Municipal Policy Research Articles

Welcoming the unwelcome: Migration industries and border control for homeless job-seeking migrants in central Copenhagen

As modes of border control increasingly shift to cities, private charities that engage in caring for non-national homeless migrants risk, unintentionally and unwillingly, serving the so-called ‘migration industries’ as front agencies for the European border regime. Since the 2008 financial crisis, which hit migrant populations in southern Europe particularly hard, the number of homeless migrants sleeping rough in northern European cities has increased. In Copenhagen, these new homeless include jobless West African men who reside in Spain or Italy but are transiently in the city to reboot their lives by collecting empty deposit-carrying bottles left on the streets. Political will to address this rising social problem at state and city levels has so far been limited, leaving the private non-profit charities of central Copenhagen as sole providers of care for homeless migrants. This article examines how these long-established institutions, which used to provide care primarily to locals with substance dependencies or mental health problems, have transformed into migrant industries shaped by the logic of the European border regime. For this purpose, prior research on urban borderlands and homeless migrants is reviewed, and documents issued by non-profit charities operating in the field of urban homelessness are analysed. The article focuses on the increasingly hostile elements of state and municipal policies on non-Western migrants, which work to divide ‘our’ homeless from the migrant ‘others’. It also considers the various ways in which charities work to enable different survival strategies to emerge and be maintained among migrants without access to the formal labour market, and finally how charities’ transformed role affects their relationships with local residents.

Including the excluded in the integrated development planning process for improved community participation

This article aims to assess the Integrated Development Planning (IDP) process for improved community participation. The IDP process was developed to improve strategic planning and community participation at the municipal level. Many South African municipalities have been struggling to use the IDP process to improve community participation. The methodology included 400 respondents who were chosen through a probability sampling technique and probed to complete the online survey using a closed-ended questionnaire guide, and ten respondents were also chosen through a non-probability sampling technique and were face-to-face interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. The key findings revealed that poor community participation exists in the study area due to a lack of encouragement from responsible authorities. The Tzaneen municipality does not provide adequate feedback to the communities, and the inputs of the communities are not considered. There is a continuous lack of community consultation during the annual review of the IDP. The ineffective IDP process for improved community participation presents several challenges. Thus, this article concluded by providing a few recommendations to enhance the application of the IDP process and community participation. The Tzaneen municipal area should at all times uphold democratic principles by ensuring active public participation, transparency, and openness in municipal affairs. It also recommends making it easier for marginalised and previously disadvantaged people to participate in municipal policy and decision-making without prejudice. South African municipalities, including Tzaneen municipality, should develop and innovate institutional, and organisational capabilities to better utilise their resources, mitigate socio-economic challenges and enhance service delivery.

Locating federalism: Non‐financial assets and public policy in Canada

AbstractScholars who study centralization and decentralization in Canada usually rely on the distribution of authority and financial/human resources to identify transfers of “power to” and “power over” among different levels of government. We argue that patterns of non‐financial asset ownership are a useful yet frequently overlooked measure of “power to.” We demonstrate that Canadian municipal policy responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic were shaped in part by the physical assets owned by municipal and provincial governments. These patterns of non‐financial asset ownership reveal Canadian municipalities to be more important policy actors than typically assumed. A full understanding of the distribution of power within the Canadian federation requires attention to government ownership of physical assets.

