Public Services In Urban Areas Research Articles

Precautionary savings and rural‐to‐urban migration: Evidence from Chinese hukou status

AbstractRural‐to‐urban migrants account for more than one‐third of the total population in China. However, because of China's hukou system, urban migrants can have limited access to different public services in urban areas. Consequently, this can affect their consumption and savings behaviour. However, little is known about how the hukou system changes migrants' allocation of savings across different savings instruments. In this study, we utilize the 2013 round of the Urban and Rural Residents Income Distribution and Living Conditions Survey of China to see if migrants' hukou status affects allocation between short‐term and long‐term assets. Propensity score matching is used to match migrants with migrants who have obtained urban hukou. When comparing the urban migrants having rural hukou with hukou holders who converted their hukou from rural to urban, we find that the migrants hold significantly higher proportions of savings in cash and other short‐term assets. Those who have obtained urban hukou, appear to hold a greater share of their portfolio in long‐term, higher returning assets. The differences in portfolio allocations appear to be larger for migrants with lower household income. We argue that these results are consistent with savings behaviour driven by a precautionary motive.

Travelling for public goods, neighborhood effect and spatial stratification

To investigate the spatial stratification of people with heterogeneous incomes, this paper incorporates travelling for public goods and the market friction arising from the minimum area when buying houses into a monocentric model, finding two stratification patterns: mixed stratification wherein people with high and low incomes live in suburbs while middle-income people live in urban areas, and complete stratification in which the wealthy live in urban areas and the poor live in suburbs. When public goods have congestion effect or when the agglomeration effect is small, there is mixed stratification; when the agglomeration effect of public services is large, there is complete stratification. Under mixed stratification, the increase in land supply in the suburbs causes low-income people to move to urban area, while lower commuting costs for suburban residents or increased public services in urban areas causes low-income people to migrate to urban areas. If travelling for public goods is impossible, these policies cause low-income residents to move from urban areas to suburbs.

Conflict on the urban fringe: Urbanization, environmental stress, and urban unrest in Africa

Most research on the security implications of environmental and demographic change does not explicitly distinguish between urban and rural areas. While statistical conflict analyses are increasingly sophisticated with respect to spatial and substantive disaggregation they largely ignore the possibility that urban and rural areas may be affected differently. In Africa, a continent assumed to be particularly vulnerable to the social and economic externalities of environmental and demographic change, less than one percent of the land mass is defined as ‘urban’. Yet, the population that lives in African cities is expected to increase by more than 150% between 2020 and 2050 according to UN population forecasts, massively outpacing rural population growth estimated at 35%. Given the vast social transformation associated with this process of rapid urbanization, understanding the dynamics and consequences of urban population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, and its possible relationship with environmental factors is key to reducing vulnerabilities and facilitating sustainable urban growth on the continent. In this article we argue that high urban population growth may strain the provision of public services in urban areas, heighten competition over scarce urban land, and increase the chances of urban social unrest. We expect population pressure to have the most profound effects on social unrest in peri-urban areas, meaning the urban outskirts. We further investigate whether environmental push factors, operationalized as droughts happening in rural areas proximate to the urban centers, could be driving any effect of urban population growth on social disorder, possibly supporting concerns over climate change-induced social unrest. We test our expectations on a sample of similarly sized urban and peri-urban ‘grid cells’ covering the whole of the African continent for the 1997–2010 period, using geo-coded social unrest data. Our analysis shows that urban population growth is associated with increased unrest in the peri-urban areas only. We find no evidence, however, that this relationship is driven by environmental push factors in the form of nearby droughts. The study contributes insights relevant to the broader debates about possible security implications of hyper-urbanization and climate change.

Quality of life in the urban environment and primary health services for the elderly during the Covid-19 pandemic: An application to the city of Milan (Italy)

The outbreak of the Coronavirus during the first months of 2020 completely reshaped urban lives because of the need to limit the spread of the disease and ensure essential services to the most vulnerable city users, such as elderly people. The urban population in European is ageing at unprecedented rate; at the same time, ageing is associated with increased vulnerability and dependence on medical care services. Age-friendly approaches are consequently necessary in urban planning strategies to ensure equal accessibility to essential services, not least in view of coronavirus pandemic. This article aims at defining a methodology for measuring urban accessibility to healthcare services as indicative of quality of life for the elderly within the city of Milan — affected by Covid — both in ordinary working scenarios and during the pandemic. The outputs show that entire neighbourhoods' elderly populations suffer from very poor accessibility to primary health services, especially in the city suburbs, and their condition deteriorates even more because of limited services and activities. The methodology would be effective to suggest policy recommendations to distribution of public services in urban areas and to reduce the potential effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on old people's health and quality of life.

