Editorial

Editorial by Alison Brown

Urban Policies and the Right to the City: Rights, responsibilities and citizenship

The purpose of the joint research project Urban Policies and the Right to the City: Rights, Responsibilities and Citizenship, launched by UNESCO with UN-HABITAT in March 2005, is to contribute to meeting the MDGs and reducing poverty by identifying good practices and initiatives in law and urban planning that strengthen rights and responsibilities, interfaith tolerance, and the participation of women, young people and migrants in urban management

Reviews

A. Barker and F. Manji, Writing for Change ‐ An Interactive Guide to Effective Writing, Writing for Science, Writing for Advocacy, CD‐ROM and Users Guide, Fahama/International Development Research Centre, Oxford, 2000. ISBN: 0–9536–9021–0, no price given. Softback (28 pages) and CD‐ROM

How students make sense of criticality skills in higher education

Critical thinking skills in students, employees and citizens are endorsed for a wide range of positive reasons. What seems less well-known and the aim of this research was to investigate how students make sense of these skills. A semi-structured interview was loosely designed, using questions to ascertain criticality skills before, during and at the present time with 7 students in their final year of a BSc Complementary Therapy degree. All participants thought the word ‘criticality’ was misleading to students unfamiliar with the term. All students used analogies and metaphors when providing their own definitions of what criticality skills are, often using linguistic binary opposed terms to define what criticality is as opposed to what it is not. Using the linguistic binary opposed terms, the author created a pedagogical tool ‘The Criticality Wheel’ that could be used by lecturers as stimulus for their students to make sense of criticality

Editorial

The authors in this issue highlight crucial issues facing Commonwealth local governments today − ensuring national influence, maximising revenue generation, encouraging probity in staffing appointments, or dealing with problems of social exclusion and alcoholism, are some of the varied challenges faced by local administrations

Editorial

This issue is published on the eve of the CLGF Research Colloquium, hosted by Ugandan Institute of Management on 13/14 May 2013 in Kampala, to launch the 2013 Commonwealth Local Government Conference. The theme − Developmental Local Government: Putting local government at the heart of development − ushers in some exciting new papers, covering issues of urban finance and development, strengthening local democracy, local economic development, and the crucial Post- 2015 agenda, which will be published in the next edition of CJLG. Our thanks to Rose Namara and Sylvester Kugonoza, coordinators at UIM, Philip Amis of the University of Birmingham, who chairs the CLGF research group, and Gareth Wall who organised the Colloquium

Editorial

The CLGF Research Colloquium, generously hosted by the Uganda Management Institute in Kamapala in May 2013, produced many outstanding papers, several of which are published in this issue. Our thanks to many of the staff and students of UMI, and to Lucy Slack and Gareth Wall from CLGF, who made the colloquium such a success

Editorial

Climate change, sustainability, diversity, financial probity, gender and governance are profound and complex challenges facing local government today, and are all topics raised by the researchers and practitioners contributing to CJLG Issue 10. Cash-strapped local governments are required to deliver core services (‘roads, rates and rubbish’ as Heather Zeppel’s interviewee said), yet are increasingly required to embrace broad social inclusion and environmental concerns, as our contributors show.The five research papers in this issue touch at the heart of equity and democratic governance. The role of critical theory in delivering good practice is explored by Eris Schoburgh in her reflection on local government and local development, and her comparison of Trinidad & Tobago’s structured decentralisation and Jamaica’s communitarian approach. She dismisses the ‘leading laggard’ model where linked settlement economies sink or swim together, and the ‘learning region’ which maximise local synergies to promote economic growth, to propose a new ‘hybrid model’ of local growth that tackles on-going issues such as gender equality, the informal economy and the local commons