Municipal Decision Research Articles

Navigating the Topography of Inequality Post-Disaster: A Proposal for Remedying Past Geographic Segregation during Rebuilding

In this chapter, I argue that New Orleans’ history of geographic segregation mandates that the burden of restoring the city be shared by all United States citizens. One useful method for implementing this nationwide burden sharing would be to levy a uniform one to two percent tax based on individuals’ income. This uniform tax would be minimal and would be consistent with other taxes raised for the public good, such as the security taxes levied on air travel post September 11, 2001. The funds accumulated from levying the taxes can be used to address some of the financial needs of individuals in disaster stricken areas. This proposal is consistent with the theory of burden-sharing based on ability to pay, which is sometimes used to allocate proportional responsibility among diverse and differently situated individuals. In the international realm, this principle has sometimes been applied in the face of a need “for nations to share in joint and sometimes costly projects for the common good.” (See Daniel A. Farber, Disaster Law and Inequality, 25 Law & Ineq. 297, 320 (2007) (stating: “Social disadvantage can kill in very obvious ways during a disaster” and noting President Bush’s statement that “the poverty of so many in the region ‘has roots in a history of racial discrimination’”).Consistent with this practice, the burden-sharing based on ability to pay “rests on equal sacrifice notions and implies either proportional or progressive tax schedules.” (Id. at 313–314 n.14). Comprehensive disaster insurance is one of the solutions that have been advanced to alleviate financial needs in times of disaster. This solution, however, because it shifts the burden of remedying the financial woes caused by disaster onto the disaster stricken individuals, does not fully achieve equity. In shifting the burden of providing remedies to the would-be-harmed individuals, the comprehensive disaster insurance proposal does not account for the role that residential and occupational segregation have had on individuals’ choice of geographic residence. This burden should be shared as a way of holding the other cities and states accountable for their silent ratification of these types of geographic segregation. Furthermore, this model of burden-sharing should not be limited to the restoration of New Orleans. It should be implemented in all instances where we can demonstrate that certain groups have historically been pushed out of geographically safe and desirable regions of the United States, being forced to live in precarious and dangerous areas. This chapter is divided into three parts. In the first, I investigate the ways in which cities have been geographically segregated and continue to be so today through various land-use related municipal decisions. In the second, I consider how geographical segregation has caused disproportionate harm in New Orleans. In the third, I argue that remedying New Orleans’ geographical segregation should be one of the primordial goals of the rebuilding efforts and I enunciate a standard that can be used to determine whether rectifying geographical segregation should play a role in disaster prevention as well as in post-disaster rebuilding plans.

Use of State Police Services for Local Policing: The Case of New Jersey

All states in the New England and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States provide State Police services without charge to municipalities without full‐time local police departments. Efficiency and equity issues have resulted from this tradition and the development of local police departments or shared departments across neighboring municipalities in rural and exurban areas has been discouraged. These problems will diminish in scope as municipalities receiving the State Police subsidy opt out of the program and adopt local policing. We examine this potential by estimating models of the municipal decision to use the State Police for local policing among New Jersey municipalities with less than 15,000 population. We find that the elasticities of the decision to use the State Police for local policing with respect to population and median family income to be −1.1 and −2.3, respectively. If recent income and population trends in New Jersey municipalities using the State Police continue, our upper range estimate is that about 20 of the 90 municipalities using the State Police will opt out of the program in the next decade.

Perceptions of Public Health Nursing Practice by Municipal Health Officials in Norway

The objective of this study was to describe and analyze municipal decision-maker's views on public health nursing and to reflect upon and discuss the relevance of those views to the future of public health nursing in Norway. This explorative qualitative study using face-to-face interviews is part of a larger project, comprising 5 studies, that explores perceptions of public health nursing. A purposeful sample of 11 municipal decision-makers was selected for interview during 2006-2007 to reflect variation in community size and perspective. Thematic content analysis of the transcribed interviews revealed 4 content categories: contribution, collaboration, challenges, and visibility. The decision-makers expressed satisfaction with the public health nursing services, showed concern about lack of visibility and clear boundaries, and some expressed irritation over lacking collaboration. The interviewees elaborated on their past experiences as the public health nurses coworkers, leaders, collaborators, and service users. The respondents recognized public health nursing's contribution to public health but they lack sufficient knowledge of its content and tend to take services at local health clinics for granted. Dialogue between nurses and decision-makers is necessary in order to ensure updated evaluation and continued development of public health nursing services.

