Companion to Public Space


Book Description

The Companion to Public Space draws together an outstanding multidisciplinary collection of specially commissioned chapters that offer the state of the art in the intellectual discourse, scholarship, research, and principles of understanding in the construction of public space. Thematically, the volume crosses disciplinary boundaries and traverses territories to address the philosophical, political, legal, planning, design, and management issues in the social construction of public space. The Companion uniquely assembles important voices from diverse fields of philosophy, political science, geography, anthropology, sociology, urban design and planning, architecture, art, and many more, under one cover. It addresses the complete ecology of the topic to expose the interrelated issues, challenges, and opportunities of public space in the twenty-first century. The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines that converge in the study of public space. The Companion will also be of use to practitioners and public officials who deal with the planning, design, and management of public spaces.







The Role of Public-Private Partnerships and the Third Sector in Conserving Heritage Buildings, Sites, and Historic Urban Areas


Book Description

The conservation of cultural heritage requires the involvement of multiple actors from across the public, private, and nongovernmental, or third, sectors, not only to initiate and carry out conservation but also to sustain heritage places. The conservation of the historic urban environment poses specific and urgent challenges that require a multidisciplinary approach in which conservation actions are embedded within economic, social, and environmental development strategies. Increasingly, the private and third sectors are playing a pivotal role in these processes. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are contractual arrangements in which the private and/or third sector assists in delivering a public facility or service by providing funding or operating leadership. The third sector, which may include heritage-related NGOs, as well as people living near a heritage site, is of particular relevance to PPPs used for heritage conservation. This publication focuses specifically on the use of PPPs for historic buildings and historic urban areas, and is targeted to those working in the cultural heritage sector. It draws on existing literature, which it aims to make more accessible to those interested in cultural heritage conservation. While providing information on the basic concepts of public-private partnerships and the roles and responsibilities of the partners in a PPP, this is not a guide to the use of PPPs. It discusses the types of PPPs that have been used to conserve historic buildings and historic urban areas, provides specific examples of where and how they have been used, and demonstrates ways in which PPP mechanisms have met conservation goals. This publication also makes some limited observations on the aims of PPPs drawn from the literature, from published case studies, and from a few further case study investigations. This publication draws on English-language works produced between 1992 and 2012, but concentrates on the more recent literature. Much of this material is from the Australia, the United Kingdom, and other European nations that have been the most active in conducting PPPs for heritage resources and in publishing information about these projects. This overview includes an extensive bibliography and provides some suggestions of topics for further research.




Social Reproduction and the City


Book Description

The transformation of child care after welfare reform in New York City and the struggle against that transformation is a largely untold story. In the decade following welfare reform, despite increases in child care funding, there was little growth in New York's unionized, center-based child care system and no attempt to make this system more responsive to the needs of working mothers. As the city delivered child care services "on the cheap," relying on non-union home child care providers, welfare rights organizations, community legal clinics, child care advocates, low-income community groups, activist mothers, and labor unions organized to demand fair solutions to the child care crisis that addressed poor single mothers' need for quality, affordable child care as well as child care providers' need for decent work and pay. Social Reproduction and the City tells this story, linking welfare reform to feminist research and activism around the "crisis of care," social reproduction, and the neoliberal city. At a theoretical level, Simon Black's history of this era presents a feminist political economy of the urban welfare regime, applying a social reproduction lens to processes of urban neoliberalization and an urban lens to feminist analyses of welfare state restructuring and resistance. Feminist political economy and feminist welfare state scholarship have not focused on the urban as a scale of analysis, and critical approaches to urban neoliberalism often fail to address questions of social reproduction. To address these unexplored areas, Black unpacks the urban as a contested site of welfare state restructuring and examines the escalating crisis in social reproduction. He lays bare the aftermath of the welfare-to-work agenda of the Giuliani administration in New York City on child care and the resistance to policies that deepened race, class, and gender inequities.




Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector


Book Description

Public sector innovation is important because the pressures of growing expectations from citizens, budget crunches, and a surge of complex governance problems cannot be solved by standard government solutions or increased funding. In order to innovate, government increasingly needs to collaborate with networks of partners across agency boundaries and especially with the nonprofit and private sectors to find new solutions. This interaction within a network can enhance creative and effective governance solutions. In this book, Jacob Torfing closely examines the link between network-based collaborative governance and innovation, proposes a framework for the study of collaborative innovation, and discusses this approach in light of theoretical insights from other disciplines and from examples of public innovation drawn from the United States, Europe, and Australia. This book will move scholars closer to being able to develop a theory of collaborative innovation.




