You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
While government provides the structure of public leadership, governance is the art of public leadership. This timely book examines current trends in metropolitan governance issues. It analyzes specific cases from thirteen major metropolitan regions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, all woven together by an overall framework established in the first three chapters. The distinguished contributors address such governance issues as city-county consolidation, local-federal coordination, annexation and special districting, and private contracting, with special attention to lessons learned from both successes and failures. As urban governance innovations have clearly outpaced urban government structures in recent years, the topics covered here are especially relevant.
We listen to a cacophony of voices instructing us how to think and feel about nature, including our own bodies. The news media, wildlife documentaries, science magazines, and environmental NGOs are among those clamouring for our attention. But are we empowered by all this knowledge or is our dependence on various communities allowing our thoughts, sentiments and activities to be unduly governed by others? Making Sense of Nature shows that what we call ‘nature’ is made sense of for us in ways that make it central to social order, social change and social dissent. By utilising insights and extended examples from anthropology, cultural studies, human geography, philosophy, politics, sociolo...
For over a century, American have created laws, processes, objectives, priorities, and rules for federal land management that often conflict, contradict, and undermine each other. We now find ourselves with inconsistent laws, unclear priorities, procedural mazes, and an antiquated bureaucratic structure. Processes and procedures often impede rather than aid management actions and prevent good stewardship. The overall result is a loss of public benefits and undesirable impact on natural resources. Allan Fitzsimmons presents a clear argument for major changes and offers new ideas for how those changes can be accomplished. Students and professionals interested in public policy, resource management, and environmental studies will find this book to be particularly interesting.
"Introduces and examines thoroughly the concept of regional resilience, explaining how resilience can be promoted - or impeded - by regional characteristics and public policies." - cover.
After decades of being defined by crisis and limitations, cities are popular again—as destinations for people and businesses, and as subjects of scholarly study. Urban Citizenship and American Democracy contributes to this new scholarship by exploring the origins and dynamics of urban citizenship in the United States. Written by both urban and nonurban scholars using a variety of methodological approaches, the book examines urban citizenship within particular historical, social, and policy contexts, including issues of political participation, public school engagement, and crime policy development. Contributors focus on enduring questions about urban political power, local government, and civic engagement to offer fresh theoretical and empirical accounts of city politics and policy, federalism, and American democracy.
This book traces the history of threats to species and habitat in California, from the time of the Gold Rush to the present. The author shows how, over the course of more than a century, scientists and conservationists came to view the fates of endangered species as dependent on the ecological conditions and human activities in the places where those species lived. The story begins with the tale of the state's extinct mascot, the California grizzly, and the conservation movements and laws that followed its disappearance. The second half of the book focuses on four high-profile endangered species: the California condor, the desert tortoise, the San Joaquin kit fox, and the Delta smelt. The author offers an account of how Americans developed a civil system in which imperiled species serve as proxies for broader conflicts about the politics of place. The book concludes that the challenge for conservationists in the twenty-first century will be to expand habitat conservation beyond protected wildlands to build more diverse and sustainable landscapes.
Water is an essential element of life. We need it for our crops, for drinking, and for cooling off, but we often take it for granted. However, as Earth's climate changes in response to human activity, our relationship to water will also change. This book examines the history of droughts in countries all over the world, feuds related to water shortage, and innovative technological solutions that could help more people have access to water. Readers will learn about solutions as seemingly strange as dragging glaciers to Africa alongside practical ways to waste less water, like xeriscaping yards and collecting rainwater.
This book explores how the concept or urban experimentation is being used to reshape practices of knowledge production in urban debates about resilience, climate change governance, and socio-technical transitions. With contributions from leading scholars, and case studies from the Global North and South, from small to large scale cities, this book suggests that urban experiments offer novel modes of engagement, governance, and politics that both challenge and complement conventional strategies. The book is organized around three cross-cutting themes. Part I explores the logics of urban experimentation, different approaches, and how and why they are deployed. Part II considers how experiments are being staged within cities, by whom, and with what effects? Part III examines how entire cities or groups of cities are constructed as experiments. This book seeks to contribute a deeper and more socially and politically nuanced understanding of how urban experiments shape cities and drive wider changes in society, providing a framework to examine the phenomenon of urban experimentation in conceptual and empirical detail.
Climate change is prompting an unprecedented questioning of the fundamental bases upon which society is founded. Businesses claim that technology can save the environment, while politicians champion the role of international environmental agreements to secure global action. Economists suggest that we should pay developing countries not to destroy their forests, while environmentalists question whether we can solve ecological problems with the same thinking that created them. As the process of steering society, governance has a critical role to play in coordinating these disparate voices and securing collective action to achieve a more sustainable future. Environmental Governance is the only ...