A deterministic linear optimization model for allocating schools to zones

This paper presents a deterministic linear optimization model to support decisions on optimal allocation of schools to zones, its characterization and assignment of students, maximizing the social benefits of school owners and students. Students are assumed to show a multi-attribute behaviour, considering as important not only location, as is usual in the literature, but also quality of education and infrastructure, school costs and other attributes. There is heterogeneity of supply and demand. Students are classified by place of residence and socio-economic characteristics. Schools can be private, subsidized or free municipal ones. The model developed is applied to data of one of the municipalities of Santiago. The results obtained under different scenarios tend to confirm the expected demand's behaviour. This model could be used to guide decisions of both school owners or municipalities as well as students towards an equilibrium closer to a social optimum.

Framework for enterprise GIS for Saudi municipalities

Municipalities in Saudi Arabia are working hard to make use of rapid advances in information technology (IT), especially geographic information systems (GIS), to improve their performance and increase their effectiveness. Most initiatives in IT applications, including GIS, are limited to individual departments rather than supporting comprehensive institutional operations. This has resulted in fragmented applications with isolated databases. It is obvious that the municipalities lack an overall framework to guide them through building reliable IT solutions that care for enterprise or corporate requirements. Because the Saudi municipalities share many commonalities, especially among their business functions and organizational structures, it is believed that a general framework is necessary to help them to develop their IT solutions in general and GIS applications in particular, because the majority of municipal decisions are spatially oriented. This article attempts to provide a framework for enterprise GIS for Saudi municipalities. It starts by reviewing the important issues associated with enterprise GIS to establish the basis for building a framework that is suitable for the Saudi context. The proposed GIS framework emphasizes the enterprise requirements for municipal institutions and considers GIS as a major IT requirement that can be supported by other related technologies. The suggested framework includes three main factors: business functions, tasks and data requirements. The integration of these factors provides the basis on which the municipalities can advance their aim of automating their functions. Discussion of these factors within Saudi context is presented with reference to the Municipality of Jeddah where data were based upon interviews with key municipal officials in 2004. The main finding of this research article is the identification of municipal functions and tasks that pave the way for determining applications required for the corporate IT solution. Furthermore, this article identifies data issues related to municipal data – sources, sharing and management – and calls for establishing a unified municipal data model. Finally, this article suggests that similarities among Saudi municipalities lead us to believe that IT applications can grow reasonably well by partnership among municipalities.

Population Oral Health in Japan: Promoting Fluoride Mouth Rinsing Programs Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process Model—Pathway Determination

Objectives: Firstly, to evaluate the factors and organizational structures which affect the decisionmaking processes for introducing fluoride mouth rinsing programs in Japan. Secondly, to better understand the structure of the processes required to develop a consensus model for public opinion on fluoride programs. Methods: 11 dental health services experts in Japan participated in this study. The AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) model was used to analyze and evaluate the factors and the organizational elements of the decision-making pathways and processes to the goal of “implementing fluoride mouthrinsing programs”. The first step in the AHP was to decide on the relative importance of each individual criterion in terms of sets of alternative proportions. Next, pair-wise comparison of the relative weight between each alternative target in each criterion was performed. A matrix of the alternative targets for each criterion was calculated and the characteristic vector and characteristic value were computed. Results: “power of enforcement”, indicating the influence of political will on health policy was the strongest criterion and its contribution rate was 56% toward municipal decision-making. As a final result, the “governor and council” was the main organizational target for advocacy of fluoride programs. “Safety” had the strongest influence on the public opinion and consensus development of fluoride programs. Conclusions: Using the AHP model, it was concluded that the power of political will of local government (the governor and the council) was most important in promoting fluoride programs in Japan. Reliable information on safety is a preceding factor necessary for residents to establish their support and consensus.

