Evaluating Collaborative Strategy for Local Partnerships in Urban Regeneration in England

The main argument in this paper is that collaboration as a means of involving different agencies into a common purpose can be the main ‘ingredient’ for the formation of a framework of a strategy, the so-called ‘collaborative strategy’. The utility of such a framework is given through the action of Citywide and Local Strategic Partnerships, which are the recent formations of partnership arrangements within the local government context. In particular, the applicability of the framework is examined in the context of urban regeneration based on policy initiatives that have been introduced over the last years. The paper also introduces a type of evaluation of collaborative strategy that is based upon specific aspects of partnership action. Despite its lack of empirical evidence it could be argued that the paper sets the scene for a framework that would be the base for partnership functioning. In this respect the testing of its applicability becomes apparent either in relation to potential fruitful policy outcomes or from the point of view that recognises significant dysfunctional elements at the operational and implementation level

Object as a Service (OaaS): Enabling Object Abstraction in Serverless Clouds

Function as a Service (FaaS) paradigm is becoming widespread and is envisioned as the next generation of cloud systems that mitigate the burden for programmers and cloud solution architects. However, the FaaS abstraction only makes the cloud resource management aspects transparent but does not deal with the application data aspects. As such, developers have to undergo the burden of managing the application data, often via separate cloud services (e.g., AWS S3). Similarly, the FaaS abstraction does not natively support function workflow, hence, the developers often have to work with workflow orchestration services (e.g., AWS Step Functions) to build workflows. Moreover, they have to explicitly navigate the data throughout the workflow. To overcome these problems of FaaS, we design a higher-level cloud programming abstraction that hides the complexities and mitigate the burden of developing cloud-native application development. We borrow the notion of object from object-oriented programming and propose a new abstraction level atop the function abstraction, known as Object as a Service (OaaS). OaaS encapsulates the application data and function into the object abstraction and relieves the developers from resource and data management burdens. It also unlocks opportunities for built-in optimization features, such as software reusability, data locality, and caching. OaaS natively supports dataflow programming such that developers define a workflow of functions transparently without getting involved in data navigation, synchronization, and parallelism aspects. We implemented a prototype of the OaaS platform and evaluated it under real-world settings against state-of-the-art platforms regarding the imposed overhead, scalability, and ease of use. The results demonstrate that OaaS streamlines cloud programming and offers scalability with an insignificant overhead to the underlying cloud system.Comment: This version of the paper has been significantly altered and the new observations have been obtained. Therefore, we withdraw the paper until the new version becomes availabl

Permanent Affordability: A National Conversation

Over the course of two days in October 2009, the Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development (ANHD) brought together key stakeholders from the affordable housing community, including local and national housing agencies, policy experts, not-for-profit developers, and advocates. The purpose of this forum was to engage in a discussion of challenges and opportunities related to ensuring permanent affordability in subsidized housing. Generously sponsored by Capital One and hosted by the Ford Foundation, this forum continued the important conversation initiated by ANHD's groundbreaking 2008 report, "Roadmap to Permanent Affordability: Analysis, Observations and The Future of Subsidized Housing in New York City."Representatives from Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. joined those from New York City to share experiences and best practices from the field. These cities were invited for two reasons. First, all have implemented some form of permanent or long-term affordability policy, which has proven effective while not impeding development. Second, the housing markets and development landscapes in these cities are quite comparable to New York's. Through this learning across varying geographies and levels of government, ANHD hopes to achieve greater national consensus on the issue and encourage workable policy solutions for New York City. The purpose of this report is to capture key points of discussion and actionable solutions from this convening and identify possible next steps in support of permanently affordable housing

Towards a developmental state? Provincial economic policy in South Africa

This paper explores the meaning of the developmental state for spatial economic policy in South Africa. Two main questions are addressed: do provincial governments have a role to play in promoting economic prosperity, and to what extent do current provincial policies possess the attributes of a developmental state? These attributes are defined as the ability to plan longer term, to focus key partners on a common agenda, and to mobilise state resources to build productive capabilities. The paper argues that the developmental state must harness the power of government at every level to ensure that each part of the country develops to its potential. However, current provincial capacity is uneven, and weakest where support is needed most. Many provinces seem to have partial strategies and lack the wherewithal for sustained implementation. Coordination across government appears to be poor. The paper concludes by suggesting ways provincial policies could be strengthened

Are species occurrence data in global online repositories fit for modeling species distributions? The case of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Final Report of the Task Group on GBIF Data Fitness for Use in Distribution Modelling.