DIRECTIONS OF ACTIVITY OF THE GENDER CENTER IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE INSTITUTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Educational programs and work programs on available educational content on gender issues are analyzed. The annual reports of the Gender Center are summarized. The content of the official websites of the Free Economic Zone has been studied. Surveys of participants in the educational process were conducted. A structural-functional approach was applied in order to highlight the activities of the Gender Center. Gender education has been implemented, which includes educational activities, dissemination and promotion of gender knowledge and gender culture, promotion of gender self-education through the implementation of non-formal education. Among the general competencies are: 1. The ability to exercise their rights and responsibilities as a member of society, to understand the values of civil (free democratic) society and the need for its sustainable development, the rule of law, human and civil rights and freedoms in Ukraine. Professional competencies include: 11. Ability to provide assistance and support to clients, taking into account their individual needs, age differences, gender, ethnicity and other characteristics. The practical experience of a higher education institution in the implementation of gender education in the training of future social workers is summarized. It was found that the most popular form of non-formal education are training programs, including "Tolerance towards the LGBT community", "Preparing young people for family life". The gender passport is the result of a gender analysis of the community and includes statistics disaggregated by article, as well as data obtained from the analysis of current municipal policies, the activities of local governments. Promising tasks of gender centers in higher education institutions are to substantiate recommendations for the introduction of educational components on gender issues based on the analysis of educational programs.

Urban Policy Entrepreneurship: Activist Networks, Minimum Wage Campaigns and Municipal Action Against Inequality

Why are cities acting against inequality? We attribute the growth of municipal economic policy to multi-city urban policy entrepreneurship networks. These networks combine activists who create pressure to address inequality with policy experts who supply the legislative means to do so. We illustrate the concept through the Fight for $15 campaign in Seattle and Chicago. Drawing on more than 100 interviews, participant observation and secondary documents, we show that advocates for municipal policy reform use national policy entrepreneurship networks to develop policy-specific and generalized policy advocacy techniques. Centering urban policy entrepreneurship brings into focus three important aspects of current municipal public policy: 1) The two-way interaction between national and local policy campaigns. 2) Partnerships between activists who set the political agenda and policy entrepreneurs who act on political opportunity. 3) The role of national advocacy and policy entrepreneurship networks in converting new policy ideas into routine, off-the-shelf policy solutions.

Analysis of municipal policy in the field of development of sports and physical education in Novosibirsk

The article considers statistical data on sports and physical education events held in the city of Novosibirsk. The comparison of planned and actual indicators of the implementation of the development program in the field of physical education and sports was carried out.

The collaboration in the action plan for a blue sky of chinese municipal government based on text data mining and social network analysis

Constructing a collaborative mechanism through the self-organizing movement within the system is the main development direction of China’s future mechanism of innovation. The reform of the administrative system can give full play to the role of the collaborative mechanism. This article comprehensively uses data mining and social network analysis to analyze the collaboration of China’s municipal departments in air pollution control. Text data includes 101 municipal policies. The paper reveals the collaboration problems in air pollution control and proposes suggestions from the perspective of the departmental responsibility. First, from the perspective of inter-departmental collaboration, the lack of responsibility for Department of Finance, Department of Housing and Urban-rural Development, Department of Ecology and Environment, Department of Industry and Information Technology, Department of Transport, Department of Public Security, and Department of Development and Reform is the most obvious, indicating that the comprehensive management departments should be strengthened to assume responsibilities, while the specialized management departments should also be strengthened. Second, from the perspective of intra-departmental responsibility collaboration, the most obvious situation is that the collaborations of responsible for promoting new-energy vehicles, air pollution control in autumn and winter, increasing tax-free incentive policy support, development of inter-modality, adjusting regional industrial layout, optimizing freight structure, and increasing economic policy support are insufficient. The number of departments responsible for supervision should be increased, as well as the number of departments responsible for guidance.

Towards age‐friendly municipalities: What are municipalities doing to support their ageing population with mental health problems?

AbstractMunicipalities in Western Europe have increasingly gained a responsibility to support their populations' healthy ageing, but are they ready to do so? In this case study, we are looking into the awareness, attitudes, capacities and mandates of 33 neighboring Belgian, Dutch, and German municipalities to support ageing people, and especially people with dementia, people with late‐life depression and informal caregivers. As part of the Senior Friendly Communities Interreg project, we conducted semi‐structured interviews with municipal policymakers and relevant stakeholders from May 2017 to January 2018. The results show that dementia was a more salient theme in municipality policies than depression; that informal caregivers were considered important but difficult for municipalities to identify; that there was a difference between how embedded these health themes were in policies versus in practice; and lastly, that conducting this assessment turned out to act as an intervention itself. We discuss the similarities and differences between the regions, and the context that needs to be taken into account for municipalities when becoming more age‐friendly. These results do not only provide an insight into the status quo of the participating municipalities with regard to becoming more age‐friendly but can provide a starting point for further development of policies in this area.

