Political and ethnic representation in Chinese local governance : analysis of the roles of the deputies of Leishan County People's Congress, Guizhou Province, China : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies, Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

This thesis investigates the political and ethnic environment of local Chinese political actors and their representational dilemmas in the Miao-dominant area of Leishan County, Guizhou Province, China. The investigation is conducted via two research questions: how do the deputies of a Miao County People‘s Congress in China play their roles in representing the interests of the state towards the community, and how do they represent the interests of the community towards the state? The achievements of the deputies and the challenges they face in their dual representational roles are a focus of the analysis. The thesis provides insight into the governance and politics of a local government body dominated by an ethnic minority and the interplay of these dynamics with central government authorities presided over by Han Chinese. The representative structure of the Leishan County People‘s Congress (LCPC) and its deputy membership is explored to understand how the deputies enact their roles in promoting, intervening in and restructuring development projects as both agents of and remonstrators to the central state. Case studies of village governance and cultural tourism are used to illustrate how the LCPC deputies are both coordinators and negotiators in a polycentric local governance structure. The fieldwork was carried out in the ethnic area of Leishan County. Relevant data was collected through four interrelated research methods: focus groups, semi-structured individual interviews, purposive observation and document analysis. The quantification of pairwise ranking by the focus groups highlighted the achievements and challenges in the key functions required of the deputies. The data also led to two further areas for in-depth analysis: centrallocal relations, and the political and ethnic representation of the deputies. The research found that when conflicts exist, political representation that favours the state prevails over community interests. At the same time, the deputies‘ representation of their ethnic communities is enhanced and augmented when they undertake to localise the national development policies and projects handed down by central authorities. Finally, the concept of polycentric governance enables a more precise understanding of the changing local governance systems in China among the diverse stakeholders present in the ethnic communities

Economic Debate On Spatial Functional Linkages And Its Application to Key Spatial Development Challanges In Poland

This article presents a synthesis of today's world economic knowledge and the results of the analyses concerning: a) the nature of spatial functional linkages, including network structures, b) diversity of approaches concerning the application of spatial structures in the policies of encouraging the macro-level economic development of territorial units. This debate has been applied for discussing concrete dilemmas of spatial development of Poland i.e. the concept of polycentric metropolis. Such metropolis is a key part of the spatial development strategy for Poland i.e. Concept of National Spatial Development drawn up in 2008-2011 defining the objectives and priorities of the national spatial policy until 2030. Moreover, the article points to issues that require further research and deep analyses.spatial concentration, agglomeration patterns, spatial development, spatial policy

The contribution of leisure and entertainment to the evolving polycentric urban network on regional scale - towards a new research agenda

The urban landscape in advanced economies transforms from monocentric cities to polycentric urban networks on regional scale. The growing amount of research that is being devoted to this transformation sticks to classic activity systems like residential development, economic production and employment and commuting. Synchronous to this transformation, a 'new' activity system, outdoor leisure and entertainment, increasingly leaves its stamp on the economic performance and spatial organisation of urban areas in general. Due to tremendous dynamics of consumption, production, and urban politics with regard to this activity system, it is subject of a composite of spatial pressures for centralisation in inner-cites, de-concentration away form central cities and (re-)concentration in suburbs and exurban places. Notwithstanding this composite spatial dynamics, leisure and entertainment are not part of the research agenda on regional polycentric urban networks. Based on brief overviews of literature on both polycentric urban development and the dynamics of leisure and entertainment in urban areas, this paper presents a few basic research questions in order to initiate the research agenda on the contribution of the leisure activity system to the development of polycentric urban networks on regional scale.

Breaking Down the Daily Use of Places - A Space-Time Typology of Temporary Populations in the Netherlands

In a network society, spurred on by technological, social, and economic factors, the process of land use deconcentration has resulted in various new urban forms such as edge cities and edgeless cities. While the consequences of this process for the distribution of the residential population and travel patterns have been extensively described and analyzed, there has as yet been little investigation of its effect on visitors’ use of places. The aim of this study is to develop a typology of urban, suburban, and rural municipalities located in monocentric and polycentric urban systems on the basis of dimensions of diurnal weekday variations in visitor populations. The dimensions used in this study have been derived from the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey. A two-step cluster analysis resulted in five types of municipality: ‘central place’, ‘contemporary node’, ‘self-contained’, ‘mobile children’, and ‘local children’. The results reveal that, compared with monocentric urban systems, settlements in polycentric urban systems are more networked; that is, suburbs in these systems are capable of attracting a substantial share of working visitors who have their residence in the core city (‘contemporary node’) and school children from other suburban and central city communities (‘mobile children’). Outside the urban systems the ‘self-contained’ type, which contains people at work, learning, and in recreation locally and lacks the inflow of visitors from outside, is over represented.