KELURAHAN SILALAS SEBAGAI INNOVATION HUB: STRATEGI KOMPETITIF PEMERINTAH KOTA MEDAN MELALUI PERANGKAT KEWILAYAHANNYA (SILALAS SUBDISTRICT AS INNOVATION HUB: THE COMPETITIVE STRATEGY OF CITY GOVERNMENT OF MEDAN THROUGH ITS TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATIONS)

Penanganan problematika pelayanan publik di perkotaan berawal dari kelurahan/desa sebagai entitas wilayah administrasi pemerintahan terdepan. Kelurahan Silalas merupakan salah satu kelurahan di Kecamatan Medan Barat Kota Medan yang menjadi pintu utama bagi warga masyarakat kelurahan agar memeroleh pelayanan secara prima, ultima, dan optima di wilayahnya. Dalam upaya membangun iklim kondusif dengan daya saing tinggi, diperlukan terobosan dan inovasi. Strategi apakah yang dilakukan Pemerintah Kota Medan, Camat Medan Barat, Lurah Silalas, dan Perangkat Kelurahan Silalas? Studi ini merupakan penelitian evaluatif dengan metode kualitatif-deskriptif. Hasil analisis membuktikan bahwa keberadaan kelurahan sangat strategis dalam perspektif pelayanan publik. Akselerasi pencapaian kesejahteraan masyarakat di kelurahan sangat ditentukan oleh keberadaan dan kemampuan mengelola modal kewilayahan (territorial capital) dan modal sumberdaya manusia aparatur kelurahan (human capital) serta interaksi sosial beserta jejaringnya (social capital) melalui kerjasama dan kolaborasi dalam simpul inovasi (innovation-hub). Diharapkan kehadiran innovation-hubakan membuka akses pelayanan, menyatukan persepsi publik terhadap pentingnya inovasi untuk kesejahteraan, dan menstimulasi partisipasi masyarakat dalam setiap kegiatan pembangunan/pemberdayaan. Selain itu, dapat meningkatkan akseptabilitas publik atas keberhasilan pembangunan yang diinisiasi dan dilakukan dalam kebersamaan antara walikota, camat, lurah, perangkat kelurahan, dan warga masyarakatnya. Studi ini merekomendasikan agar Kelurahan Silalas dapat dijadikan teladan/panutan bahkan role modelbagi kelurahan lainnya di Kota Medan.
 Kata Kunci:Simpul Inovasi, Evaluasi, Kelurahan Silalas, Strategi Kompetitif, dan Kota Medan.

Private Governance of Public Schools: Representation, Priorities, and Compliance in New Orleans Charter School Boards

In many cities, charter schools make up an increasing proportion of public schools, substantially altering education governance. In New Orleans, nearly every public school student attends a charter school. Each charter school or network has its own private governing board responsible for obtaining and maintaining the school’s charter, school finances, and hiring school leadership. We know relatively little about the composition, priorities, or effectiveness of these boards. In this article, we find that New Orleans’s charter boards are unrepresentative, are focused on fiduciary responsibilities rather than academics, and routinely fail to comply with state transparency laws. As more schools and other public services in urban areas move to private governance, it is important to examine the people who compose the boards, their decision-making processes, and the extent of public involvement. New Orleans provides a cautionary tale of how this governance system could operate in other cities with growing charter sectors.

Optimising the spatial location of urban fire stations

One of the most essential public services in urban areas is fire protection and response. It also happens to be one of the most costly. As urban areas grow, develop and change, it is important to plan services accordingly, both in terms of safety as well as being fiscally responsible. This paper discusses strategic planning goals and objectives in fire protection and response, and details modeling approaches to support fire station siting. A case study examining a fire service system for a city in California is used to illustrate the importance of strategic planning and system re-evaluation when expanding services.

The evolution of China’s social policies

The movement of the Chinese economy towards a market-based system brought about a profound change in the nature of the social protection system in China and in the relative incomes of different groups in society. The collectively-provided health care systems failed to adapt to the new economic system, pension provision in urban ceased to be provided for all workers and rewards in the labour market became linked to the market-value of a skills. The result was a significant increase in inequality driven, especially by differences between urban and rural incomes. Since the middle of the last decade, though, inequality has stopped rising and shows signs of declining as increased labour mobility has tended to raise incomes in rural areas. At the same time, a range of new social policies have been introduced. While the level of spending on these policies remains low, they offer a framework for future expansion. There are still some areas where only limited progress has been made, notably concerning the access of migrants to public services in urban areas.

The city as a business: gas and business in the Spanish region of Galicia, 1850–1936

ABSTRACTThe history of town gas is unique in the development of public services in urban areas. Indeed, gas was the subject of the first network infrastructure set up in cities. In Spain, its history is discontinuous because the networks were dismantled in the 1940s and 1950s. The purpose of this paper is to retrace the steps of the development of the gas network in a region where the Spanish gas companies took the form of early modern businesses. They contributed significantly to the dynamism of local financial markets, both in terms of enterprise configuration, technology dissemination and innovative management. However, the development of the gas industry remained subject to local conditions of supply and demand, to conflicts with local government and suffered from competition from electricity.

