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Urban regime theory has shaped the urban politics research agenda in the United States for the past two decades. The article argues that urban regime theory draws on public and corporate behavior and strategies that were typical to the industrial era in the United States. As a result, the theory is insensitive to changes in institutional hierarchies, economic globalization, and the emergence of new types of actors and issues in urban politics. Urban governance theory conceptualizes agency more generically that allows the theory to travel better than urban regime theory in time and space.

"This paper discusses how widespread poverty and exclusion are in urban China during the period of transition from central planning to a market economy. Two poverty lines have been employed to measure poverty rates in urban areas: a diagnostic poverty line calculated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) experts and a benefit poverty line used in the Minimum Living Allowance Program of the Chinese government. Both sets of estimates show marked variations by province. According to the former standard, the poverty headcount of China in 1998 was estimated as 14.8 million, with a poverty rate of 4.7 percent. According to the later standard, the poverty headcount for 2007 is estimated as 22.7 million, amounting to a poverty rate of 3.9 percent. Poor people are generally not living in absolute poverty, as their basic needs in food, clothing and shelter can largely be met. However, they have low incomes and restricted consumption potential. Economic constraints also entail adverse consequences like poor health, poor education and limited social contacts. Two groups of people are here considered as the new poor: unemployed or laid-off workers and labor migrants. This means that China now has two new forms of urban poverty which are caused by different factors and are combined with different forms of deprivation. Therefore, policy programs designed to eradicate poverty in urban areas have to be tailored carefully to the poor people's special needs. Job creation and a comprehensive social protection system are here proposed as two effective instruments in the fight against urban poverty." (author's abstract)

Nowhere is the urban challenge more starkly evident than in Asia. Many cities lack data and information on urban conditions and trends, which has undermined their ability to understand and manage the complex forces of urban growth and change.

Nowhere is the urban challenge more starkly evident than in Asia. Many cities lack data and information on urban conditions and trends, which has undermined their ability to understand and manage the complex forces of urban growth and change.

Die Bedeutung von Berufsprestige und sozialen Schichten in zwei
amerikanischen Städten.

Themen: Ökonomische Ideologie; Einstellung zu
Unternehmenskonzentration, Gewerkschaften, Unternehmern, Streik,
Mitbestimmung und zur staatlichen Übernahme von Versorgungsunternehmen;
Selbsteinschätzung der sozialen Schicht und Kriterien für die
Einschätzung von Schichtzugehörigkeit; Freundschaften;
Nachbarschaftskontakte; Zusammengehörigkeitsempfinden und
Klassenbewußtsein; soziale Mobilität; Arbeitszufriedenheit; Bedeutung
beruflicher Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten; Ortsansässigkeit; Mitgliedschaften;
Parteipräferenz.

Skala: soziale Distanz zu ausgewählten Berufen.

Demographie: Alter; Familienstand; Kinderzahl; Konfession;
Schulbildung; Berufsausbildung; Beruf; berufliche Position;
Berufslaufbahn; soziale Herkunft.

"Lecture Notes in Urban Economics and Urban Policy provides a wide-ranging introduction to urban economics and urban policy by Professor John Yinger, one of the world's leading scholars in urban economics. It draws on his extensive teaching and publication record to provide detailed lecture notes for both a PhD level course in urban economics and a master's level course in urban policy. Both the US and the world populations are becoming more and more urbanized, and these notes are designed to help scholars learn and teach about the factors that determine urban residential structure and that lead to urban problems such as inadequate housing, concentrated poverty, an inequitable distribution of local public services, racial and ethnic discrimination in housing, and traffic congestion. Although these notes focus on the US, many of the lessons in the notes apply to other countries as well. They also draw on Professor Yinger's extensive teaching experience and publication record in urban economics and should prove useful to many scholars who want to teach about or study urban areas."--

An "urban" definition of public policy problems raises great difficulties for the policy maker. If we emphasize implementation as a primary factor in evaluating public policy, we have good grounds for questioning the wisdom of an urban perspective. But urban questions have been and still are major areas of concern in public policy formulation. The ALP federal platform contains a long section on urban policies, reiterating what the Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD) was striving to achieve under the Whitlam Government. At state level, urban problems have been tackled with varying degrees of success and seriousness, although at this level overall urban perspectives tend to be ignored, for reasons we shall indicate. However urban planning authorities have been tried in most capital cities, and metropolitan plans have been drawn up for all of them. They have concentrated mainly on land use and urban form. By the 1970s a common criticism of such planning was that it left aside many social and economic aspects of urban growth. For example, one (admittedly partisan) government source—the N.S.W. Department of Decentralization and Development—noted "a massive and increasing trend towards socio‐economic segregation":…the remoteness of central city facilities …the cost of commuter transport and the inadequacy of community facilities in low‐income outer suburbs are operating to perpetuate economic under‐privilege.

Urban policy is unlikely to be a major concern of the Bush administration in the near future. Some of the reasons for this outlook are offered in this article, including the nature of Bush's electoral support and the benefits those constituencies receive from the allegedly natural workings of the "invisible hand" and the "invisible foot." Some countervailing tendencies are noted. A broader view of urban concerns is called for, a view that would lead toward a domestic policy with an urban consciousness.