Demystifying Governance and its Role for Transitions in Urban Social–Ecological Systems

Governance is key to sustainable urban transitions. Governance is a system of social, power, and decision‐making processes that acts as a key driver of resource allocation and use, yet ecologists—even urban ecologists–seldom consider governance concepts in their work. Transitions to more sustainable futures are becoming increasingly important to the management of many ecosystems and landscapes, and particularly so for urban systems. We briefly identify and synthesize important governance dimensions of urban sustainability transitions, using illustrations from cities in which long‐term social–ecological governance research is underway. This article concludes with a call to ecologists who are interested in environmental stewardship, and to urban ecologists in particular, to consider the role of governance as a driver in the dynamics of the systems they study

The Politics of Race and Class and the Changing Spatial Fortunes of the McCarren Pool in Brooklyn, New York, 1936-2010

This paper explores the changing spatial properties of the McCarren Pool and connects them to the politics of race and class. The pool was a large liberal government project that sought to improve the leisure time of working class Brooklynites and between 1936 and the early 1970s it was a quasi-public functional space. In the 1970s and the early 1980s, the pool became a quasi-public dysfunctional space because the city government reduced its maintenance and staffing levels. Working class whites of the area engaged into neighborhood defense in order to prevent the influx of Latinos and African Americans into parts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint and this included the environs of the McCarren Pool. The pool was shut down in 1983 because of a mechanical failure. Its restoration did not take place because residents and storekeepers near the vicinity of the pool complained that by the 1970s, it was only African Americans and Latinos who patronized the pool and that their presence in the neighborhood undermined white exclusivity. For two decades, the McCarren Pool became a multi-use alternative space frequented by homeless people, graffiti artists, heroin users, teenagers, and drug dealers. Unlike previous decades, during this period, people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds frequented the pool area in a relatively harmonious manner. In the early part of the twenty-first century, a neoliberal city administration allowed a corporation to organize music concerts in the pool premises and promised to restore the facility into an operable swimming pool. The problem with this restoration project is that the history of the pool between the early 1970s and the early 2000s is downplayed and this does not serve well former or future users of the poo

River histories : A thematic review

Peer reviewe

Premessa

Nella prospettiva degli studi di Law and Literature, i saggi accolti nel volume indagano le idee di Leopardi su forme di governo antiche e moderne, sulla legge naturale e il rapporto tra natura e diritto, sul disordine normativo e la frammentariet\ue0 degli ordinamenti, a partire dallo Zibaldone e nei loro riflessi creativi. Un\u2019alleanza tra competenze letterarie e giuridiche, volta a delineare un quadro non privo di originalit\ue0 nel panorama del diritto sette-ottocentesco e per molti versi ancora attual

Lingua e cultura dell'Italia coloniale

La cultura coloniale non \ue8 stata soltanto il riflesso dell\u2019imperialismo italiano ma, per vari aspetti e da varie angolazioni, ne ha costituito il motore. Giovani studiosi di ottima formazione affrontano, in prospettiva linguistica, testuale e retorica, singole occasioni o fenomeni letterari complessi della lingua coloniale e postcoloniale, significativi a pi\uf9 livelli. Un percorso di ricerca che muove dal contributo di Pascoli alla discussione sull\u2019impresa libica, attraversa la stampa (di regime e non) dell\u2019epoca, incrocia la parola\u2013azione di Mario Appelius nella narrativa degli anni Trenta e le dinamiche del romanzo coloniale; per spostarsi, dopo il crollo dell\u2019impero, sul linguaggio della disillusione nei romanzi a sfondo coloniale di Berto e Flaiano, fino alla riflessione attuale sulle scritture postcoloniali e sulla vivace affermazione degli scrittori migranti. Il volume costituisce il risultato delle ricerche condotte nell'ambito del Prin 2006-2008 "Colonialismo italiano: letteratura e giornalismo" (Coordinatore nazionale: S. Costa; responsabile dell'unit\ue0 di ricerca: G. Frenguelli