ESPON SUPER – Sustainable Urbanisation and land-use Practices in European Regions. A GUIDE TO SUSTAINABLE URBANISATION AND LAND-USE

Guides help you do things. You turn to them when you need to find out how to solve a problem. They are a form of knowledge transfer, written by experts in a way that is accessible and helpful to a wide audience. This guide was written by the researchers engaged in the ESPON 2020 applied research project on Sustainable Urbanisation and Land-Use Practices in European Regions (SUPER). It aims to help people and institutions engaged with land-use management at various levels across Europe to promote sustainable urbanisation in their territories. Overall, the guide offers information, ideas and perspectives to help decision-makers and policymakers to proactively contribute to more equal, balanced, and sustainable territorial development. The decision to convert land to a different use influences our quality of life and that of future generations, and, as this Guide shows, a large toolbox of interventions exists that can help alter prevailing land-use practices. Choosing among them is a tough decision, and implementation may require strong political commitment and bold leadership. We hope that this Guide provides the inspiration to accept this challenge

The Legal, Administrative and Managing Framework for Spatial Policy, Planning and Land-Use. Interdependence, Barriers and Directions of Change

The book aims to explore the legal and administrative aspects of spatial governance and the challenges that their interaction entails. It does this through a number of chapters focusing on case studies located in different geographical areas of Europe and beyond. By doing this, the editors shed light on a set of challenges that emerge around the world at the intersection between the legal and administrative spheres during the governance and planning of territorial phenomena. The issues addressed in the various chapters highlight how spatial planning activities continue to face serious challenges that have not yet been satisfactorily addressed. In more detail, a correlation emerges between the legal regulations that allow and shape spatial-planning activities and the socio-economic and territorial challenges that those activities should tackle. This is often a consequence of the path-dependent influence of the traditional administrative and spatial planning configuration, which presents an inertial resistance to change that is hard to overcome. A similar situation arises concerning the mismatch between the boundaries of the existing administrative units and the extent of territorial phenomena, with a system of judicial–territorial administration that does not always coincide with the boundaries of the fundamental administrative division of a country, leading to an overall deterioration of the conditions in which all actors involved in spatial development operate

Schooling and resistance to schooling in Betsiamites: a case study in a Canadian Amerindian rural reserve

Traditionally, the vast majority of Canadian Amerindians have largely remained\ud undereducated and such is the case in Betsiamites. This 2,500 people community is the\ud largest of the nine Montagnais reserves which are located in Eastern Québec.\ud There has been an improvement in the overall completion rates at the elementary and\ud secondary levels between 1970 and 1985, following the transfer of all the\ud responsibilities for reserve schools from the federal Government to the Amerindian\ud communities. But progress had come to a halt by the end of the 1980s and most\ud secondary school or university Amerindian students still drop out today. By focusing on\ud the reserve of Betsiamites, this thesis attempts to provide explanations for this situation\ud and to suggest ways to improve the effectiveness of Amerindian education.\ud The thesis is divided into seven chapters, including the introduction and the conclusion.\ud In the second chapter, the assumptions underlying this thesis, the data-gathering and\ud analysis methods and the ethical problems linked to the situation of the current\ud researcher as former teacher and current principal of the secondary school under\ud investigation are discussed. In the third chapter, it is argued that the 1969-1972 political\ud battle which allowed the Amerindians to govern their education systems has\ud overshadowed some basic and essential issues regarding quality education and is partly\ud responsible for the lack of improvement since the mid 1980s. In the fourth chapter, the\ud historical process which led to the creation of the reserve of Betiamites and to the\ud generalized dependency on welfare is presented. The fifth chapter analyses the daily life\ud of the local secondary school, from its management to the motivation of students. The\ud sixth chapter discusses the links between the local political, economic and social life and\ud local schooling and suggests ways of alleviating widespread educational\ud underachievement in rural reserves.\ud This thesis argues that despite an adverse socio-economic environment, Canadian\ud Amerindian schools could have become much more effective if it had not been for the\ud excessive politicization of the issue of reserve schooling and for the unwillingness of\ud Amerindian leaders and the federal Government to question the adoption, in 1972, of\ud affirmative action as the ideological pillar of Amerindian teacher-training programmes