Primary Biodiversity Data (PBD) are defined as the basic attributes of observations or records of the occurrences of species. PBD is a fundamental concept of biodiversity informatics since it is substantial in quantity and provides the links to organize other large and independent bodies of data concerning species (= taxonomic information) and environments. In fact, PBD is at the core of the exploding field of biodiversity informatics, which in some sense now underlies biogeography, macroecology, landscape ecology and several other subdisciplines of biology. A principal - and rapidly growing - class of research that can be performed using PBD is the estimation of a species' environmental requirements and the projection of these in both environmental and geographic spaces to estimate niches or distributional ranges, generally by using models of ecological niches and species' distributions (often called ENMs or SDMs, respectively). The largest point of access to PBD in the world is the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and hundreds of papers have now used GBIF-mediated data to fit and apply ENM/SDM. Experience has shown that GBIF, like other aggregated data research infrastructures, holds a number of potential problems related to incomplete or difficult access to all the fields in its schema, inconsistent information among fields, or simply erroneous or incomplete data. These drawbacks complicate ENM/SDM analyses considerably, and detract from the enormous scientific value of this information storehouse. Three overlapping communities participate in GBIF's data process: providers (museums, herbaria, and observer's networks), users (scientists, analysts working for governments, NGOs or the private sector, the public) and the technical staff managing the huge databases, web services and servers at GBIF. Each can play a different role in fixing data issues of GBIF. Our main recommendations for the GBIF Secretariat are the following: GBIF.org should serve indicators of precision, quality, and uncertainty of data that can be calculated practically, and preferably "on the fly", as well as summaries and metrics of completeness of inventories, at scales and for regions defined by the user. The summaries should display maps and graphs of completeness by region, time-period and taxa. The implementation of the GBIF information resource should go beyond unique identifiers of queries (DOIs for downloads, including the capability to re-run queries, http://www.gbif.org/publishing-data/summary#supporteddatasettypes), and to include identifiers of the individual data that make up the queried data. GBIF.org should include applications or functionalities enabling users to annotate errors or problems, and communicate those changes directly to providers, as it may be practical and appropriate. This point may need to be discussed with providers. A procedure enabling users to make accessible versions of their databases that have been improved and annotated should be supported, but this functionality should not lose the vital tie back to the original data records and the actual data provider. GBIF should partner with and/or support initiatives to do more for training and guiding users on the proper use of the data; such initiatives should incorporate actual expert uses in ENM/SDM to assure that current best practices are followed

The future of an illusion: Paradoxes of Corporate Social Responsibility

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological strategies as well as the rhetorical and discursive arguments developed in organizations and by individuals when they have to cope with the paradoxes and changes related to CSR. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses the perspective of the paradox as an analytical framework to parse strategies developed in organizations as they cope with tensions and changes related to CSR. The authors conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and the authors performed a qualitative analysis with the information compiled. Findings – The main strategies for dealing with CSR paradoxes and changes consist of developing perceptual and motivational biases as well as explicative heuristic ones through which, from a discursive perspective, a coherent and conciliatory framework is presented with rhetoric that play a fundamental role in justifying CSR as a present hope over a future illusion regardless of the past reality. Originality/value – The lesson to be drawn from the exploration is the following: managers and CSR officers need to leave behind fear, anxiety and defensive attitudes and accept the paradox by re-contextualizing the tension as a stimulus for conscious and reflexive confrontation with emotional equilibrium, this being defiantly motivating as a sensemaker. In this way, the approach to the present inconsistencies in CSR should not involve a dismissal of conflictive situations but rather the development of the capacity to transcend the tension emanating from them and to learn to manage organizations from this paradoxical reality

