Making tracks: the politics of local rail transport in Merseyside and Strathclyde, 1986-96

This thesis explores the impacts of geographical structures of local governance upon the development of passenger rail transport policies in the Merseyside and Strathclyde urban regions. Rather than evaluate policy outcomes, it describes and analyses the systems and processes through which strategic rail transport policy-making is shaped and constrained. The impacts upon urban local rail transport policy-making of the statutory Passenger Transport Authorities and Executives, other local authorities, public and private sector bodies and individuals, which together comprise the prevailing structure of local governance in each area, are traced. The theory of the urban policy regime is applied to explain the development of particular policies from their basis in local political and popular concern, through to their implementation or rejection in order to illustrate the influences of each member of the policy community in practice. The two study areas and 1986-1996 timescale are chosen to represent the period when two differing territorial structures of Passenger Transport Authority (PTA) co-existed in the UK. Strathclyde Regional Council, which acted as PTA for the Clydeside conurbation and surrounding area in the west of Scotland, was the last remaining example in the UK of a strategic urban local government with jurisdiction over an entire city-region. In contrast, Merseytravel, the PTA responsible for local rail transport development in Merseyside, an urban region of similar economic, social and rail transport structure to Strathclyde, was jointly administered by five smaller local authorities acting under the quasi-market principles of public choice theory. Through a detailed exposition of the development of urban rail transport policies in each area, the ways in which both types of institutional arrangement influenced the structure and operation of the local policy regime, and its pattern of policy discourse, are analysed. The opportunities arising for the effective expression of public accountability under each system are highlighted, since this is a central aspiration of the abolition of strategic city-region wide local authorities inspired by public choice theory

Visions of Resilience: Design-led transformation for climate extremes

This report presents results of a two-year research project led by the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) exploring community-based visions of climate resilience and barriers to change. Its methods put community stakeholders at the heart of building resilience to climate extremes in Australia. It demonstrates why and how local perspectives and values must have a seat at the table when disaster mitigation strategies are conceived and designed

Rethinking Urban Risk and Resettlement in the Global South

Environmental changes have significant impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods, particularly the urban poor and those living in informal settlements. In an effort to reduce urban residents’ exposure to climate change and hazards such as natural disasters, resettlement programmes are becoming widespread across the Global South. While resettlement may reduce a region’s future climate-related disaster risk, it often increases poverty and vulnerability, and can be used as a reason to evict people from areas undergoing redevelopment. A collaboration between the Bartlett Development Planning Unit at UCL, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements and the Latin American Social Science Faculty, Rethinking Urban Risk and Resettlement in the Global South collates the findings from 'Reducing Relocation Risks', a research project that studied urban areas across India, Uganda, Peru, Colombia and Mexico. The findings are augmented with chapters by researchers with many years of insight into resettlement, property rights and evictions, who offer cases from Monserrat, Cambodia, Philippines and elsewhere. The contributors collectively argue that the processes for making and implementing decisions play a large part in determining whether outcomes are socially just, and examine various value systems and strategies adopted by individuals versus authorities. Considering perceptions of risk, the volume offers a unique way to think about economic assessments in the context of resettlement and draws parallels between different country contexts to compare fully urbanised areas with those experiencing urban growth. It also provides an opportunity to re-think how disaster risk management can better address the accumulation of urban risks through urban planning

A critical evaluation of local air quality management and its contribution to meeting the EU annual mean nitrogen dioxide limit value

Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) was initially intended to play a supplementary role in assisting the UK government in achieving its European air quality obligations (Directive 2008/50/EC) through the implementation of action plans to reduce public exposure to local air pollution hotspots. Since the inception of LAQM in 1997, however, exceedences of health-based nitrogen dioxide objectives, primarily related to road traffic sources, have proved to be more widespread and intractable than previously anticipated. The failure of the UK government to achieve the EU annual mean limit value by the prescribed deadline of 1st January 2010 for 93% of the UK’s Zones and Agglomerations has increased the emphasis on the role of LAQM. At the same time, the lack of revocations of local Air Quality Management Areas has called into question the efficacy of local authorities Air Quality Action Plans (AQAPs). This research draws on the extensive body of evidence provided by the LAQM process since 1997 to establish if it possible to determine whether local AQAPs have been effective in achieving their aims and in improving air quality at a local level. By evaluating the degree of success achieved through individual AQAPs and then building an aggregate picture of progress to achievement of their goals, it has been possible to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the LAQM regime as a national strategy to meet national air quality objectives and to contribute to EU air quality legislative requirements.The key finding from this research is a confirmation of the thesis statement, i.e. that historically LAQM has not been a successful strategy in achieving selected EU limit values. An absence of adequate AQAP progress reporting and representatively sited robust monitoring data indicate that, collectively, the means to assess the effectiveness of LAQM in terms of reducing local concentrations of nitrogen dioxide does not currently exist.The thesis offers nine recommendations for Defra and the Devolved Administrations to improve the effectiveness of LAQM in assisting with the achievement of the NO2 annual mean EU limit value. They are proposed as solutions to the limitations and obstacles observed in undertaking this research, and in essence advocate a combined and coordinated national and local approach to reducing traffic-related nitrogen dioxide concentrations in order to achieve the EU limit value. The current revision of LAQM and the recent changes to the EU AAQD reporting requirements make this an opportune moment to instigate these proposed changes

20 Minute Neighbourhoods in a Scottish Context

The Programme for Government 2020 commits the Scottish Government to working with local government and other partners to take forward ambitions for 20 minute neighbourhoods: Places that are designed so residents have the ability to meet the vast majority of their day-to-day needs within a 20 minute walk (approximately 800 metres) of their home; through access to safe walking and cycling routes, or by public transport. This projects supports this by: 1) Considering the ambition for 20 minute neighbourhoods in Scotland, taking account of the differing settlement patterns across the country, and to highlight interventions that would support delivery of the concept, supported by findings from the baseline analysis. 2) Analysing international evidence of the success of interventions to achieve these ambitions, including identifying specific success factors, place-making impacts, barriers to success, regulatory frameworks, funding mechanisms and stakeholder engagement and buy-in. It uses five dimensions to capture the features and infrastructure, and quality of services and experience that make up a 20 minute neighbourhood: Stewardship, Civic, Movement, Resources and Spaces. The baseline assessment has shown that communities across Scotland have the required services and infrastructure that would allow them to be 20 minute neighbourhoods. This is the case across both urban and rural settlement areas

Risk Governance and Deliberative Democracy in Health Care

I argue in this article that the concept of risk-centered governance is the best theoretical paradigm for understanding health law and the health care system. Over the past 20 years, an insurance-inflected discourse has migrated from the purely financial side of the health system into the heart of traditional medicine - the doctor-patient relationship. Rather than focus on doctrinal strands, I argue that scholars should analyze the law of health care as a set of governance practices organized around managing and allocating financial, as well as clinical, risk. Over the same period, the body of law that structures most private group health insurance - ERISA - has effectively delegated control of risk pooling and resource allocation to the employers that sponsor group plans. Drawing on a history of ERISA that has not been explored in legal scholarship, I demonstrate how the private welfare state of workplace-based health insurance has evolved into the creation of what amounts to corporate sovereignty in controlling access to health coverage. The discourse of managing risk bonds these two components of health law and the health care system: patient care and access to coverage. From a normative perspective, the greatest problem with risk-centered governance arises from a democracy deficit. Because almost all health insurance risk pools are based in workplaces, there is potential to draw on the social networks created by work as a mechanism for building new, localized publics engaged with health policy. Treating insurance risk pools as potential mechanisms of governance, rather than merely as actuarial units, would force the publicizing (at least within the workplace) of myriad political decisions: who gets included and excluded in the pooling process, how allocation decisions are made, and whether there are systems of accountability and checks and balances sufficient to produce a risk allocation system that is equitable, as well as efficient and flexible. The article builds on the egalitarian potential of social insurance as a technology of governance, and argues for filling a gap that exists not only in the current system, but also in all proposals for reform