Urban governance of liminal legality comparing the incorporation of migrant children in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem

Increasing numbers of migrant children worldwide grow up with fragmentary and revocable legal statuses that perpetuate their liminal legality as socially present yet legally non-existent. Scholars of migration have mainly explored macro drivers and micro-level effects of liminal legality paying less attention to the role of urban governance and actors in shaping migrant children's pathways of incorporation amidst broader processes of local rescaling. Taking into consideration that neoliberal rescaling is anchored in the uneven institutional landscapes in which it unfolds, this comparative research shows how different trajectories of urban rescaling result in two modes of governance: centralized–segregated in Tel-Aviv, and particularistic–integrative in Jerusalem. Grounded on 101 in-depth interviews with local agents and surveys of municipal policies and NGO reports, we show that in cosmopolitan-oriented yet relatively less ethno-nationally heterogeneous Tel-Aviv, actors maneuver institutional ambivalence by emphasizing liberal status-blind principles in the provision of segregated services. Conversely, in ethno-religious oriented yet ethno-nationally heterogeneous Jerusalem, migrant children are incorporated in integrative frameworks that recognize their particularity. Drawing on an inter-city comparison, we argue that local actors both reflect and mobilize inherited institutional landscapes and legacies of sensemaking of “otherness” as they negotiate similar national restrictive migration policies. Integrating critical scholarship on urban rescaling, attentive to structures of social provision and policy paradigms, and local actors' sensemaking, we foreground the centrality of cities in forging liminal legality as a multidimensional space where policies, institutional contexts, and agency work together in emplacing migrant children, suspended between legal categories, as urban subjects.

Securing human right to water of slum-dwellers in Mumbai, India: Achievements, limitations, and institutional appropriation

This paper elucidates different forms and modes by which the two State agencies in Mumbai, India—the High Court and the municipal government—appropriated the human rights to water of an estimated two million slum-dwellers in the city. While the order of the High Court made inadequate and narrow interpretations of human rights to water, the municipal policy and functionaries indulged in delayed, selective, cosmetic, distorted, or rhetorical acceptance of these rights. These interpretations and actions led to many limitations and risks for the realization of human rights to water for slum-dwellers including penal tariffs, sub-par infrastructure, and new barriers to water access. Yet, the court order also removed a stiff legal barrier and empowered slum dwellers by lending legitimacy to their claims to water access. This paper responds to concerns in the literature over the appropriation of human rights to water by capitalist States especially in the Global South and its adverse implications for the realization of these rights. It also substantiates previous researchers’ claims that there is a potential for positive outcomes of struggles for these rights. Finally, I indicate that, while countering such institutional appropriation, struggles for human rights to water need to undertake political action to enforce these rights.

The Food Police: The White Possessive Securitization of Winnipeg Food Spaces

Grocery shopping is one of the most necessary everyday practices when it comes to being food secure. Food security is frequently spatially imagined along two axes – access and health. I highlight the specific conditions of existence for food insecure citizens in Winnipeg to demonstrate the incommensurability of how food insecurity is imagined and intervened upon, or not, through municipal policy. Drawing on Critical Indigenous Studies scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s theorizations of white possession, I establish a framework of white possessive securitization to interrogate the dynamics between policy, policing, and securitization of space that results in Indigenous people being subjected to multiple modes of policing when grocery shopping. With white possessive securitization, I trace how individual settler citizens operate as self-governing subjects to police Indigenous people in the city while carrying out the aims of white patriarchal sovereignty – to secure private property. I provide three vignettes of the intersections of municipal policy and the policing of food by focussing on municipal budgets, securitization of public-private space, and grocery stores. These vignettes delineate how policing in grocery stores interfere with Indigenous food security and are inseparable from inflated municipal policing budgets, austerity measures that reduce community services, increased surveillance, threats of violence, and the undiscriminating implementation of the rule of law by individual settler citizens who through rationalities of governmentality are the police.

