New Principles in Planning Evaluation

Maintaining and enhancing living conditions in cities through a combination of physical planning and environmental management is a newly emerging focus of governments around the world. For example, local governments seek to insulate sensitive land uses such as residential areas from environmentally intrusive activities such as major transport facilities and manufacturing. Regional governments protect water quality and natural habitat by enforcing pollution controls and regulating the location of growth. Some national governments fund acquisition of strategically important sites, facilitate the renewal of brown fields, and even develop integrated environmental quality plans. This book provides recently developed and tested methods for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of planning and policy options. Several contributions focus on new substantive areas of concern in planning evaluation, including environmental justice and sustainable urban development. Applications of evaluation in several planning contexts are demonstrated, and special problems that these pose are assessed. Several chapters address how to communicate the process and results to several stakeholder groups, and how to engage these groups in the evaluation process. Each chapter employs a realworld case in practice, thus dealing with the complexity of applying planning evaluation, and providing practical advice useful in similar situations

A Global Review on Peri-Urban Development and Planning

Urban regions worldwide are increasingly facing the challenge of dealing with highly dynamic metropolitan growth and, at the same time, institutional changes like decentralisation and globalisation. These kinds of changes express themselves most evidently in peri-urban areas, where urban and rural life meets. These peri-urban areas in particular have been the stage for rapid physical, social and economic transformations, both in developed and developing countries. Peri-urbanization takes place here. Based on literature review, this paper presents an effort to identify generic attributes of peri-urbanisation and the way in which development planning tends to reply. Three major attributes are identified: peri-urban space (the spatial expression of peri-urban development), peri-urban life (the functional appearance of land uses, activities and peri-urban innovation), and peri-urban change (a causal and temporal perspective featuring flows and drivers of change). It is also shown that prevalent institutional replies in planning and development generally fail to acknowledge the dynamic and increasingly fragmented attributes of global peri-urbanisation

Troubled waters: an institutional analysis of ageing Dutch and American waterway infrastructure

Waterways are one of the oldest systems for the transportation of cargo and continue to play a vital role in the economies of some countries. Due to societal change, climate change and the ageing of assets, the conditions influencing the effective functioning of these systems seem to be changing. These changing conditions require measures to renew, adapt or renovate these waterway systems. However, measures with the sole aim of improving navigation conditions have encountered resistance, as the general public, and stakeholders in particular, value these waters in many more ways than navigation alone. Therefore, a more inclusive, integrated approach is required, rather than a sectoral one. Addressing these contemporary challenges requires a shift in the traditional waterway authorities' regimes. The aim of this study is to identify elements in the institutional setting where obstacles and opportunities for a more inclusive approach can be found. Two major waterway systems, the American and the Dutch, have been analyzed using the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to reveal those obstacles and opportunities. The results show that horizontal coordination and a low pay-off for an inclusive approach is particularly problematic. The American case also reveals a promising aspect – mandatory local co-funding for federal navigation projects acts as a stimulus for broad stakeholder involvement. Improving horizontal coordination and seizing opportunities for multifunctional development can open pathways to optimize the value of waterway systems for society

Developing Dynamic Leadership in YOUR Library

This paper, converted from a presentation given at the 2017 PNLA Conference in Post Falls, Idaho, briefly examines four areas that library professionals, regardless of experience, education level, station or title, can begin cultivating in order to better hone leadership skills. The four topics of: communica-tion, accountability and expectations, failure, and initiative and creativity are by no means an all-inclusive list of areas needing to be examined when honing leadership skills. These areas were chosen as a base-set of common areas all aspiring—and established—leaders should focus on to begin trans-formational leadership change.The intent of this paper is to begin the following three things:* Bring awareness and understanding to one’s personal leadership strategy within the four areas cov-ered;* Provide suggestions how to begin implementing change in one’s leadership strategy in order to be-come a more effectual leader; and,* Act as a resource for identifying one’s own strength and weaknesses in order to grow as a leader

Spectral shifts in quasi-stellar objects

Red and blue shift frequency distribution of quasi-stellar objects from nearby galaxie

Civil society contributions to local level flood resilience

There is an increasing emphasis on the local level as well as growing expectations regarding civil society actors in flood risk management in the UK. However, not enough is known about the potential contributions of civil society to flood resilience at the local level. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by conceptualising flood resilience at the local level across three phases inherent to flood disasters: pre-flood, during the flood, and post-flood. These phases act as the foundation for this paper’s exploration of the contributions of civil society to local level flood resilience. Data was collected before, during and after the floods through interviews (in 2015 and 2017) and from secondary data sources. The paper identified the importance of time and place when analysing civil society contributions to local level flood resilience. These contributions were dynamic over time with a strong initial response that diminished over time due to apathy, ‘active forgetting’ and lack of further exposure. Exposure and a sense of community strongly influenced civil society contributions to flood resilience in the Upper Calder Valley. Issues of representation and varying place-based capacities were also identified as relevant for flood resilience-based policies. These results have larger implications in our understanding of the contributions of civil society actors to flood resilience and suggest that whilst they can deliver better local context-specific approaches, there needs to be caution over the long-term sustainability and longevity of their contributions