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The development context -- Market roles and actors -- Policy instruments

Innovative geovisualization interfaces have created the opportunity for almost anyone with a reliable internet connection to generate and publicize their own maps and geographic information. Such advances have led to what Goodchild (2007) has come to term 'volunteered geographic information' (VGI): digital spatial data that are created by individuals who use the tools described above to disseminate their geographic data. Volunteered geographic information are receiving increasing consideration as researchers begin to develop a research agenda for examining their societal significance and authors have made some recent attempts to consider how VGI might facilitate new forms of activism, participatory democracy and neighbourhood empowerment. This paper briefly reviews three interrelated ways in which VGI could be incorporated into planning processes: in terms of creating increasingly open public contributions; its content and characteristics, and the purposes for which these new data sources might be proactively used in a local context. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

The range of usable information for public policy is complex and distributed but policy debate is still dominated by instrumental and centralised information constructed and controlled by functional and managerial experts—the creed of expertise. In recent years other types of 'usable' knowledge has begun to flow back into policy streams and in particular local knowledge (sometimes called community knowledge) is staging a major revival. This inductive knowledge is now being merged with the deductive paradigms of new public management.In the first section I illustrate the key features of expert‐based knowledge and how it pervades our thinking about how policy happens and the valued content of policy. Then I outline the types of usable information that flows into government and therefore constitutes the basic building blocks for knowledge. Finally, I drill down to expand on the idea of community knowledge and illustrate what it actually looks like.

The mixed economy of the welfare state armed with the new science of public administration was going to eradicate poverty. But it hasn't and the policy influence of the idea of poverty has fallen away. I explain this by looking at the conditions under which good ideas are likely to make it to policy status. Good ideas tend to be simple to understand; resonate with people's experiences of life; have leadership and a policy community around them; fit into program and resource structures of governments and seem capable of solving immediate problems. The idea of eradicating poverty has lost these features. For example, for the past 20 years poverty ideas have been knocked off their perch by economic reform ideas. Not only are there these competing economic ideas (which are claimed to be a solution to poverty), there is also a raft of new social capital ideas making claims on policy resources. The idea of poverty has been obfuscated such that we can't agree what it means any more or how to measure it or who is responsible for tackling it. Which, of course, means no one can be held accountable. Out of the muddle I suggest a way forward to make the idea influential again. For example, having some national goals and agreeing some basic language and targets would be a good start.

The culture of peace concept has been developing for 10 years at the UNESCO & the UN since it was first described at Yamoussoukro in 1989. It calls for a transformation & development of alternatives to the values, attitudes, & behaviors that are necessary & sufficient for the preparation & elaboration of the culture of war & violence: the concept of power as force; the image of an enemy that does not have the same rights as you; authoritarian social structure, secrecy, & armaments. The UN, in its recent Declaration & Program of Action on a Culture of Peace, has called for a global movement for a culture of peace. This commentary describes unique aspects of this movement, as well as actions designed to launch & promote its development. 5 References. Adapted from the source document.