Site Planning, Volume 3


Book Description

Ebook Volume 3 of 3. A comprehensive, state-of-the-art guide to site planning, covering planning processes, new technologies, and sustainability, with extensive treatment of practices in rapidly urbanizing countries. Ebook Volume 3 of 3. Cities are built site by site. Site planning—the art and science of designing settlements on the land—encompasses a range of activities undertaken by architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and engineers. This book offers a comprehensive, up-to-date guide to site planning that is global in scope. It covers planning processes and standards, new technologies, sustainability, and cultural context, addressing the roles of all participants and stakeholders and offering extensive treatment of practices in rapidly urbanizing countries. Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack wrote the classic text on the subject, and this book takes up where the earlier book left off. It can be used as a textbook and will be an essential reference for practitioners. Site Planning consists of forty self-contained modules, organized into five parts: The Art of Site Planning, which presents site planning as a shared enterprise; Understanding Sites, covering the components of site analysis; Planning Sites, covering the processes involved; Site Infrastructure, from transit to waste systems; and Site Prototypes, including housing, recreation, and mixed use. Each module offers a brief introduction, covers standards or approaches, provides examples, and presents innovative practices in sidebars. The book is lavishly illustrated with 1350 photographs, diagrams, and examples of practice.




Realizing the Potential of Public–Private Partnerships to Advance Asia's Infrastructure Development


Book Description

This publication highlights how public–private partnerships (PPPs) can be effective to meet Asia's growing infrastructure needs. It shows how governments and their development partners can use PPPs to promote more inclusive and sustainable growth. The study finds that successful PPP projects are predicated on well-designed contracts, a stable economy, good governance and sound regulations, and a high level of institutional capacity to handle PPPs. It is the result of a collaboration between the Asian Development Bank, the Korea Development Institute, and other experts that supported the theme chapter "Sustaining Development through Public–Private Partnership" of the Asian Development Outlook 2017 Update.




Collaborative Governance


Book Description

How government can forge dynamic public-private partnerships All too often government lacks the skill, the will, and the wallet to meet its missions. Schools fall short of the mark while roads and bridges fall into disrepair. Health care costs too much and delivers too little. Budgets bleed red ink as the cost of services citizens want outstrips the taxes they are willing to pay. Collaborative Governance is the first book to offer solutions by demonstrating how government at every level can engage the private sector to overcome seemingly insurmountable problems and achieve public goals more effectively. John Donahue and Richard Zeckhauser show how the public sector can harness private expertise to bolster productivity, capture information, and augment resources. The authors explain how private engagement in public missions—rightly structured and skillfully managed—is not so much an alternative to government as the way smart government ought to operate. The key is to carefully and strategically grant discretion to private entities, whether for-profit or nonprofit, in ways that simultaneously motivate and empower them to create public value. Drawing on a host of real-world examples-including charter schools, job training, and the resurrection of New York's Central Park—they show how, when, and why collaboration works, and also under what circumstances it doesn't. Collaborative Governance reveals how the collaborative approach can be used to tap the resourcefulness and entrepreneurship of the private sector, and improvise fresh, flexible solutions to today's most pressing public challenges.




Site Planning, Volume 1


Book Description

Ebook Volume 1 of 3. A comprehensive, state-of-the-art guide to site planning, covering planning processes, new technologies, and sustainability, with extensive treatment of practices in rapidly urbanizing countries. Ebook Volume 1 of 3. Cities are built site by site. Site planning—the art and science of designing settlements on the land—encompasses a range of activities undertaken by architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and engineers. This book offers a comprehensive, up-to-date guide to site planning that is global in scope. It covers planning processes and standards, new technologies, sustainability, and cultural context, addressing the roles of all participants and stakeholders and offering extensive treatment of practices in rapidly urbanizing countries. Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack wrote the classic text on the subject, and this book takes up where the earlier book left off. It can be used as a textbook and will be an essential reference for practitioners. Site Planning consists of forty self-contained modules, organized into five parts: The Art of Site Planning, which presents site planning as a shared enterprise; Understanding Sites, covering the components of site analysis; Planning Sites, covering the processes involved; Site Infrastructure, from transit to waste systems; and Site Prototypes, including housing, recreation, and mixed use. Each module offers a brief introduction, covers standards or approaches, provides examples, and presents innovative practices in sidebars. The book is lavishly illustrated with 1350 photographs, diagrams, and examples of practice.