Urban Councils Research Articles

Testing the feasibility of performance indicators for play facilities in England

Play England, the leading national voluntary organization for play in England, commissioned research into the feasibility of four performance indicators being utilized as national indicators for play provision in local authority areas. The four indicators represent participation in outdoor play, satisfaction with local play spaces, quality of local play spaces, and accessibility to local play spaces. Six pilot authorities agreed to participate in the feasibility study, including five from metropolitan (mainly urban) councils and one from a district (more rural) council. The methods employed to generate the performance data comprised household surveys, surveys of children and young people via schools, professional assessment of play space quality using a standard assessment tool, audits and mapping of local play spaces, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The results suggest that three of the indicators are suitable for national comparisons, but the quality indicator is only suitable for local management purposes. The participation indicator should be constructed using a household survey and the satisfaction indicator from an online survey of children and young people via schools. The audit and mapping data assembled for the access indicator proved more useful for local performance management than the access indicator itself. Considerable challenges are evident in some authorities, particularly achieving the necessary cooperation of (and IT capacity in) schools to conduct the survey of children and young people, and generating the necessary GIS resource to map the access data.

Inventory of water management practices in Harare, Zimbabwe

AbstractLake Chivero, in Zimbabwe, is the major water supply source for the greater Harare area. This paper looks at the sustainability of current practices of the urban water cycle in relation to water quantity and quality management in the Chivero catchment. Data on population, water supply, water and wastewater treatment and river flows were obtained from urban councils and government departments. The data were used to assess water consumption, wastewater generation, treatment and disposal practices, river flow trends, raw water abstractions and water demand patterns. The results showed that the current situation is not sustainable as water quantity in the catchment will soon be a problem at current levels of consumption while water quality is already a problem, especially with regard to nutrient levels. Water and nutrient management strategies, which include water use efficiency, treatment and water recycling and nutrient reuse in controlled urban agriculture, are recommended as matters of urgency.

Les Chemins de la nouveauté: Innover, inventer au regard de l'histoire (review)

Reviewed by: Les Chemins de la nouveauté: Innover, inventer au regardde l’histoire Daryl M. Hafter (bio) Les Chemins de la nouveauté: Innover, inventer au regard de l’histoire. Edited by Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Anne-Françoise Garçon . Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 2003. Pp. 473. €38. This collection is poised to dethrone Joseph Schumpeter's old narrative of the Industrial Revolution and replace it with a more nuanced analysis. In Schumpeter's paradigm, the steam engine, the factory, and the identifiable inventor took pride of place, and the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain became the archetype. There was said to be a gulf between the handicraft of the preindustrial years and the industrial "takeoff" which came to permeate all sectors of the economy, speeding up production and the transformation of national life. On the contrary, as the essays in Les Chemins de la nouveauté make clear, the Industrial Revolution was actually the result of many small artisanal innovations. The book is divided into three sections: invention and its institutions, collective and individual methods, and the art of invention. Christine MacLeod shows how nineteenth-century English inventors were turned into heroic figures, thereby not only helping to perpetuate the "great man" theory of economic history but also reinforcing the notion that the Industrial Revolution in Britain was the standard by which to judge other countries. Of the authors seeking to discredit the great-man theory, Patrice Bret is among the most assertive. Bret discusses a nineteenth-century French inventor, Henri-Joseph Paixhans, whose development of cannon with explosive projectiles gave the French navy parity with the British. Paixhans refused to take credit for the innovation, explicitly documenting the contributions made earlier by others. By insisting that the development be judged by several learned academic groups, however, he captured the interest of the public and successfully overrode bureaucratic inertia. Other authors address the theme of joint responsibility for invention by focusing on the innovative climate that coeditor Liliane Hilaire-Pérez calls "open technique." Coeditor Anne-Françoise Garçon suggests that this competitor to the "vulgate schumpétérienne" has multiple roots, including the research of Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin into flexible and small-scale enterprise, Thomas Hughes's concept of systems, and H. Verrin's analysis of the ties between enterprise and workshop from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. Examples come from diverse settings. Italian silk workers [End Page 850] learned new techniques from the particular specialties of various cities, and urban councils permitted glassmakers to circulate freely. In Switzerland, as Bernice Veyrassat shows, the sheer numbers of individual watchmakers gave rise to extraordinary innovation in response to the mass production of American competitors. John Snail shows that the supposed hostility of artisans to technical change is much exaggerated. Rather, they themselves were responsible for innumerable changes that cumulatively resulted in better production and distribution of goods. Arguing for a new historiographical perspective, he writes that "examining artisanal innovation . . . clearly shows how the responses to market conditions affected both the development of particular technologies AND [sic] a broad cultural emphasis on innovation which . . . was crucial to the long term growth of the economy" (p. 315). Snail points to the notebook of the eighteenth-century Yorkshire wool-frizzing miller John Brearley, with its numerous diagrams of machine improvements and new schemes to satisfy market demands. Examining technological transfer, Marco Belfanti writes that artisan migration was a key to the preindustrial diffusion of techniques. Only with the spread of literacy and the opportunity to set the "mysteries" of the crafts into print did workers' actual tours of other workshops decline in importance. Belfanti emphasizes the "vast network of competence and complimentary technical progress" that accumulated in urban centers, even lending a market-oriented cooperation to peasants. S. R. Larry Epstein concurs in the importance of artisan migration, whether temporary or permanent. Though full-scale compagnonnage tours started only in the eighteenth century, masters had long understood that journeymen could acquire new technology and perfect their skills by working under different conditions and in other markets. While industry developed through technological transfer, encountering a new invention did not inevitably lead to change. A novelty not only had to...

