Energy Transition and Urban Planning for Local Development. A Critical Review of the Evolution of Integrated Spatial and Energy Planning

The aim of the article is to analyse the evolution of spatial and energy planning integration, seen as a mean to foster local development, from the birth of the theme to the current prospects of shared sustainability and Decentralised Energy System (DES) solutions. The paper is a review of the evolution of the spatial and energy planning integration, exploring weaknesses and future opportunities. After an initial period of intense theoretical elaboration, the relationship between energy and city physical-functional organization and planning is still far from finding an implementation. The article explains this lack of integration through the analyses of significant steps in the last 50 years with the aim to outline current obstacles in achieving a more comprehensive vision of energy and spatial planning. The experiences selected highlight critical aspects concerning the trend towards the divergence of energy planning from systemic urban and spatial planning, also due to the low consideration of energy as a factor for local development. From the processes of decentralization and energy localism, some perspectives emerge which converge on the eco-energy district as a projection of the local energy community and which seem to enhance a more systemic and strategic dimension of planning

Socio-psychological aspects of grassroots participation in the Transition Movement: An Italian case study

In this article, we present a case study investigating the socio-psychological aspects of grassroots participation in a Transition Town Movement (TTM) community initiative. We analyzed the first Italian Transition initiative: Monteveglio (Bologna), the central hub of the Italian TTM and a key link with the global Transition Network. A qualitative methodology was used to collect and analyze the data consisting of interviews with key informants and ethnographic notes. The results provide further evidence supporting the role of social representations, shared social identities, and collective efficacy beliefs in promoting, sustaining, and shaping activists\u2019 commitment. The movement seems to have great potential to inspire and engage citizens to tackle climate change at a community level. Grassroots engagement of local communities working together provides the vision and the material starting point for a viable pathway for the changes required. Attempting to ensure their future political relevance, the TTM adherents are striving to disseminate and materially consolidate inherently political and prefigurative movement frames \u2013 primarily community resilience and re-localization \u2013 within community socio-economic and political frameworks. However, cooperation with politics is perceived by most adherents as a frustrating and dissatisfying experience, and an attempted co-optation of the Transition initiative by institutions. It highlights a tension between the open and non-confrontational approach of the movement towards institutions and their practical experience. Corresponding to this tension, activists have to cope with conflicts, contradictions, and ambivalence of social representations about community action for sustainability, which threaten the sense of collective purpose, group cohesion and ultimately its survival

Social capital, local institutions, and cooperation between firms

There are many different reasons behind cooperation between firms and many possible interpretations are assumed to be based on an assessment of endogenous benefits of collective action directly generated by taking part in a joint project. This paper attempts at verifying the interpretative capacity of models analysing the cooperation between firms using not only technological or organisational factors and rivalry between firms, but also some proxy variables of social capital, of experience accumulation in collective action and of institutional capacity for initiative. The specific aim of our work is hence that of providing an interpretation of Italian inter-province differentials in the propensity of inter-firm cooperation.35

Social Capital, Institutions and Collective Action Between Firms

This work is based on the hypothesis that explanation of collective action between firms requires partly different variables from that used in explaining collective action between individuals. In order to look at the problem of what determines collective action, a model has been built using alongside social capital, the historical tradition of collective action and the activism of institutional actors as explicative variables of associationism between firms. The empirical results confirm the theoretical hypotheses put forward in the first part of the paper. First, social capital, institutional activism and experience accumulation, all together, enhance the propensity to collective action between firms. Each variable plays a significant role in explaining inter-firm co-operation. Secondly, these variables, however, affect the behaviour of small firms while the large ones appear to follow a different pattern of conduct. Thirdly, the empirical findings seem also to suggest that social capital and institutional proactive initiative produce synergic effects on collective action. The two variables reinforce each other in their effects on co-operation. Finally, the positive correlation between social capital and institutional initiative emerging from the empirical results suggests that an increase in the endowment of social capital tends to rise the level of institutional activity and the other way round.social capital, economic institutions, firms co-operation

Teacher 2020. On the Road to Entrepreneurial Fluency in Teacher Education

No abstract available

PPPs in the EU: a critical appraisal

The full critical overview report on PPPs in Europe, as presented at the ASPE conference in St Petersburg November 2008. This report examines the experience with PPPs in Europe. It is presented in six sections: - Concept and definitions of PPPs - Overview of development of PPPs in Europe - EU laws and policies in relation to PPPs - Myths about PPPs - Evaluating PPPs – a framework covering cost of capital, construction costs, operating costs, transaction costs, and uncertainty - The lessons of the Metronet failure in the U

