Financial Coaching: A New Approach for Asset Building?

Through a literature review and interviews with nonprofit financial coaches, examines the concepts, training, and capacity building involved in financial coaching for low-income families, as well as critiques of existing models and their implications

From evangelistic bureaucrat to visionary developer: the changing character of the master plan in Britain

Masterplanning is having a major effect on development, especially in Britain, Europe and the USA, though the theoretical base is ill-defined and process has received little research attention. Of greater concern is that masterplanning is the antithesis of sustainable development. The paper explores the evolution of the masterplanner, critiques the way this product-driven device has changed and suggests sustainable alternatives. Giddings was the lead author

Heritage Protection Versus Individual Interests in a Post-Socialist Country: the Case of Mšeno, Czech Republic

Large-scale investment is routinely believed to be the main danger to urban heritage. The measures designed to sustain heritage thus traditionally focus on steering investment into respectful ways of real-estate development. The majority of Czech built heritage is, however, located in towns and villages that rather face economic decline. Losses of objects of heritage in such places are often due to lack of maintenance. The case study of this article discusses the issues of heritage protection and restoration of the Enlisted town zone of Mšeno, where affordability and communication of values are the key issues in heritage protection

Stress concentration analysis of plate with circular hole : elasticity theory and finite element comparison

Stress concentration factor for a plate with circular free stress hole subjected to a uniform far field tension in single was investigated in this study. The stress concentration level along X and Y axis was determined by the elasticity theoritical method. Finite element analysis using LISA free source software was validate by the elasticity theoritical results. It was found that finite element analysis stress concentration factor results shows similar pattern as theoretical but higher near of the hole. Plain strain analysis with Quad 8 element type showed better results compared to plain stress with Quad 4 element type and plain strain with Quad 4 element type

Towards strategic-decision quality in Flemish municipalities: the importance of strategic planning and stakeholder participation

Legislation put forth by the Flemish government mandated Flemish municipalities to adopt strategic planning for their 2014-2019 policy cycle. The government’s assumption is that strategic planning’s approach to decision-making results in strategic-decision quality. Despite this assumption, it remains unclear whether and how strategic planning actually contributes to municipal decision-making. This study elucidates this issue. Drawing on survey data from 271 informants within 89 Flemish municipalities, we find that the systematic dimension of formal strategic planning and the participation of both core and peripheral stakeholders contribute to strategic-decision quality. However, the analytic dimension of formal strategic planning offers no significant contribution

Dancing on a Pin: Health Planning in Arizona

This publication challenges us to step back and reflect on the past, present and future of health systems. Take a deeper look at planning and how we got here, review the roles of competition and regulation, and learn about the health planning matrix along with the concept of health planning bridges. Discover for yourself if these thoughts and tools help the signal of quality health planning rise more clearly from out of the noise

Developer-Planner Interaction in Transportation and Land Use Sustainability, MTI Report 01-21

This study argues that significant unmet demand exists for alternatives to conventional auto-oriented development; and further that planning interventions that restrict densities and land use mixing in developed areas are a major reason that this demand remains unmet. In order to explore these hypotheses, this study carried out two principal investigations. The first is a national survey of developers, randomly selected from the database of the Urban Land Institute in Washington, DC, the premiere national organization of land developers. Overall, the survey reveals considerable interest on the part of the private development community in developing in a fashion that is more compact than regulations currently allow. This interest varied by region, with the greatest interest expressed in the densely settled regions of the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Developers in the Southwest and South Central regions (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana) expressed considerably less interest in developing in a more dense or mixed-use fashion than permitted by current regulation. Similarly, interest in developing more intensely than current regulations permit varied by setting. Little such interest exists for development in rural areas, but developers\u27 interest in such development in inner suburbs was especially keen