Explanators of Local Government Distress

This article develops a statistical model to explain sources of distress in local government. Whereas ‘financial distress’ in the private sector has been equated with a failure to meet financial commitments, here ‘distress’ is interpreted as an inability to maintain pre‐existing levels of services to the community. Since the late 1990s local councils in an Australian state (New South Wales) have been required to estimate the cost of restoring infrastructure assets to a satisfactory condition (a requirement which predates that form of reporting on infrastructure condition introduced as an option in U.S. GASB 34). Information regarding the cost of restoring infrastructure is used in this study as a proxy for levels of distress (in contrast to the binary classification that characterizes much of prior private sector financial distress research). Data regarding service levels for a sample of 161 councils for 2001 and 2002 were used and a multiple regression model was estimated and interpreted. The main findings were that the degree of distress in local councils is positively associated with the size of the population they serve and the size and composition of their revenues. Road maintenance costs featured prominently in results, as higher road program costs were associated with higher levels of distress (particularly when interacted with other variables). However, the revenue generating capacity of councils had the strongest statistical impact on local government distress. Councils with lower percentages of rates revenue to total revenue and lower ordinary revenue levels to total assets were typically identified as more distressed. However, no systematic evidence was found that rural councils have higher distress levels than urban councils (i.e., both rural and urban councils serving larger populations were relatively more distressed than councils serving smaller populations). It is suggested that the model (or modifications thereof) may serve as an early warning system for those monitoring the circumstances and performance of local governments.

Assessment of Urban Governance in Zimbabwe: Case of the City of Gweru

The objective of this paper is to assess urban governance in Zimbabwe with specific reference to the City of Gweru. In Zimbabwe urban governance is the immediate responsibility of Urban Councils in cogovernance with the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development, which has an overall supervisory role. Chapter 29: 15 of the Urban Councils Act of 1995, revised in 1996, provides for the establishment of municipalities and towns and the administration of local boards, municipal and town councils. It confers functions and powers that impose duties upon municipal and town councils, as well as local boards. In Zimbabwe urban governance is not totally autonomous. The responsibilities and functions of urban governance are often shared and take place within a policy framework, which is both set by national politicians and over which those same national politicians will want to exert influence and direction. The issue is less about autonomy and more about inter- dependence and balance. The paper explores the view that if urban councils are to be government in the real sense of the word, then they must have a strategic capacity for accountability, efficiency and transparency to help in combating corruption, urban poverty and enhancing civic engagement. Through the use of interviews, questionnaires and minutes of council and committee meetings, the research also examines the relations between councillors, electorate, officials, and central government in the urban governance of Gweru. The study concludes by discussing recommendations for good urban governance in Gweru.