Undervaluing a Sector: The Enigma of Micro-Enterprise Self-Contained Accommodation in Australia

Commercial second homes operating as holiday rentals are an important and undervalued sector of the tourism economy. Research conceptualises second homes as life-style projects but collectively they form a critical mass and provide a valuable regional economic contribution. Known as micro-enterprise self-contained accommodation (MSA), this exploratory study of three Australian destinations investigates MSA networks from a key stakeholder perspective. Interviews and secondary data are used to gain insights into a sector hampered by stakeholder lack of knowledge. Digital marketing platforms such as Airbnb are thriving as they occupy the untapped and undervalued space

A Framework for Analyzing, Developing, and Applying Community Practice Interventions

Due to multiple factors, the community practice field struggles with incongruent community practice language and activities. In this article, authors unpack various challenges associated with community practice and explore implications for analysis, development, and application of effective interventions. Grounded in applied social science paradigms, authors offer a framework incorporating multi-paradigmatic approaches to inform intervention development and application. Principally centered in praxis—that is, reflection and action—this article builds on the work of foundational scholars to cultivate contextual interventions in planned change work. The authors aim to further develop the community practice knowledge base, expand what constitutes relevant evidence, and aid practitioners in making sense of complexity and contradiction in practice

Preparing Communities for the Golden Years: Approaches for Developing Age-Friendly Communities for Seniors

The heterogeneous nature of aging has led policymakers to reconsider how seniors are impacted by localized decision-making and implementation efforts (Remillard-Boilard, 2018). Forecasted by the World Health Organization (WHO), the population of seniors (60+) is expected to reach over two billion worldwide, surpassing the number of children being born across the world for the first time in human history (United Nations, 2006). To better address the local challenges faced by the aging population, WHO devised an Age-Friendly Communities (AFC) framework to guide urban communities into redesigning policy and intervention models to better reflect the needs of seniors while also allowing them to independently ‘age in place.’ Shifting social, health, and economic barriers towards implementing age-friendly policies help sustain, expand, and champion aging-related policy initiatives. Municipalities are well-equipped to address aging issues, given the ease in access this particular level of government has to its communities. The resiliency and success of age-friendly communities is a product of collaboration between various levels of government and community stakeholders. Prioritizing the need for neighborhood-level initiatives requires innovation, harnessing knowledge, and partnerships with various community actors to demonstrate the impact of successful implementation. Devising innovative solutions works best through collaboration. Recognizing how aging, and urbanization work in tandem requires an integrative decision-making model to drive positive outcomes for effectively developing age-friendly communities for seniors

Geographical Indications between Trade, Development, Culture, and Marketing: Framing a Fair(er) System of Protection in the Global Economy?

This chapter analyzes some of the topics on the current debate involving geographical indications (GIs) of origin that will be further elaborated by the contributors to this volume from a variety of perspectives and angles. As the title indicates, this volume focuses on GI protection “at the crossroads of trade, development, and culture,” with a specific focus on the countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This choice is due primarily to the fact that the analysis of issues related to GI protection in this region is, to date, not as extensive as the analysis in other regions, particularly in the Western world. This volume intends to fill this gap and aims, in particular, at analyzing the potential benefits, but also related problems, of GI protection for local and national development in Asia-Pacific countries. Trade- and culture-related issues, primarily issues related to the conservation and promotion of local culture and cultural diversity, are also central to the contributions to this volume. As the opening contribution of this volume, this chapter then aims at setting the stage and framing the context for other authors by offering an overview of the status of the GI debate, as well as emphasizing some of the trends that have become salient features of this debate in Asia-Pacific, and worldwide. These trends are, in particular, the following: the globalization of the GI debate beyond Western countries and beyond a “wine and cheese” agenda, or trade war, between primarily Western interests; the increased attention for the potential benefits of GI protection by developing countries and the often neglected attention to the potential problems associated with GI protection for local producers in these countries; and the increasing loosening of the definition of GIs as symbols of true geographical origin in favor of a definition granting exclusive rights based on the “historical reputation” of GIs