Geography
Local Government Policies
Local government policies refer to the regulations and guidelines implemented by local authorities to manage and govern their respective areas. These policies address a wide range of issues, including land use, zoning, public services, and environmental protection. They are designed to address the specific needs and challenges of a particular locality, and they play a crucial role in shaping the physical and social landscape of a region.
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7 Key excerpts on "Local Government Policies"
eBook - PDF- Kevin R Cox, Murray Low, Jennifer Robinson, Kevin R Cox, Murray Low, Jennifer Robinson(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
7 Planning, Space and Government M a r g o H u x l e y INTRODUCTION Any delineation of space or territory and prob-lematization of its characteristics implies the need for some form of administration (Hebbert, 1998: 100–2). This means that land use or spatial planning systems are pivotal elements in the government of territories and citizens. Conversely, almost all forms of state policy can be seen to have spa-tial implications of some sort. But the policies and practices, variously known as spatial, urban, regional or city planning, land use planning or development control, are some of the most explic-itly spatial forms of state attempts to manage social and economic relations. Spatial planning and land use control systems aim to allocate land uses to spaces, to order boundaries and connections between them, and to manage the political consequences of such allo-cations and delineations in endeavours to influ-ence interactions between individuals, populations, environments and spaces within their territories. Conflicts focused on the built or natural envi-ronment, on processes of spatial development, or spatial inequalities in distributions of resources or decision-making power, involve challenges to the aims, forms, procedures or outcomes of planning systems at specific times and places. Studies of spa-tial or land use planning are therefore central to the concerns of political geography. This chapter aims to provide an overview of some key implications for planning that can be drawn from different theoretical perspectives and the significance of such conceptualizations for thinking about the relations between states, territories and citizens. The structuring axes of this overview are: first, a discussion of the aims of planning to produce economic efficiency, social harmony and/or healthy and aesthetic environments; and second, an outline of different theoretical analyses of planning’s capacity to produce effects.
eBook - PDFNew Forces Of Development, The: Territorial Policy For Endogenous Development
Territorial Policy for Endogenous Development
- Antonio Vazquez-barquero(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- World Scientific(Publisher)
Chapter 7 Local Development Policies The high unemployment and poverty rates experienced by many developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s called for a profound change in their development policies. In order to respond to global-ization, increased competition, and changes in market conditions, these countries needed to restructure their productive systems. The local development policy represents a spontaneous response on behalf of local communities for the purpose of neutralizing the negative effects of globalization and productive adjustment on employment and the population’s standard of living. Faced with the limitations of the macroeconomic policies in reaching the goals of the eradication of poverty, job creation, and improved social welfare, the local and regional actors attempted to manage the adjustment process. Through their actions, they tried to increase the productivity of the farms and the industrial and service firms, and to improve competitiveness in the national and interna-tional markets of firms located within their territories. However, the economic, political, and institutional environment in which local initiatives were implemented has changed since mid-2007, when developed and emerging economies found themselves affected by the financial crisis that has spilled over into the real economy. How have local development policies responded to global challenges? Do they help create the conditions for sustainable devel-opment? Are local policy tools making the productive system more competitive and creating jobs? Which are the most efficient policy tools? How are local initiatives designed and implemented? What is the role played by local actors and civil society? What lessons can be 165
eBook - PDF- John A Agnew, David N Livingstone, John A Agnew, David N Livingstone, SAGE Publications Ltd(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
While there is clearly some overlap between these themes, they provide an overarching framework for this brief explo-ration. Furthermore, it should be stressed that each of these can be addressed at a variety of scales, from the global through the national to the local. The chapter also seeks to combine three kinds of evidence: published literatures on the questions addressed; responses to a questionnaire survey and interviews among geographers working in government and the policy arena specifically undertaken for this chapter; and my own experiences of working for a UK government department and an independent international foundation. The focus is primarily on the United Kingdom and the United States, but it must also be empha-sised that the role of geographers in policy formulation and government varies signifi-cantly depending on the country and context. Such an agenda begs important questions about the roles of academics within society THE ROLE OF GEOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHERS IN POLICY 273 more generally. While this is not the place to explore this in detail (although see Habermas 1974, 1978; Unwin 1992), there has in recent years been a healthy debate within geography over the extent to which geographical research should indeed be addressing issues of con-temporary concern (Unwin 2006). Historically, from the medieval period through to the early twentieth century, geographers participated actively in ‘discovery’, ‘exploration’ and the ‘colonial enterprise’. Thus, writing at the dawn of the Christian era, Strabo (1949: 31) was able to argue convincingly that ‘the greater part of geography subserves the needs of states’ and ‘that geography as a whole has a direct bearing upon the activities of commanders’. Such arguments remained highly pertinent to geographical practice until well into the twentieth century.