Justices ecclésiastiques et justices laïques dans les communes de la basse vallée du Rhône (XIIe -XIIIe s.)

Church Justice and Secular Justice in Lower-Rhône Town Councils (12th-13th Centuries). The study of the urban contentions that took place in the lower Rhone valley from the 12th to the 13th century shows that, even if church institutions were endowed with a complex judicial system that had strong jurisdictional bases, they had to give in to the more and more pressing demands for autonomy made by municipalities. The town councils of Arles and Avignon, which were created in the first decades of the 12th century, had a set of tools at their disposal which was appro¬ priate not only to show the citizens that their authority was fully legitimate, but also to develop into institutions which would be capable to offer political representation to the cives. They also became jurisdictional authorities which could head urban councils as a whole. The judicial competence of law experts who came from a diversity of social backgrounds and the unrelenting claim for political and jurisdictional autonomy that was gradually advanced by groups of urban leaders were instrumental in reaching that goal. In that regard, the shape of the relationship between justice and politics shows that town councils built a jurisdictional space which was autonomous from that of the bishop and puts to the fore the roots of the distinction that was gradually made between the different kinds of judicial competence. The latter have to be taken into account if one wants to understand the organization of power relations which establishes social practices and govemement policy in all societies.

Understanding Household Limitation Strategies among the Sixteenth-Century Urban Poor in France

This essay explores what we can learn about the household limitation behaviour and strategies of those members of sixteenth-century French society who numbered among the mass of the poor. In particular, it focuses on the evidence produced by urban poor relief councils and hospitals, as they recorded the circumstances of the poverty-stricken clientele for their administrative records, and presents some preliminary findings. Although contraceptive methods do not feature explicitly in petitions and supporting documents, it is possible to build up a modest picture from these sources of the kinds of household limitation techniques available to the urban poor. As this essay demonstrates, in some cases, these involved reproductive strategies, yet in other cases it may be more appropriate to speak of household limitation methods.

Playing cowboys and Africans: Hollywood and the cultural politics of African identity

In his introduction to Africans on African-Americans, Yekutiel Gershoni relates a discussion he once had with the African historian L.H. Gann. The most popular films among African miners in Norther...

Self-Governance and Community

This article has three objectives: 1) to assess the contribution of villager self-government to the development of community councils in urban China; 2) to discuss whether there are lessons to be learned from the experiments in urban community councils relevant to the building of rural communities; and 3) most importantly, to raise theoretical issues common to both villager self-government and urban community councils. In fulfilling these three aims, this article will further understanding of the expansion of grassroots democracy and increasing citizens’ participation in China. The article’s comparative approach will incorporate an analysis of the institutionalization of the ‘Four Democracies’ at the village level and the extent to which they are also being implemented in the different and varying circumstances of the urban experiments and environments. We are interested in whether the villagers’ committees and residents’ committees, especially the latter in their restyled community status, are training grounds for citizenship. The different human landscapes of village and community, however, will have a profound effect on the nature and exercise of citizenship.

Empirical Analysis of Productivity in Australian Local Government, 1993/94 to 1995/96

In this study, the nature and extent of efficiency and productivity growth in Australian local government is investigated using nonpara-metric frontier technique. Employing Malmquist indices, productivity growth is decomposed into technical efficiency change and technological change for two important local government functions: domestic waste management and recycling services and planning and regulatory services. The results indicate that there was little or no productivity growth at the frontier during the period in question although there was substantial improvement in the relative efficiency of nearly all councils in both functions. That productivity growth which did occur appears largely due to and increase in efficiency over the period with improvements in scale efficiency dominating for larger, urban developed councils and improvements in technical efficiency being notable for smaller, rural agricultural councils.