The impact of metropolitan structure on commute behavior in the Netherlands: a multilevel approach

The effect of decentralization of land uses on travel behavior remains an unresolved issue in the academic literature. Some US researchers argue that a tendency towards polycentrism is associated with decreasing commute times and distances. Others have, however, suggested and shown the opposite commute times and distances tend to be longer in polycentric than in monocentric urban areas. Using this controversy as a starting point, we analyse how monocentric and polycentric urban structures affect commuting in the Netherlands with data from the 1998 National Travel Survey. Four kinds of urban systems are distinguished: one monocentric and three polycentric systems. In contrast to most previous work, we use multilevel regression analysis to take adequate account of the effects of individual and household attributes. The results indicate that urban structure influences most dimensions of commuting considered here. Yet, individual and household level variables are more important determinants than characteristics of the residential and workplace environment. Gender, household type and their interaction effects remain important determinants of commute behavior in the Netherlands; particularly women in two-earner households commute less than average. Education and income are both positively related to the amount of commuting. Further, the effects of mono- and polycentrism on commuting are more complicated than the literature makes us believe. When individual and household level factors are taken account of, polycentrism does not always result in more efficient commute patterns than monocentric urban structures: in most polycentric urban areas commute distances and times are longer than in monocentric ones. Only when polycentric regions consist of several relatively independent and self-contained development nodes are commute distances shorter than elsewhere. Commute times are in that case comparable to those in monocentric urban areas. The impact of urban structure disappears when commute time is related to the time spent on work activities; the ratio between commute time and work duration is not much affected by the type of urban system in which workers reside. The fact that commute times and distances are not lower in polycentric urban areas may be attributed to the specific situation in the Netherlands: strong spatial planning policies may have obstructed the relocation of employment and housing in close proximity of each other. However, the longer commute in most policentric regions may also indicate that workers and their households not always behave as urban economic theory predicts. In any case, the results show that it is necessary to distinguish several types of polycentric systems instead of merely using a dichotomy of monocentric and polycentric in the analysis of commuting.

Enforcing the climate change act

This paper examines the enforceability of the duties in the Climate Change Act 2008 which require the UK’s GHG emissions to be reduced over time. Section B highlights how the Act’s other provisions must be interpreted so as to give proper support to these duties. The paper goes on, in Section C, to dispute objections that have been made to the duties’ enforceability – on the grounds that they are ‘target duties’ or ‘non-justiciable’– and argues that the courts can enforce them provided they adopt the amplified role which this new kind of duty requires; by seeking to forge effective but appropriate remedies. Section D suggests what form these remedies might take. Final conclusions are described in Section E

Towards a New Methodology to evaluate the Urban structure of the Metropolitan Systems; Chicago and Barcelona Metropolitan Areas as Examples.

The specialized researches have proposed various approaches to the delimitation of urban and metropolitan systems. Administrative aspects (administrative units historically inherited), morphological (urban continuum), some linked to the economies of agglomeration (population and employment density, urban economic activities, …) or functional interaction (home-work commuting) have been used for the definition of a metropolitan area. At the same time it has developed in recent years, an extensive research that has come to reveal the progressive trend of the metropolitan areas to the polycentrism. There is no doubt that the monocentric city paradigm, structured around a single CBD, is broken. The contemporary metropolises have seen the emergence of the phenomenon of the sub centers. This changes in the internal structure of many cities has extended the hypothesis that the polycentric city is more efficient than traditional monocentric city, from an environmental perspective (ETE, 1999), representing usually shorter home-work trips, thus contributing to more sustainable mobility. However, few efforts have been directed to address the three aspects together: a) the metropolitan boundaries, b) analysis of its internal structure, and c) contrasting the hypothesis of the environmental efficiency of polycentric systems. This paper addresses the challenge of defining an integrated way of both metropolitan areas and their internal composition, structured or not around different sub centers. The methodology developed of the Interaction Value simultaneously allows delimiting these two levels of urban structure: the metropolitan system as a whole and the subsystems articulated around the emerging sub centers, by measuring the functional relationships between housing and workplaces. At the same time, the Interaction Value assesses the degree of polycentrism beyond the simple identification of sub centers developed in the literature. And, so, support the hypothesis that the polycentric city structure is more efficient, from an environmental perspective, than the monocentric. In this way, and taking the cases of Chicago and Barcelona metropolitan areas as examples of these types of organizations, the efficiency of metropolitan structures is evaluated from the dual perspective of land consumption and sustainable mobility.

Rethinking the scale, structure & scope of U.S. energy institutions

This essay notes some of the key institutions created in the twentieth century for the purpose of delivering energy in North America. Those institutions are being challenged by a combination of stresses in three interconnected areas: reliability, economics, and environmental sustainability. The essay argues that these three stresses create an “energy trilemma” requiring institutional reform. We suggest that new and modi½ed institutions can best be understood if we evaluate them along three dimensions: institutional scale, structure, and scope. We consider real-world examples of recent institutions in light of each of these dimensions and note both successes and concerns that those factors illuminate. We conclude by noting that some institutional changes will be organic and unplanned; but many others, including responses to climate change, will bene½t from conscious attention to scale, structure, and scope by those engaged in designing and building the energy institutions needed in the twenty-½rst century

State and local governance in Solomon Islands: building on existing strengths

In dealing with the question of a future system for governance in Solomon Islands, two options have been put on the table: patch up the existing system or convert the existing provinces into states under a federal system. I question whether the public has had a chance to discuss a third option—that is, more effective use of local governance—and point to the variety of informal governance structures that rural communities have formed to fulfil their needs in the absence of effective government. I argue that better articulation of these kinds of organisations with the state may do more for development through broadbased participation than federalising