When affordable homeownership means doing it yourself

An affordable homeownership program that began with residents rolling up their sleeves and digging into hard work has evolved to become more efficient and effective. Franklin County's Paul Douglas explains why Rural Development Inc. got started and how its on-the-job learning has led to changes.Housing - Prices ; Housing - Massachusetts

Cultures of unruly bricolage : 'debadging' and the cultural logic of resistance

Arnould and Thompson note that the "marketplace has become a pre-eminent source of mythic and symbolic resources through which [people] construct narratives of identity' (2005: 871). Not only do consumers "actively rework and transform symbolic meanings" (ibid: 871), but in everyday practices they use "marketplace cultures [to] define their symbolic boundaries through an ongoing opposition to dominant lifestyle norms and mainstream consumer sensibilities" (ibid: 874). The paper examines identity work done with cherished possessions, in this case cars. By means of a netnography we focus on everyday practices where consumers rework brand identity towards their local identity projects

Master Planned Communities and Governance

In the last three decades, a number of master planned communities (MPCs) have been developed in South East Queensland (SEQ) as part of the response to the housing demands of rapid population growth. Developers, state government, local councils and communities play key roles in the production and management of infrastructure and community services in these Masterplanned communities. Alongside rising community expectations regarding quality of services, there is an increasing trend for developers to be involved in either the direct provision of infrastructure, or its funding, with local councils and the state government playing a facilitating role in provision of services alongside their more traditional role of direct provision. It is imperative to understand the governance structures as well as governance challenges of master planned communities at different stages of development. The objectives of this paper are to review governance frameworks and challenges for master planned communities at three critical stages of development: the visioning and planning stage, the implementation stage, and the completion stage. The paper has identified three distinct governance structures of master planned communities – single developer model, principal developer model and government led model. Three case studies from South East Queensland, each being representative of a particular governance structure, are used to evaluate each of the three stages of development with respect to the challenges involved in the provision of infrastructure and services. The paper provides a framework for analysing the relationship between governance structures and the development of master planned communities, focusing on the relationships that exist between institutional stakeholders, and on the potential impacts of the transfer of infrastructure and service provision from private management to community and local control

Building Jefferson\u27s future

2002 Annual report of Thomas Jefferson University

Does it work? evaluating a new pay system

This report focuses on the evaluation of the impact of new pay systems in large, unionised multi-site organisations by the organisations themselves. Evaluation of the effectiveness of a pay system, however, does not take place in a vacuum and relates to the aims and objectives of the pay system concerned. Moreover, evaluation is not an end in itself. It is, therefore, relevant to consider if any further steps were taken as a result of evaluation. Accordingly our research questions were: • What were the aims and objectives of organisations when introducing new pay arrangements? • What data did organisations collect and review to inform their evaluation? • What steps have organisations taken as a result of their evaluation? We re-appraised our data from 10 NHS trusts in England which had introduced some innovations in pay and grading in the 1990s. Additionally, we looked at seven multi-site unionised organisations outside the NHS in both the public and private sectors, which had recently made changes to their reward systems, carrying out interviews and inspecting documents. The main output is a template for the evaluation of Agenda for Change by NHS organisations

Effective Capacity and Randomness of Closed Sets

We investigate the connection between measure and capacity for the space of nonempty closed subsets of {0,1}*. For any computable measure, a computable capacity T may be defined by letting T(Q) be the measure of the family of closed sets which have nonempty intersection with Q. We prove an effective version of Choquet's capacity theorem by showing that every computable capacity may be obtained from a computable measure in this way. We establish conditions that characterize when the capacity of a random closed set equals zero or is >0. We construct for certain measures an effectively closed set with positive capacity and with Lebesgue measure zero