Luz, leis e livre-concorrência: conflitos em torno das concessões de energia elétrica na cidade de São Paulo no início do século XX

O artigo discute o processo de introdução da energia elétrica na cidade de São Paulo no início do século XX. A Proclamação da República marcou o início da modernização das empresas de serviços urbanos, com a introdução da eletricidade. Foi neste contexto que dois grupos iniciaram uma intensa batalha no setor elétrico paulista: o grupo nacional da Companhia Brasileira de Energia Elétrica (CBEE) - conhecido também como Docas de Santos - e o canadense Light. A falta de uma legislação federal para o setor de energia elétrica legou às Câmaras Municipais o poder concedente para os serviços de eletricidade, garantindo que as relações políticas entre vereadores e empresários tivessem decisivo papel na instalação de tais serviços. Assim, o artigo descreve o processo de introdução da eletricidade em São Paulo mediante os debates sobre a regulamentação dos serviços públicos, desvendando os critérios políticos ou ideológicos que levaram a conformação de tais leis.

The Grants are Falling! The Grants are Falling! How Municipal Governments Changed Taxes in Response to Provincial Support in New Brunswick, 1983–2003

The real value of grants to New Brunswick municipal councils from the provincial government fell dramatically from 1983 to 2003. At the same time, municipal property tax rates increased, especially among municipalities with comparatively low tax rates in 1983. This study uses an econometric model of the joint determination of local property tax rates and local property tax bases to examine the hypothesis that municipal responses to falling grants were constrained by tax competition. After controlling for observable characteristics, there is little evidence of spatial interaction among jurisdictions, suggesting that tax competition was not a major factor in municipal decisions. The grant cuts themselves appear to be a far more important determinant of changes in property tax rates. There is also some evidence that the tax base is sensitive to a municipality's own tax rates. However, the elasticity of the tax base with respect to the tax rate is small enough that there remains scope for municipalities to increase tax revenue by increasing their tax rates.

STUDY OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT BY APPLYING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES (FALLUJA CITY AS A CASE STUDY)

The progress in technological earth observation field , using of satellite data and the development of computer software, lead to reduce effort and time to control the change in land uses especially after the increases in both accuracy and resolution of image data. This paper studies the urban development of falluja city since its construction (depending on the fact of land uses) and future directions for the development of the city. The above two trends are very important in supporting decisions of governorates, municipalities and government departments in the land uses management and control of building by using a new technique which treated with data and uses maps. The present study concluded that the use of remote sensing, geographic information system and mathematical models are very important to prepare master plan of cities with high efficiency.

Taxi and Limousine Services after the Bersani Reform: An Investigation on Main Italian Cities

Using data from a Bank of Italy survey, this paper analyzes the Italian taxi market and its recent changes. Local regulations are rather homogeneous, while there is a widespread disproportion, within municipal advisory committees, between the number of representatives of taxi drivers and that of consumers' advocates. Indicators of service adequacy are seldom used. The average service costs are rather homogeneous across Italian provinces, while there is great variance of supply and fare structures. The instruments made available to municipalities by the Bersani Law 2006 have been used mainly in large cities. In many cases, the expansion of service, achieved mainly through additional shifts rather than through the issue of (free) additional licenses, has been the result of a trade-off for fare increases (in part to protect drivers' income). Virtually no use has been made of municipal traffic rules. All in all it is difficult to evaluate the suitability of the decisions of municipalities with respect to market characteristics, given the lack of non-occasional information on market structure.

Are practices of local participation sidelining the institutional participatory channels?: Reflections from Johannesburg

While public discourses emphasise the growing role of ward councillors in service delivery and urban policy implementation, as well as underline their role as mediators between local government and urban residents, local councillors are increasingly the target of mass urban protests. They are also relatively absent from the public scene as far as municipal decisions and debates are concerned. What can explain this discrepancy? This article argues that institutional channels (be it representative democracy, or various institutions and instruments set up by local government to enhance participation) are currently not working in the South African city, and the city of Johannesburg in particular. Whether in low-income or high-income areas, suburbs or townships, residents have to resort to other means, sidelining in particular their ward councillor, to be heard. The article analyses the structural and contextual constraints that may be responsible for this lack of bottom-up dialogue, and concludes that both the limited power of ward councillors in Council, and the lack of incentive for fostering their accountability to voters, lead to the development of patterns of clientelism at the local level. After examining the actual implementation of some urban projects in Johannesburg, the article argues that local government fragmentation (in different tiers, in several city agencies and utilities, and with the widespread use of contracts and consultants) is also an important factor in the failure of participatory processes.