Exploring policy options for a new rural America : a conference summary

The United States needs a new rural policy. That was the conclusion of ten policy experts and 250 rural leaders from throughout the nation who met in Kansas City for the Center for the Study of Rural America’s second annual conference on rural policy matters, Exploring Policy Options for a New Rural America. The conference examined a menu of promising policy options and also considered ways to combine these options into a more coherent overall approach to the challenges facing rural communities.> Drabenstott and Sheaff highlight the issues raised at the conference. Participants agreed that new rural policy will be needed to help local communities seize the economic opportunities ahead. Fostering more entrepreneurs and tapping digital technology will be critical ingredients of a new policy approach. Participants also agreed that capital—especially equity capital—will be an important part of the mix. Cooperation among firms and communities was a major theme in discussing ways to reinvigorate traditional rural industries, whether helping manufacturing clusters to form, encouraging new alliances in a more product-oriented agriculture, or helping rural places make more of their scenic amenities.> Perhaps the most challenging discussion at the conference centered on building a new overall framework for rural policy and a new slate of policy options. The United Kingdom and Italy provided interesting new experiments in rural policy. Yet participants concluded that moving the United States from a longstanding reliance on supporting one sector to a broader focus on rural policy will not be easy. No matter how difficult, though, participants agreed that the transition was one worth making.Rural areas ; Rural development

The evolution of indigenous contractors in Ghana

This paper provides some preliminary insights into the emergence and development of indigenous general contractors in Ghana. General contracting is the means by which an individual or organisation takes responsibility for supplying all of the materials, labour, equipment and services necessary for the construction of a project. Whereas the development of general contracting in places like the UK is well documented, the evolution of contractors in Ghana is not clearly articulated in the literature. Therefore, the main question in this paper is: How did indigenous contractors evolve in Ghana? To examine and analyze the research question, a literature review on similar developments elsewhere was first carried out. This was followed by discussions and unstructured interviews with experienced construction practitioners in Ghana most of whom were Quantity Surveyors. Most interviewees narrated their knowledge of contractor development in Ghana dating back to around 1945. From the explanations given, it was possible to develop a general understanding of the research question and to make a qualitative interpretation of the respondents’ comments and to draw some conclusions. General contractors emerged rapidly in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) shortly after World War II. Most were Italian master craftsmen in Ghana who were capitalized by the British colonial government to develop infrastructure in the Gold Coast following devastating effects of the war. Some of the indigenous people learned from the Italians and also established construction firms. Thus, general contracting in Ghana has a relatively short history in comparison to countries like Britain where the profession developed rapidly in the early part of the 19th century in response to the industrial revolution. Although they may possess sufficient technical expertise, many indigenous contractors in Ghana today lack the capacity to carry out major projects because of low capitalization and poor organisational structures. The current construction market in Ghana is dominated by foreign contractors. To become major players in the market, indigenous Ghanaian contractors should build strong organisational structures and pursue mergers and joint venturing to boost their financial, technical and managerial capacity

COORDINATION, COOPERATION, AND THE EXTENDED COASEAN APPROACH TO ECONOMIC POLICY

The Coasean way to deal with the cooperation failure that is implicit in Pareto inefficiency is to remove or lessen the obstacles to cooperation through the attribution of property rights and the elimination or reduction of transaction costs. The relevance of this approach is however undermined by some intrinsic difficulties to its application in a real world context, such as those arising from the number and indeterminacy of the interested parties, as well as from the free rider problem. A way to extend the Coasean approach taking into account those real life limitations is to consider the local authorities as representatives of the interest of their local constituencies and, through the provision of an adequate institutional framework, to enhance the opportunities for cooperation through voluntary agreements involving private and public parties. Thus the extent of cooperation could be widened, as opposite to traditional remedial actions relying on non- contractual, or direct entrepreneurial action by the state. With the reduction in the appeal of direct and coercive action by the state a number of institutions emphasising the contractual cooperation between public and private parties have effectively grown of importance, as wide apart as the township and village enterprises in China, or the “programmazione negoziata” in Italy. In the final part of the paper the lattercoase theorem, economic policy, transition, property rights, cooperation, coordination