eBook - PDFThe Politics of Scale in Policy
Scalecraft and Education Governance
- Papanastasiou, Natalie(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Policy Press(Publisher)
Education policy and governance is an area which has received little attention in both policy studies and human geography. In political science in general, education policy can be characterised as making periodic ‘guest appearances’, but on the whole, it remains a strikingly neglected area of policy ( Jakobi et al, 2009 ). A number of critical scholars are demonstrating that a focus on education policy and governance is just as important as any other empirical focus for making contributions to theories of international organisations (for example, Martens and Balzer, 2007 ; Grek, 2014 ), the role of knowledge in policymaking (for example, Grek and Ozga, 2010 ), frontline work (for example, Papanastasiou, 2017b ), and policy networks (for example, Williamson, 2016 ). For the large part though, education continues to be relegated to the domain of the education sciences or a sub-section of sociology rather than being of central interest to political science and public administration. As a result, education remains a relatively neglected empirical focus in the key debates of policy studies. An emerging literature on ‘critical geographies of education’ has successfully placed the study of spatial politics on the agenda for education policy scholars (for example, Helfenbein and Taylor, 2009; The politics of scale in policy 10 Pini et al, 2017 ). This has involved a group of critical education scholars arguing that by engaging with the relationality and multiplicity of spatial politics, their work can ‘disrupt understandings in, and posit new possibilities for, “mainstream” education policy studies’ (Gulson and Symes, 2007 , 2). This book shares a similar outlook with these education scholars when it comes to arguing about the potentials of engaging with the politics of space as a way of extending critical understandings of education policy.
eBook - PDFMultilevel Democracy
How Local Institutions and Civil Society Shape the Modern State
- Jefferey M. Sellers, Anders Lidström, Yooil Bae(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
In other domains, such as land use planning or municipal waste services, authorities at the local level usually received their own independent authorities to make policy. Beyond any single field of policy, governance at the local scale also arises out of a need to 262 Multilevel Democracy accommodate the many policies that intersect within communities and urban regions (Frederickson, 1999). Urban planning, for instance, coordinates mul- tiple elements of physical infrastructure priorities with urban development, environmental protection, and social ends like affordable housing. In many of the most developed countries, the policy state began to take shape in the early phases of local state development and modern civic forma- tion. The post-World War II welfare state and the development of sectors like environmental policy in the 1970s marked its maturation. Why the policy state developed has been the subject of many theories. Modernization and economic development have been advanced as explanations (Stern, 2004), as has indus- trial capitalism (Jessop, 2008) and the mobilization for war (Scheve and Stasa- vage, 2010). Work on particular domains of domestic policy consistently shows that expanding policies grew out of struggles between organized interests and movements (Huber and Stephens, 2001, Schreurs, 2003). It seems likely that the spread of democracy played at least an indirect role (Alber and Flora, 1981). Diffusion of policy and ideas about it across borders furnished a common source of this sea change in state activities, and institutionalized professional policy expertise laid the groundwork for it. The civic mobilization that swept across the Atlantic world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and beyond, from the Progressive Movement in the United States to the municipal socialist and social democratic movements in Europe, took the development of these policies as a central aim (Rodgers, 1998).
- Michael C. Williams(Author)
- 1995(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
It is of interest to compare the developments in England with those in Holland (Van der Schee, 1994), where curriculum policy also dictates the centrality of traditional subjects such as geography and biology and 'areas such as environmental education, peace education and third world education which are not embedded in existing subjects are doomed to suffer' (Van der Schee, 1994, p. 113). Research focused on a comparison of environmental education in a range of national and policy environments is a field yet to be explored. It may offer useful insights into policy sociology in the context of en-vironmental education. CONCLUSION This chapter has sought to demonstrate a number of key issues. First, the study of policy and the framework it provides for the practice of education are an important context for most educational research. Education operates in the political arena, and may be inter-preted as a political process itself, so to consider any aspect of education as if the policy processes were absent is to miss an important dimension of the study. Secondly, the policy framework for geographical and environmental education oper-ates at all scales from global to the individual classroom. Understanding the way in which national, school and individual teacher activities in the field are shaped by international perceptions and policy is particularly important in geographical and envir-onmental education research. The concept of 'Think global, act local' might be applied to research planning as well as to environmental responsibility! Thirdly, it is clear that the policy dimension has not been prominent in geographical and environmental education research. The examples considered briefly here show that reflec-tion on the role of policy has been tentative at best.
- Stephen A. Roosa(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- River Publishers(Publisher)
Chapter 7 Local Policies for Sustainable Development “…the impersonal forces of structure and the personal volition of agency are not al-ways easy to distinguish… Cities may differ in their underlying structure—in the cards they hold. But political leaders can use that structure—play those cards—in any number if ways. The challenge is to understand what specific economic and political contexts underpin choices regarding development options and how they explain varia-tions in cities.” S avitCh & K antoR , C iTies in The i nTernaTional M arkeTplaCe (2002:31) This chapter focuses on those policies that facilitate improvements in cities and local governments in an effort to achieve urban sustainability. “Sustainability can provide a qualitative measure of the integrality and wholeness of any given system” (Bell and Morse 1999:103). In regard to cities, Castells notes that “a city, ecosystem or complex structure is sus-tainable if its conditions of production do not destroy over time the con-ditions of its reproduction” (Castells 2000:118-122). Local solutions must be sought to foster the health and longevity of the systems that funda-mentally support the well-being their localities. Managing the energy use of cities is part of the solution. According to Portney, “Sustainable cities frequently attempt to address energy issues” by directly influencing the city’s “consumption of energy.” This is done by offering consumers pub-lic transportation alternatives and creating home energy conservation op-portunities (Portney 2003:95). Promoting an urban ecology that engenders construction of environmentally sensitive developments and energy effi-cient structures is a valid alternative. This chapter concerns urban policies that impact urban sustainabil-ity—particularly those involving energy—and programs with which to implement them. Cities, though quite different in many ways, have com-mon concerns that are important to urban development.
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