Children's citizenship and participation models: participation in planning urban spaces and children's councils

AbstractParticipation represents a very important strategy for the sustainable development of cities and many governments have implemented a number of initiatives with this objective in mind. Of all the forms of children's involvement in changing the city, the present work takes into account two models of children's participation: Children's Councils and Participation in Planning. Special emphasis has been put on the description of the methods followed by a number of Italian cities in carrying out these initiatives. A description is given of the positive effects on the child's personal and social development and factors are seen to be relevant to success are discussed. It is argued that it is necessary to extend the cultural debate on the political and social significance of these experiences and to put in place additional procedures guaranteeing a functional collaborative relationship among all the parties concerned. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Measuring Efficiency in Local Government: An Analysis of New South Wales Municipalities' Domestic Waste Management Function

Data envelopment analysis is used to measure the technical and scale efficiency of the domestic waste management function in 103 New South Wales local governments. After allowance is made for nondiscretionary environmental factors that may affect the provision of these local public services, such as congestion and the inability to operate machinery in densely populated urban areas, comparison of efficiency across geographic/demographic criteria is made. The results suggest that, on average, waste management inputs could be reduced to just over 65% of the current level based upon observable best‐practice, while productivity losses due to scale effects account for slightly over 15% of total inputs. The results also indicate that inefficiency in urban developed councils is largely the result of congestion and other collection difficulties encountered in densely populated areas, while inefficiency in regional and rural councils stems from an inability to attain an optimal scale of operations.

THE INTERACTION OF TREE ROOTS AND SEWERS: THE SWEDISH EXPERIENCE

Summary A survey carried out between 1993 and 1995 in 232 municipalities found that 99 per cent of public sewer systems in Sweden were affected by tree root systems which penetrated the sewage effluent pipes causing serious disruption at an annual cost of £4.5m. Root damage most often occurred in old sewers but modern PVC and concrete pipes were also affected. Damage to sewer pipes installed in the late 1970s was reported in 17 per cent of urban councils and in southern Sweden 63 cases of damage to new sewer systems after repair work. The main problem arising from this survey was lack of information on the extent of the damage. Most of the local authorities dealt with the problem when root invasion had become acute and only 16 per cent of those surveyed exercised a strategy to alleviate the tree root damage. Those responsible for sewerage systems could reduce or avoid tree root intrusion by siting pipes at a distance from existing mature trees, by reducing the number of pipe joints and by accurate pipe installation. Newly installed systems should be carefully inspected, since it was shown that much damage arose from faulty workmanship at the time of installation. Once damage has occurred, park and sewer authorities should cooperate in the remedial operations. By working together the two authorities are in a better position to reduce the cost of repairs. Further research should concentrate on finding new ways to treat existing pipe damage, of improving cooperation between park and sewer authorities and on the development of strategies to prevent further intrusion occurring in sewerage systems.

The Determinants of Rates of Octroi Tax in Pakistan

Octroi is a tax imposed by local governments in Pakistan on commodities imported into the municipal limits for local use, sale, or consumption. It is levied generally by urban local councils on goods coming in by all modes-sea, land, and air transport. The point of assessment is alongside roads at octroi posts situated at or before municipal boundaries, at railway stations, seaports or airports. Octroi is currently the largest source of revenue to urban local councils in the country and contributes 86 percent to total tax revenues and over 59 percent to total local revenue receipts (see Table I). Its revenue significance (in terms of share in total receipts) has increased over the years. In 1987-88, it accounted for about 57 percent of total local receipts. Also, revenue generation from octroi is higher than that by any provincial tax. In 1991-92, total national collection from octroi was Rs 5.5 billion as compared to Rs 3.5 billion from stamp duties, the largest provincial tax source.

Urban management performance: An assessment framework for Third World city managers

This paper seeks to present an operational guide for Third World city managers to test their organizations' urban management performance. It does so with the practitioner firmly in mind. This guide was developed with the four urban councils in Malawi. The performance framework centres on three activities: development, operations and impact. The notion of consequence analysis is introduced. The importance of an organization's impact on its development environment is stressed. This is seen as a holistic concept, in relation to a wider institutional development paradigm.