Impact of a Homeless Encampment Closure on Crime Complaints in the Bronx, New York City, 2017: Implications for Municipal Policy

ABSTRACT Purpose As part of COVID-19 control policy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised local jurisdictions to permit the formation of homeless encampments to prevent community disease spread. This new federal public health guidance is in conflict with existing police policies in many jurisdictions to raze or evict homeless encampments upon discovery. However, no empirical research on homeless encampment policy actions exists. Methods This study utilized interrupted time series to estimate the impact of the 2017 closure of “the Hole”—a longstanding encampment of homeless people who use drugs in the Bronx, New York City—on crime complaints. Daily crime complaints originating from public spaces within 1 mile of the encampment were captured during the 30-day periods before and after closure. Results Closure was associated with no short-term changesin complaints [IRR=1.01; 95% CI (0.81-1.27)], with daily complaints remaining at baseline levels during the post-closure period [IRR 0.99; 95% CI (0.98-1.00)]. Discussion Findings preliminarily suggest that the presence of a homeless encampment may not have been associated with increased levels of crime in the neighborhood where it was located. Future research is necessary to understand the health and social impacts of homeless encampments and inform municipal policymakers.

Play-Friendly Communities in Nova Scotia, Canada: A Content Analysis of Physical Activity and Active Transportation Strategies.

The Play-Friendly Cities framework describes key municipal actions and indicators which support a community’s playability and can positively influence children’s health behaviors and quality of life. The purpose of this study was to conduct a content analysis of Nova Scotia physical activity (PA) and active transportation (AT) strategies by applying the playability criteria in the Play-Friendly Cities framework. Methods: PA and AT strategies from communities across Nova Scotia were assessed using the Play-Friendly Cities framework. Strategy content was analyzed based on indicators across four themes: participation of children in decision making, safe and active routes around the community, safe and accessible informal play environments, and evidence-informed design of formal play spaces. Results: Forty-two (28 PA,14 AT) strategies were reviewed and all included statements reflective of at least one indicator (8 ± 4; range: 1–14). Content about safe and active routes around the community was most prevalent (41 plans, 812 mentions), while participation of children in decision making was least frequently presented (18 plans, 39 mentions). Content about safe and accessible informal play environments (31 plans, 119 mentions) and evidence-informed design of formal play spaces (28 plans, 199 mentions) was also present. Conclusions: All PA and AT strategies included some content reflective of a Play-Friendly City; however, there was great variability in the number of included indicators. This summary provides key information on opportunities, such as increasing meaningful involvement of children in decision making, that can inform future municipal actions and policies to improve a community’s playability.

Co-Creation Hub Is the First Step for the Successful Creation of a Unified Urban Ecosystem-Kaunas City Example.

The identification of the main steps for the creation of a unified ecosystem from the institutional point of view and the framework for ecosystem design is presented and discussed. Based on the expertise and the knowledge gained during the time when the ELISE project had been implemented, a unified Kaunas city ecosystem is being designed using the Ecosystem Map method. As the review of the ELISE project reports helped to identify the main steps of each project partner in building ecosystems’ networks, Kaunas city chose to create a co-Creation Hub (c-CH), which is the first step in developing an ecosystem management model. The main tasks of such a hub are listed, and should involve the preparation of a long-term action plan involving not only the coordination of the stakeholder meetings, organisation of seminars, the preparation of new materials, and methodology but also the development of a clear strategy for each stakeholder based on national economy and government and municipality policies. The role of the c-CH is to ensure the ease of cooperation and knowledge distribution among stakeholders within the city, public authorities, and the national government. This approach could become a fundamental background tool for the regional and/or city municipal and stakeholder-based creation and development of unified ecosystem development.

