Federal Program Evaluations


Book Description

Contains an inventory of evaluation reports produced by and for selected Federal agencies, including GAO evaluation reports that relate to the programs of those agencies.




Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications


Book Description

February issue includes Appendix entitled Directory of United States Government periodicals and subscription publications; September issue includes List of depository libraries; June and December issues include semiannual index







Federal Evaluations


Book Description

Contains an inventory of evaluation reports produced by and for selected Federal agencies, including GAO evaluation reports that relate to the programs of those agencies.




The Politics of Redistributing Urban Aid


Book Description

Targeted aid to cities tends to become distributive because of political pressures to broaden the coverage, thus reducing the effectiveness of the program.




The Political Culture of Planning


Book Description

The Political Culture of Planning is written for two quite distinct readerships. The main body of the book synthesizes a mass of information to provide an overview of a complex and amorphous field. This material is designed to meet the needs of students who require a succinct account of the American system of land use planning. These readers can ignore the notes. For those who are embarking upon a much wider and deeper study of land use planning in the US the notes are crucial: they provide the guideposts to an immensely rich literature. The first four parts of the text present the main issues of land use planning in the US. Part 1 assesses the US zoning system. The introductory chapter discusses the meaning of zoning (and its difference from planning), the primacy of local governments, the constitutional framework and the role of the courts. Chapter two provides the historical background to zoning and an outline of the classic Euclid case. Chapter three discusses the objectives and nature of zoning and the use which local governments have made of its inherently inflexible character. Chapter four acts as a corrective to this view, describing how lawyers and planners have shown remarkable ingenuity in adapting zoning to the demands of a changing society. Part 2 deals with the perennial issues of discrimination, financing infrastructure for new development and the process for negotiating zoning matters. Part 3 presents a discussion of two overlapping issues of increasing significance - aesthetics and historic preservation. Part 4 focusses on the main issue facing land use planners: attempting to channel the forces of development into spatial forms held to be socially desirable. Part 5 consists of a series of broad-ranging essays which discuss land use planning in the US, its institutional and cultural framework and the reasons for its particular character. Part 6 discusses the limited possibilities for land use reform in the US - drawing on the author's considerable experience in both Britain and Canada - in order to interpret the limitations and potentialities of land use planning in the US.




Federal Policymaking and the Poor


Book Description

Do federal, state, and local governments differ in their responsiveness to the needs of the poorest citizens? Are policy outcomes different when federal officials have greater influence regarding the use of federal program funds? To answer such questions, Michael Rich examines to what extent benefits of federal programs actually reach needy people, focusing on the relationship between federal decision-making systems and the distributional impacts of public policies. His extensive analysis of the Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG), the principal federal program for aiding cities, reveals that the crucial divisions in domestic policy are not among the levels of government, but between constellations of participants in the different governmental arenas. Rich traces the flow of funds under the CDBG from program enactment through three tiers of targeting--to needy places, to needy neighborhoods, and to needy people--and offers a comparative study of eight CDBG entitlement communities in the Chicago area. He demonstrates that while national program parameters are important for setting the conditions under which local programs operate, the redistributive power of federal programs ultimately depends upon choices made by local officials. These officials, he argues, must in turn be pressed by benefits coalitions at the community level in order to increase the likelihood that federal funds will reach their targets. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




Business Improvement Districts and the Contradictions of Placemaking


Book Description

The “livable city,” the “creative city,” and more recently the “pop-up city” have become pervasive monikers that identify a new type of urbanism that has sprung up globally, produced and managed by the business improvement district and known colloquially by its acronym, BID. With this case study, Susanna F. Schaller draws on more than fifteen years of research to present a direct, focused engagement with both the planning history that has shaped Washington, D.C.’s segregated landscape and the intricacies of everyday life, politics, and planning practice as they relate to BIDs. Schaller offers a critical unpacking of the BID ethos, which draws on the language of economic liberalism (individual choice, civic engagement, localism, and grassroots development), to portray itself as color blind, democratic, and equitable. Schaller reveals the contradictions embedded in the BID model. For the last thirty years, BID advocates have engaged in effective and persuasive storytelling; as a result, many policy makers and planners perpetuate the BID narrative without examining the institution and the inequities it has wrought as BID urbanism has oiled the urban gentrification machine. Schaller sheds light on these oversights, thus fostering a critical discussion of BIDs and their collective influence on future urban landscapes.




Privatism and Urban Policy in Britain and the United States


Book Description

Demonstrating how cities in the United Kingdom appear to be following the American patterns of urban policy, even as far as the language used, this book compares urban policy and programs in both countries. The authors show that the parallels between these two approaches rest on the market-oriented, small government political foundations of both countries, but that these political similarities obscure significant differences which will make transatlantic urban policy and program transfer more difficult.