Urban observatories opportunities for environmental monitoring: Solid wastes

Towns concentrate around 50% of world-wide population and the trend is oriented to underscore an urban profile of population. In addition, towns have become important for their economic contribution to the Gross Internal Product. The negative side of towns is the environmental and social impacts as a result of productive and domestic activities, besides the lack of available data. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the United Nations has established a project of urban monitoring throughout the Global Network of Urban Observatories; Mexico joined the project in 2005. The Local Urban Observatory of Mexicali has the task to produce information about cities that is useful to design public policies. Some of this information deals with a set of environmental indicators in the United Nations Habitat Agenda, which includes solid wastes. Therefore, this paper deals with two main topics; firstly, from the Habitat Agenda, a comparative urban analysis of waste production and coverage of domestic waste collection services; secondly, from the Local Agenda, the identification and ranking of environmental problems according to public perception coming from people involved in the municipal planning and decision making process. Results will be used to develop local indicators and public environmental policies.

Hamilton, Ontario: Towards a Paradigm of Energy-First Planning

Hamilton, Ontario is one of the first municipalities to consider the challenge posed by a potential fossil fuel crisis and its impact on the city's economic development and freight and passenger transportation. This article describes Hamilton's efforts, which culminated in a comprehensive report that assessed the likelihood of future energy constraints, and considered a broad range of land use, transportation and economic development issues. The main challenge in preparing the report was that of contributing to a paradigm shift concerning energy availability while remaining credible to city officials. The paradigm shift would be from a planning perspective that takes availability of sufficient energy as a premise to one that anticipates scarcity and puts energy concerns at the forefront of most municipal decision-making. The chosen strategy focuses on the economic aspects of energy scarcity in ways that responded to city officials' concerns about job creation. Although the City Council seriously considered the final report and took several steps towards developing a greater sensitivity to energy issues, the outcome was modest in relation to what could have been stimulated by the report.

Building sustainable & resilient communities: a balancing of community capital

Working toward sustainable community is a complex task for communities especially given the ambiguous nature of implementing the concept of sustainable development. However, by working to understand the nature of community capital, administrators can begin to move beyond bottom line thinking toward a more comprehensive and collective view of community. This paper presents a theoretical framework that helps municipal decision makers begin collecting information they need to help them build sustainable and resilient communities.

Optimal Expansion Strategy for a Sewer System under Uncertainty

Because of fast urban sprawl, land use competition, and the gap in available funds and needed funds, municipal decision makers and planners are looking for more cost-effective and sustainable ways to improve their sewer infrastructure systems. The dominant approaches have turned to planning the sanitary sewer systems within a regional context, while the decentralized and on-site/cluster wastewater systems have not overcome the application barriers. But regionalization policy confers uncertainties and risks upon cities while planning for future events. Following the philosophy of smart growth, this paper presents several optimal expansion schemes for a fast-growing city in the US/Mexico borderlands—the city of Pharr in Texas under uncertainty. The waste stream generated in Pharr is divided into three distinct sewer sheds within the city limit, including south region, central region, and north region. The options available include routing the wastewater to a neighboring municipality (i.e., McAllen) for treatment and reuse, expanding the existing wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in the south sewer shed, and constructing a new WWTP in the north sewer shed. Traditional deterministic least-cost optimization applied in the first stage can provide a cost-effective and technology-based decision without respect to associated uncertainties system wide. As the model is primarily driven by the fees charged for wastewater transfer, sensitivity analysis was emphasized by the inclusion of varying flat-rate fees for adjustable transfer schemes before contracting process that may support the assessment of fiscal benefits to all parties involved. Yet uncertainties might arise from wastewater generation, wastewater reuse, and cost increase in constructing and operating the new wastewater treatment plant simultaneously. When dealing with multiple sources of uncertainty, the grey mixed integer programming (GIP) model, formulated in the second stage, can further allow all sources of uncertainties to propagate throughout the optimization context, simultaneously leading to determine a wealth of optimal decisions within a reasonable range. Both models ran for three 5-year periods beginning in 2005 and ending in 2020. The dynamic outputs of this analysis reflect the systematic concerns about integrative uncertainties within this decision analysis, which enable decision makers and stakeholders to make all-inclusive decisions for sanitary sewer system expansion in an economically growing region.