An intersectional reading of circular economy policies: towards just and sufficiency-driven sustainabilities

ABSTRACT Transitions to a circular economy (CE) have, in recent years, emerged as a popular approach to deal with the challenges related to the systemic crises of the Anthropocene. However, mainstream CE discourses have been critiqued for being ecomodernist and for focusing too much on managerial issues, at the expense of justice and social aspects, and thereby risking not leading to the systemic changes so direly needed. Given this backdrop, as well as cities key role in responding to sustainability challenges, this article adopts a posthumanist intersectionality-perspective to explore the transformative potential of a municipal policy in which CE has been adopted as a key strategy for achieving change. A critical policy analysis of the City of Gothenburg’s new Environment and Climate Programme reveals that, apart from a focus on efficiency, the Programme also includes a politics of sufficiency and decreased consumption, thus potentially taking a first step within Swedish public sector towards an outspoken post-growth paradigm. The analysis, moreover, provides insights into what notions of citizens (or Gothenburgians), justice, responsibility, and nature–human relations the Programme is underpinned by. Drawing on these findings, the article proposes practical implications for urban policymakers and avenues for further research.

Social Order as a Financial and Economical Instrument for Regulating Employment and Labour Migration in the Russian Federation

The improvement of the financial and economic mechanism and instruments for implementing state projects and programs is one of the most pressing issues for the Russian Federation in the regulation of economic processes. In this area, the most important thing for the state is the issue of providing citizens equally with socially significant services in demand and creating opportunities for broad access to the market of competitive services for all interested state and non-governmental organisations of various organisational and legal forms, and the possibility of creating new jobs as well. The state solving these problems is consistently developing and adopting legislative acts that regulate the process of practical implementation at all levels of government’s hierarchy, creating an opportunity for an independent regional and municipal policy in the field of employment, orderly attraction and regulation of migration processes. The article discusses new, most relevant approaches and considers the mechanism and tools, which make it possible to solve the tasks set by the authorities until 2024. The conclusions the author has drawn reflect the possibility of achieving concrete results, considering the tasks to be solved in the area of implementing the social order, regulating the employment of the population and labour migration at the regional and municipal levels.

Regional Cooperation in Waste Management: Examining Australia’s Experience with Inter-municipal Cooperative Partnerships

Effective governance and inter-organisational cooperation is key to progressing Australia’s journey toward the circular economy. At the local governance level, inter-municipal cooperative partnerships in waste management (‘IMC-WM’ partnerships) are a widespread phenomenon throughout Australia, and the world. This paper aims to analyse waste management in Australia through a governance perspective and inaugurate the scholarship on understanding the complex interactions between actors and institutions designed for regional cooperation. To this end, we explore the partnerships’ institutional characteristics, joint activity outputs and the internal relations observed between participants. Data were collected through a nationwide census survey of Australia’s IMC–WM partnerships and a short online questionnaire to the municipal policy actors (councillors, executives and council officers) who participate in them. The investigation observes that a diversity of innovative institutional responses has emerged in Australia. However, within these partnerships, a culture of competitiveness antithetical to sustainability is also detected. Despite competitive behaviours, the partnerships perform very well in cultivating goodwill, trust, reciprocity and other social capital values among their participants—as well as a strong appreciation of the complexity of municipal solid waste (MSW) policy and the virtues of regional cooperation. This dissonance in attitudes and engagement dynamics, it is suggested, can be explained by considering the cultural-cognitive influence of broader neoliberalist paradigms. As the first scholarly investigation into Australia’s experience with regional cooperation in waste management, this research reveals the macro-level structures and ascendent micro-institutional dynamics shaping the phenomenon.

