suggests that more attention should be paid to the delicate role of urban planners in facilitating change in a politically and culturally contested environment.

The institutional mark and the planning practices can be the two principal dimensions for improving metropolitan governance, addressing the running challenges of several greater cities. Regarding the South West European capital regions, what are the main differences and innovations in their currently processes and models? This paper proposes an applied framework to present the metropolitan governance analysis. Through a comparative case study methodology, various elements and interviews were qualitatively measured, in the regions of Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and Lisbon. The conclusion finds a tendency to balance, between the efforts on those major dimensions of the metropolitan governance system, which does not prevent different paths to register: for example Ile-de-France has developed good initiatives in the technical processes, which then require some adjustments in the political mark, while Madrid had in recent years "less activity", in result of his institutional stability. If it can be obvious that institutional reforms lead to new challenges in planning practices, the research argues that the opposite direction is also true - that operational processes give rise to structural changes, proving their corresponding influence on responsibilities, resources and leadership, given by the political context.

International audience ; The rise of technological advancements has come at a time of heightened awareness of the importance of analysing our cities' environmental impact, as well as the buildings which constitute them. One criteria for evaluating the quality of life may be the assessment of one's access to direct sunlight and of its optimization through architectural form. The attention to solar benefits was highlighted by Knowles in 1980, who defined the concept of " solar envelopes " in which an individual building's maximum volume is calculated depending on its direct impact on neighbouring buildings' solar accessibility. This approach produces an empathetic architecture, conceived with consideration for pre-existing or potential developments and their inhabitants, yet maintaining the goal of creating a dense urban environment. Originally implemented on hand-built models, we presently propose a new software implementation of Knowles' concept, integrated into a well-known, pre-existing ergonomic Computer-Aided Architectural Conception (CAAC) program, and made possible due to the democratization of available 3D urban GIS models. This tool also incorporates factors such as building usage and the corresponding productive periods of direct solar irradiation for its occupants.

The state protection bodies of the White movement in the territory of the South Ukraine was the special organization that operated not only in the military confrontation, but this organization was an essential attribute of social and political terror against the population of cities in the South Ukraine. Author is researching the issue of the confrontation of the state movement and state security structures of White Guard government. Separately, the author defines the institutional instruments of special services of the White movement, which were used relative to the Ukrainian political organizations, leaders and individuals who in certain way have been configured on the cooperation with the Ukrainian government bodies. ; Державоохоронні органи Білого руху на території південноукраїнського регіону являли собою особливу організацію, що діяла не тільки в рамках військового протистояння, а й була неодмінним атрибутом соціально- політичного терору проти населення міст Півдня. У статті автор роз- глядає питання протистояння українського державницького руху із дер- жавоохоронними структурами білогвардійського уряду. Окремо автор визначає інституційний інструментарій спецслужб Білого руху, що за- стосовувався по відношенню до українських політичних організацій, діячів та осіб, що певним чином були налаштовані на співпрацю з українськими урядовими структурами