Co-Designing Economies in Transition


Book Description

This transdisciplinary volume puts forward proposals for wiser, socially just and sustainable socio-economic systems in transition. There is growing support for the view that the end of capitalism is around the corner, but on which conceptual and ethical basis can we interpret these times? With investigations into feminist economics, post-growth environmentalism, socio-technical digital design, collaborative and commons economics, the editors create a dialogue between radical knowledge/practices and contemplative social sciences to transgress disciplinary boundaries and implement new visions of reality. This important book challenges our ways of thinking and outlines a pathway for new research. Chapter 13 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com




Designing Financial Systems in Transition Economies


Book Description

This collection examines the design of financial systems for central and eastern European countries engaged in the transition to market-based economies. It highlights the need for better approaches to measuring performance and providing incentives in banking and for financial mechanisms to encourage private-sector growth. Written by leading European and North American scholars, the essays apply modern finance theory and empirical data to the development of new financial sectors.




The Development of Property Taxation in Economies in Transition


Book Description

This book details the context within which policy decisions and objectives for the property tax system are made in the transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe. It shows how these policy decisions evolve as a part of the transitional reforms still in process. This book offers the chance to review the experiences of transitional countries in initiating and implementing fiscal instruments during a decade of enormous transformations. The research for the case studies, included in this book, was sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.




Planning Climate Smart and Wise Cities


Book Description

This book provides information that facilitates integrated climate actions in cities, leveraging disruptive technologies, business models, policies, financing, and leadership solutions. It fosters the development of climate smart and wise cities. It reviews the major developments of climate actions in cities and combines climate environment and energy technology, policy and financing instruments. A range of distinguished authors assess the experiences thus far and also consider future development from both theoretical and practical perspectives. They also discuss many policy and technical options, including climate smart and wise city planning, inclusion of urban nature, international and national carbon market mechanisms and measuring its impact and digital transformation. Moreover, attention is paid to the role of natural principles, the role of transparency principles and to aspects of democratic climate governance within a climate action scheme. This book makes clear that the carbon neutrality, sustainability, circularity, efficiency, connectivity and resiliency of cities depend to a large extent on the specific digital technologies and the leadership reshaping our cities. Discussing multidisciplinary aspects of climate action, this book offers new insights to academics, policymakers and practitioners both in the public and private sectors. Those insights are not only retrospective, relevant for understanding the past, but they are also prospective and forward-looking, guiding the achievements of the SDGs and the climate goals.




Economies in Transition


Book Description

In 1994, the Asia Foundation's Center for Asian Pacific Affairs began a two-year project to compare the transitions of selected East European and Asian economies from centrally-planned communist systems to market economies. The goal was to shed light on the transition process through an understanding of the underlying economic and institutional dynamics. This volume is the culmination of that project.The volume is divided into three parts. In the first part, an overview, the editors review the authors' findings and highlight major themes. The second part looks closely at the transition process in seven Asian and East European economies: China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The third part contains six comparative studies that explore key elements of the transition process. The papers incorporate feedback obtained from meetings with cabinet members and high government officials, conferences, and seminars in Prague, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Beijing, Ulan Bator, and Washington, D.C. Contributors Leszek Balcerowicz, Barbara Blaszczyk, Peter Boone, Yuan Zheng Cao, Bruce Comer, Marek Dabrowski, Georges de Menil, Daniel C. Esty, Gang Fan, Boris Federov, Roman Frydman, Carol Graham, Stephen Parker, Andrzej Rapaczynski, James Riedel, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Baavaa Tarvaa, Vinod Thomas, Gavin Tritt, Adiya Tsend, Enkhbold Tsendjav, Joel Turkewitz, Narantsetseg Unenburen, Yan Wang, Wing Thye Woo




Design/Repair


Book Description

This collection of essays sheds light on repair as a disposition to material culture and a practice rooted in diverse sociocultural experiences. It provides an in-depth exploration of how repair manifests itself through the different lenses of governance, grassroots activism, transformative design and community-led initiatives. Most importantly, the chapters demonstrate how place-based approaches can reveal blueprints for social impact in circumstances of growing environmental and social precariousness.




Policy Analysis for Effective Development


Book Description

This practical text provides analytic tools and real-world examples to equip both students and professionals with the skills they need to develop and implement effective public policies.Focussing on transition economies, Morse and Struyk concentrate on the day-to-day tasks involved in tackling social and economic policy issues. They thoroughly cover the practicalities of activities such as allocating resources, balancing political and technical factors, introducing competition into the public sector, weighing costs and benefits, monitoring and evaluating programs, and even presenting policy recommendations, as well as the specifics of the actual decision-making process. Exercises and case studies allow readers to apply lessons learned to real situations.




Identity, Institutions and Governance in an AI World


Book Description

The 21st century is on the verge of a possible total economic and political revolution. Technological advances in robotics, computing and digital communications have the potential to completely transform how people live and work. Even more radically, humans will soon be interacting with artificial intelligence (A.I.) as a normal and essential part of their daily existence. What is needed now more than ever is to rethink social relations to meet the challenges of this soon-to-arrive "smart" world. This book proposes an original theory of trans-human relations for this coming future. Drawing on insights from organisational studies, critical theory, psychology and futurism - it will chart for readers the coming changes to identity, institutions and governance in a world populated by intelligent human and non-human actors alike. It will be characterised by a fresh emphasis on infusing programming with values of social justice, protecting the rights and views of all forms of "consciousness" and creating the structures and practices necessary for encouraging a culture of "mutual intelligent design". To do so means moving beyond our anthropocentric worldview of today and expanding our assumptions about the state of tomorrow's politics, institutions, laws and even everyday existence. Critically such a profound shift demands transcending humanist paradigms of a world created for and by humans and instead opening ourselves to a new reality where non-human intelligence and cyborgs are increasingly central.




The Age of Sustainability


Book Description

With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment. Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another period of great transformation equal in significance to the agricultural revolution some 13,000 years ago or the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. This book helps readers make sense of our global crisis and the dynamics of transition that could result in a shift from the industrial epoch that we live in now to a more sustainable and equitable age. The global renewable energy transition that is already underway holds the key to the wider just transition. However, the evolutionary potential of the present also manifests in the mushrooming of ecocultures, new urban visions, sustainability-oriented developmental states and new ways of learning and researching. Shedding light on the highly complex challenge of a sustainable and just transition, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with establishing a more sustainable and equitable world. Ultimately, this is a book about hope but without easy answers.




Sustainable Urbanism in China


Book Description

Sustainable Urbanism in China explores the notion of "Sustainable Urbanism" by considering the role sustainable neighborhood planning plays in the larger picture of sustainable urbanism and suggests innovations and best practices that are either developed or adopted by China. These are narrated as lessons learnt for other countries where we see similar trends of development patterns or emerging practices. Through various explorations of challenges, paradigms, and innovations of urban sustainability, this book highlights how planning, policy, and design are forming and reforming in the context of China. These are offered through a set of guidelines and pathways for urban sustainability at the scale of neighborhoods/communities or districts in a wider context of urban environments, as well as strategies for planners, developers, policy makers, and educators in the field of the built environment. Through a comprehensive overview of urban sustainability practices in China, this book investigates 12 case study projects. These comprehensive explorations should in turn help construct the future directions of China’s sustainable urban development and provide innovative pathways of sustainable urbanism in China and around the globe.