Political Rescaling and Municipal Cultural Public Policies: A Comparison of France and Québec

AbstractDo territories change public policies? This would appear to be a rather unusual research orientation. It is even a reversal of the most commonly accepted approaches to the study of territorial public action, which tend to look at this issue from the opposite perspective, that is, in examining how public policies affect territories. The municipal reforms that have simultaneously occurred in Québec and France since the late 1990s afford an excellent opportunity to consider this inversion of the issues. To do so, we take as our theme culture and municipal cultural policies. We try to define and understand to what extent there exist in Québec and France retroactive links between municipal restructuring and municipal decisions about cultural facilities and activities and, more generally, municipal cultural intervention in the urban milieu. This comparative analysis of the cases of France and Québec focuses on discourse as well as achievements. First, we look at the changes arising from institutional reforms in the supply of cultural activities, budgets devoted to culture, and cultural policies. We then consider culture as a vector in the construction of a new municipal institution and a new municipal territory.

FIVE‐YEAR EXPERIENCE WITH THE LONG‐TERM CARE INSURANCE SYSTEM IN JAPAN

To the Editor: The long-term care insurance (LTCI) law that was enacted in Japan in 2000 has brought major changes to the care system for older people. As a result, there has been a shift in the financial source for social care services, from tax based to LTCI based to ensure a stable financial basis for the increasing numbers of impaired elderly persons who need long-term care services. A contract-based system of service that ensures users' “freedom of choice” has replaced the former municipal decision system that did not allow individual choice. Moreover, with certain exceptions, care management has been formally established as a system paid for with care service fees. This ensures the provision of appropriate services with individual care planning and facilitates the use of the services by elderly persons in need. Below, the challenges faced by the LTCI system in Japan are discussed by focusing on care management. A new qualification for care managers was introduced in Japan. By 2004, approximately 340,000 people in various care professions had been trained as care managers (Table 1).1, 2 More than half of these care managers were nurses and certified care workers, but there was also a high proportion of physicians and other medical professionals such as pharmacists. Qualification as a care manager requires at least 5 years of work experience, passing an examination, and the completion of a preservice training course. The qualification system leaves much to be desired, because neither the specified work experience related to elderly care nor the length of training (approximately 35 hours) is sufficient. The professional diversity of care managers might have been due to the huge demand for managers at the time of enactment of the LTCI system and to business opportunities in related professions. The government is now taking steps to improve the quality of care managers by introducing successive in-service training schemes, by introducing a grade of “supervisory care manager” for highly skilled managers, and by renewing care managers' qualification every 5 years.3 The LTCI system allows profit-making companies to provide care services, and care managers can be employed by them. Another characteristic of the LTCI system is that the care management fee is low; the monthly unit cost paid by insurers is ¥8,500 (approximately $77; $1=¥110) per service user. The care management fee is too low to compensate for the high workload of care managers.4 To provide appropriate care management services, it has been recommended that the care management fee be increased 50% to 100%.5 Finally, care managers take part not only in the assessment for care planning but also in the appraisal of care eligibility for insurance payment. A system with the characteristics described above is open to abuses by care managers employed by profit-making companies. There is also a growing concern that care managers could encourage users to receive unnecessary services, purchased preferably from their own companies, and manipulate the care eligibility appraisal with the intent to increase benefits, although such abuses are considered to be the exception, as attested to by the fact that insurers conduct the audit and that the average service use only reaches approximately half the upper limit of benefits allowed for total care services.6 One of the advantages of care management is considered to be “a clear division of responsibility between assessment/care management and service provision, separating the interest of service users and providers.”7 The LTCI system in Japan has no clear division between care management and service provision; it was designed based on the assumption that care service providers would simultaneously function as care management providers. This was expected to reduce care management fees but at the cost of forcing care managers into a conflict of interests with users and providers. Issues outlined above underline the inevitable consequences of the structural fragility of the care system in Japan. The LTCI system is due to be substantially revised in April 2006. At that time, the major focus is expected to be on financial reconstruction of the insurance system with the introduction of preventive care programs (kaigo-yobou). Separation of responsibility for care management from that of service provision is also due to be on the agenda. It is undoubtedly an important milestone that Japanese society has approved a contract-based system of care management and service provision. In the near future, care management will be made available for handicapped persons, in addition to elderly people. It is hoped that this will lead to improvements in the social service system in Japan well into the 21st century. Financial Disclosure: None of the authors received any financial support related to this letter. Author Contributions: Kazunori Kikuchi: data analysis and description. Ryutaro Takahashi, Yoko Sugihara, and Yumi Inagi: interpretation of data. Sponsors' Role: None.