Multilevel analysis of injury severity of elderly motorcycle riders: The role of regional transport development

Objective Research specifically focusing on the elderly segment of motorcycle riders remains largely scarce, which represents a serious lack in understanding given the fast-growing trend of aging societies around the world. This article examines factors affecting the injury severity of elderly motorcycle riders in Taiwan using a multilevel model consisting of both individual and municipality levels. In particular, this study emphasized the role of municipality-level factors closely related to the municipality characteristics and policy considerations in directing local governments’ policies and implementing crash-prevention strategies and measures. Methods A multilevel logistic regression model was specified and estimated by using crash data of elderly motorcycle riders across 20 municipalities in Taiwan between 2012 and 2018. Principal component analysis was employed to identify the municipality-level factors. Results Individual-level factors such as being male, old age, no valid license, drunk driving, not wearing a helmet, turning or overtaking others, early morning and evening riding, errors in traffic signaling, and exceeding the speed limit have significant effects on injury severity. The highlighted municipality-level factor, the transport development index, demonstrates its significant effect on mitigating injury severity across municipalities. Conclusions Apart from considering individual factors such as driver-related, vehicle-related and road-side-related variables, this paper shed light on the role of transport development level of a municipality in analyzing the injury severity of elderly motorcycle riders. Policy implications in directing local governments’ policies and implementing crash-prevention strategies and measures are discussed and provided.

A process model of the public sphere: A case of municipal policy debates on Sina Weibo

AbstractSocial media have become a major venue where citizens discuss matters of public concern, prompting some scholars to apply theory of the public sphere to analyze online discussion. However, the public sphere is often viewed as a static space; little attention is given to the complex processes through which topics are raised, debated, and refined by the public through this discussion. This study conceptualizes the public sphere as a problematization process and proposes a novel framework combining a four‐phase process analysis together with content analysis to analyze public deliberation process on social media. A case study is conducted of public discussion on Sina Weibo about municipal policy in Hangzhou, China. Data generated using the framework illustrate how social media function as a filtering mechanism, channeling salient public opinions from civil society to decision‐making bodies in the center of the politico‐legal system, where these opinions play a role in policy decision‐making. This paper provides analytic leverage for understanding the relevance of public sphere theory to policymaking processes.

Municipal Characteristics of In-Home Death Among Care-Dependent Older Japanese Adults

The provision of in-home and community end-of-life care has emerged as an important policy issue for aging populations around the world. Despite most patients expressing the wish to die at home (as opposed to in the hospital), substantial geographic variation persists in the prevalence of in-home death at the end of life. To assess the association of municipal characteristics with variation in the place of death among care-dependent older people in Japan. In this cross-sectional study using multilevel logistic regression, analyses were performed using national claims data under Japan's long-term care insurance system. The study population included long-term care insurance beneficiaries 65 years and older who died in 2015, excluding those who died from external causes, such as unintentional injuries. Data analyses were conducted from January 1 to April 31, 2021. Predisposing, enabling, and need factors at the individual and municipal levels according to a behavioral model. The outcome was whether individuals died at home or not. This cross-sectional study analyzed 544 836 decedents (median [IQR] age, 87 [81-91] years; 300 142 [55.1%] female). The proportion of in-home deaths was 10.3%. In the multilevel null model, 7.2% of the variance in the place of death was associated with municipal-level characteristics. Municipal characteristics were associated with more of the variance than were prefectural characteristics (2.7%). The largest proportional change (7.3%) in variance at the municipality level was observed when enabling factors (ie, medical and long-term care resources) were added to the model. Municipalities with a high proportion of in-home death were more likely to have a higher supply of clinics, physicians, and care workers providing in-home services per population, as well as a lower number of hospital beds and long-term care facility workers per population. In this cross-sectional study, municipal characteristics explained a substantial proportion of the geographic variance in in-home death in Japan. These results suggest that municipal policy makers need to ensure an adequate supply of clinics, physicians, and care workers providing in-home services to meet the preferences of care-dependent older people who wish to spend their final days at home.