Public and Private Institutions, Political Action, and the Practice of Local Government

Local government politics and political institutions are undergoing rapid changes as they adapt to changing social, political, and economic conditions. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing local governments in the coming years lies in forging new understandings of how to govern in a world increasingly beset by new institutional forms, like private government and quasi-governmental institutions, and by constantly changing populations. We selected the articles included in this symposium with these challenges in mind. These papers were initially presented at a conference supported by Florida State University’s DeVoe Moore Center in February 2006. The call for papers for the symposium was issued broadly, and the eight articles published here were among ten presented at the meeting. We selected papers that addressed issues of political behavior, the development of public and private institutions, and the intersection of behavior and institutions in the practice of local government. The initial two articles focus on the structure and functions of new forms of governments in cities. Robert Nelson describes the rise of private governments as providers of public services in urban areas. He reports on the explosive growth of neighborhood associations in the United States, discusses the evolution of a variety of types of private associations, and argues that state governments should alter their constitutions to better accommodate the reality of private governance institutions. In their article, Barbara Coyle McCabe and Jill Tao examine the scope of activities undertaken by homeowner associations. They report data from a national survey of homeowner associations undertaken with the cooperation of the peak professional group that represents them. They portray an industry in which organizations appear to be more interested in providing limited services to supplement those provided by local governments than in supplanting local governments. However, to the extent that private associations are able to provide services without duplicating what their members are paying for through taxation, they are willing to do so. McCabe and Tao point to a large new agenda for public services research and for students of public management, as privatized governments are in many ways hybrid organizations with powers, responsibilities, and career ladders that differ from either fully public or private organizations. 1119

Services publics et fractures de la ville. La « pensée publique » entre diversité, éclatement et souci du rapprochement

This review of publications, mostly written during the 1990s, examines the links between scientific expertise and public (in the first place central) authorities’ priorities with regard to public services in urban areas in France. The relations between “public services” and the “city” refer to a many-sided reality at the center of specialized discussions that do not lend themselves to generalization. The relations between these two subjects can be seen from three angles: the territorial supply of services; their relations with the environment; and the norms for thinking about and justifying the changes under way. Regardless of the angle chosen, three themes can be identified in talk about public services and urban areas: diversity, fragmentation and proximity. The publications examined in this review represent a mixture of heterogeneous studies, more or less dependent on requests from public institutions. These variable and varying requests provide evidence of the state’s hesitations about how to cope with social and urban changes.

Financing the decentralization of urban services in developing countries: Administrative requirements for fiscal improvements

Rapid urbanization in developing countries is placing increasing strains on the financial capacity of governments to provide the urban services and infrastructure that will be needed to promote sustainable economic growth. The growing complexity of urban systems in developing countries and the financial constraints on central government agencies are pressuring governments to decentralize a wider range of responsibilities for financing and providing public services in urban areas. Experiments with five approaches to local finance in many developing countries have focused more on revenue generation than on strengthening the administrative capacity of local governments to manage new responsibilities. The success of decentralization and of local revenue generation in the future, however, will depend on strengthening the ability of local governments to manage revenues and expenditures more efficiently and to maintain urban services more effectively.

A conceptual framework for the location of public facilities in the urban areas of developing countries: the Nigerian case

The provision of adequate public services to their urban populations within the constraints of financial resources is a major problem of most developing countries. The fact that the few available facilities are unevenly distributed in the urban areas suggests a need for efficient physical planning of public services. This paper suggests a conceptual framework for the provision of public services in Nigerian urban areas. The paper identifies the supply and demand factors which should govern the distribution of public services in the urban areas of the country.

The Spatiotemporal Pricing of Some Urban Public Services: Urban Ecology, Equity, and Efficiency

The paper discusses pricing schemes for some public services in urban areas with regard to equity and efficiency, taking into consideration the residential geography of cities, in terms of the spatial pattern of population density and the level of income. Spatial pricing schemes that use a distance criterion, especially distance from city center, are shown to be inadequate for purposes of equity and efficiency—the reason being the weakness of distance as an underlying variable in urban social ecology. One should, therefore, resort to a pricing scheme which comes as close as possible to the actual residential pattern. This paper suggests the use of a zonal and parcel pricing scheme which takes into account data on density and income by zone, or neighborhood, and by parcel. Usually such zonal and parcel data are quite readily available and are often used for such purposes as land use regulation or property taxation. With little additional effort a more refined spatial pricing scheme would be reached, thus equity and efficiency considerations would be more properly satisfied. By introducing additional data on the spatial distribution of peak and offpeak users, such a spatial scheme could replace temporal pricing in urban areas where peak-load pricing through metering is not feasible.

Local Impact Evaluation in the Design of Large-Scale Urban Systems

Abstract When public service systems are designed in accordance with a highly aggregated definition of the public interest, their impacts often clash with community welfare as seen from a local perspective. In this article, such conflicts of interest are not viewed as an aberration of planning for large-scale systems, but as an inherent and central issue of designing and evaluating public services in urban areas. This problem is reflected in serious disparities between abstract models of planning, and the more practical processes of decision-making. To explore means of looking at public system impacts from the concrete and unique viewpoint of neighborhoods, this discussion focuses on the nature of evaluation strategies that might best cope with these conflicts. A number of evaluation procedures are reviewed with this requirement in mind, including benefit-cost and cost-effectiveness analysis, computer interaction techniques, and a process suggested under the name of “dialectical scanning.”