Temporary grant programmes in Sweden and central government behaviour

The purpose of this paper is to study whether the central government in Sweden approves applications for temporary grants from municipalities according to political objectives. We also study factors that determine the municipal decision to apply for temporary grants. Two hypotheses are tested, that the central government supports municipalities with many swing voters in order to influence voters, and that the central government provides benefits to groups that share its ideology and that provide political support. Data is used from three election years 1982, 1985, and 1988. Under the Socialist governments municipalities with a high share of Socialist voters were more likely to apply for grants. The same pattern does not apply to the 1982 Conservative government. There is evidence that Socialist governments approved temporary grants on the basis of party tactical criteria. However, there is no indication of vote purchasing behaviour by the 1982 Conservative government.

Carta à prefeita, carta ao prefeito. Uma cidade para a criança

O texto trata da elaboração de uma carta que apresenta algumas ideias de como a administração pode estar centrada nas crianças. A cidade para a criança pode ser a síntese de uma administração que coloca a infância e a adolescência como foco principal das políticas públicas. Para tanto, expõe razões que justificam essa decisão municipal: razão cientifica, razão política; razão social, argumento econômico; argumento do direito. Ressalta que os passos para o município fazer o melhor por suas crianças dependem de uma decisão política, um compromisso político, mobilidade da sociedade e articulação com as políticas e programas nacionais e estaduais. O texto conclui que várias ciências constataram que os primeiros seis anos de vida são cruciais para a formação da personalidade, da inteligência e das estruturas afetivas e sociais. Nos planos e programas da União e do Estado encontram-se recursos e linhas de cooperação técnica, aos quais o município deve recorrer para suplementar suas ações na garantia dos direitos da criança pequena.

Rethinking cities in the Middle East: political economy, planning, and the lived space

Urbanisation is an economic, political, and socio-cultural complexity, and so is its interaction with cityscapes. However, this truism rarely finds an expression in academic research. It is obvious that economic transitions would determine the quality and volume of the built environment. Municipal and state decision making further shape the nature of urban spaces, and socio-cultural transformations influence perceived notions of the lived space and, in turn, reshape the physical landscape itself. Nevertheless, research on cities in the Middle East and elsewhere remains fairly limited in scope, with little cross-discipline ‘conversation’ among scholars in different fields which attempts to account for such complexity. This is all the more surprising as life in cities has become, over the past half century or so, the most significant form of human collective dwelling; in the Middle East over half the population currently lives in urban settings and the numbers are forecast to grow in the future.1 This review article is the result of a dialogue between an architect and an economic historian in response to the foregoing. We have united in an attempt to offer a more integrative approach to Middle East urbanism, accounting for the interactions of the political economy of this region, planning, and the lived space. The key questions on which we focus are why and how do state transformation and economic structural change impact upon urban space. In seeking the answers we examine the long-term trajectory of cities as they went through the first period of globalisation under imperial intervention and/or direct colonial rule; gradually came under independent, inward-looking, national regimes; and presently experience the second wave of globalisation and the opening of local economies to international markets. Such a narrative explores common themes in the historical trajectories of cities' lives. Our long-term, geographically extensive overview (Map 1) is bound to miss some specific developments that have made a significant impact on the transformations of cities in the region; our aim is not to totalise Middle East experiences and reduce a variety of narratives to a simplistic linear model of change. Even more so, our study of the Middle East is mostly focused on Egypt, the Asian Arab countries (the mashraq), Israel/Palestine, and Turkey, the geographical unit which roughly corresponded with the Ottoman Empire, the last state to control the Middle East before the age of nations. We acknowledge that any bird's eye view perspective is bound to do some injustice to historically specific contexts, and city transitions that occurred in such contexts. We would welcome any future work that brings our suggestion here, namely to integrate political economy with the study of urban development and city life, to bear on more specific research on urbanism in the Middle East.