A review of the main determinants and characteristics of centre-local relations in Zimbabwe

This paper examines the main determinants shaping the ultimate nature of centre -local relations in the world' s countries with particular reference to Zimbabwe. These determinants are seen to result in two broad and generalist types of centre-local relations, namely, functional and territorial centre-local relations. Zimbabwe's colonial and post-colonial centre-local relations are then examined within the framework of the two broad models of centre-local relations, and are seen to be largely consisting of functional centre-local relations despite the post-colonial politicians's rhetoric in favour of more territorial relations. The Regional, Town and Country Planning Act (1976), the Urban Councils Act, the Rural Councils Act and the District Councils Act, all indicate a functional prevalence in the content of centre-local relations. The Prime Minister of Zimbabwe's 1984 Directive on decentralisation of administrative structures and the appointment of provincial governors equally indicates a functional pre...

Training and information for institutional development for the implementation of the million houses programme of Sri Lanka

For a support based housing programme to be effective, support has to be active. The basis of active support is training and information at every level of decisionmaking. Therefore, the emphasis of training and information for the Million Houses Programme (MHP) can be summarised by contrasting it with a centrally administered policy. In the Hundred Thousand Houses Programme (HTHP), a few technocrats at the centre made the decisions and contractors and households carried out their instructions. In the MHP all the actors, from the centre to the household level, make decisions and ail the actors have a role to play in the implementation. Therefore, when all actors have to decide and implement, they need to be convinced by the ideology, analyse their experience, realise their role, develop their skills and understand the procedure. In other words the actors had to internalise the programme for decentralisation to work. Also the message had to reach all the actors: over 4,000 Gramodaya Mandalayas,’ 245 Pradeshiya Mandalayas,2 25 District Housing Committees, in respect of Rural Housing Sub-Programme (RHSP) and 12 Municipal Councils, 39 Urban Councils and numerous Community Development Councils in respect of the Urban Housing Sub-Programme (UHSP). The intention of this paper is to record how training and information was carried out as a means of support, the principles adopted and how all the actors were reached.

Applied social area analysis: Defining and evaluating areas for urban neighbourhood councils

Urban neighbourhood councils, neither statutorily established nor widely initiated in England, are seen to possess a number of advantages over existing forms of representative participation in relation to the equitable distribution of resources. In Portsmouth a community area perception survey and principal components analysis of census data were undertaken to produce synthesised ‘best fit’ social sub-areas upon which to base neighbourhood councils. These areas were then analysed in terms of their relevance and appropriateness, terms specifically defined, along four scale dimensions. An original contention that for maximum effectiveness neighbourhood councils should be established to cover all urban residential areas was confounded by the manifest irrelevance of the neighbourhood council concept in certain socio-spatial contexts.

Eighty years on: A history of Halstead Urban and Rural District Councils

The Halstead Urban and Rural District Councils were established in 1894 and ceasedto exist with the reorganization of local government in 1974. The total population of the two districts in 1974 was approximately 27,000 of whom 7000 lived in the urban district. The combined districts cover an area of 120 sq. miles in North-East Essex. A review of the 80 years is made from old reports and minute books which traces the gradual introduction of basic public health facilities and emphasizes some of the problems of rural areas.

Cabinet Governance and Political Stability in English Urban Councils

Policy-makers have long been concerned with the quality of local political leadership and have often resorted to institutional reform to try to improve political leadership. This paper looks at a specific and neglected facet of the political management reforms that have been implemented in English local government over the last decade: the tenure and turnover of cabinet members. The tenure of top politicians may be an important influence on the performance of local government particularly when political management is designed to favour individualised leadership. On the one hand, excessively short tenures for top politicians may damage the ability of governments to develop strategic plans and ensure they are implemented while on the other hand the risk of loss of office is central to political accountability and excessively long tenures may be indicative of an insulated and unresponsive elite. While some research attention has been paid to the tenures of leaders of councils in England there is little systematic information about the tenure of cabinet members. This paper discusses the relevance of cabinet stability and provides an overview of recent experience in England.