This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.
In recent years, the United Kingdom has become a more and more divided society with inequality between the regions as marked as it has ever been. In a landmark analysis of the current state of Britain’s regional development, Philip McCann utilises current statistics, examines historical trends and makes pertinent international comparisons to assess the state of the nation. The UK Regional–National Economic Problem brings attention to the highly centralised, top down governance structure that the UK deploys, and demonstrates that it is less than ideally placed to rectify these inequalities. The ‘North-South’ divide in the UK has never been greater and the rising inequalities are evident in almost all aspects of the economy including productivity, incomes, employment status and wealth. Whilst the traditional economic dominance of London and its hinterland has continued along with relative resilience in the South West of England and Scotland, in contrast the Midlands, the North of England, Northern Ireland and Wales lag behind by most measures of prosperity. This inequality is greatly limiting national economic performance and the fact that Britain has a below average standard of living by European and OECD terms has been ignored. The UK’s economic and governance inequality is unlikely to be fundamentally rebalanced by the current governance and connectivity trends, although this definitive study suggests that some areas of improvement are possible if they are well implemented. This pivotal analysis is essential reading for postgraduate students in economics and urban studies as well as researchers and policy makers in local and central government.
Interest and research on regionalism has soared in the last decade. Local governments in metropolitan areas and civic organizations are increasingly engaged in cooperative and collaborative public policy efforts to solve problems that stretch across urban centers and their surrounding suburbs. Yet there remains scant attention in textbooks to the issues that arise in trying to address metropolitan governance. Governing Metropolitan Areas describes and analyzes structure to understand the how and why of regionalism in our global age. The book covers governmental institutions and their evolution to governance, but with a continual focus on institutions. David Hamilton provides the necessary comprehensive, in-depth description and analysis of how metropolitan areas and governments within metropolitan areas developed, efforts to restructure and combine local governments, and governance within the polycentric urban region. This second edition is a major revision to update the scholarship and current thinking on regional governance. While the text still provides background on the historical development and growth of urban areas and governments' efforts to accommodate the growth of metropolitan areas, this edition also focuses on current efforts to provide governance through cooperative and collaborative solutions. There is also now extended treatment of how regional governance outside the United States has evolved and how other countries are approaching regional governance.
This timely book is the first to take a close historical look at Ken Livingstone s London. It examines the development of London governance from the demise of the Greater London Council to the establishment of the Greater London Authority. The authors investigate the working of Mayor and Assembly, unravel the underlying politics of London and explore policy debates about transport, crime, and economic development. Finally they pose a question of key importance, not just to Londoners, but also to those interested in urban governance throughout the world: to what extent can the creation of new institutions and instruments of government give a major city the sense of being a political community?
English regions appeared to have been killed off by the massive 'no' vote in the referendum in the North East on 4 November 2004. By contrast, this book analyzes the many institutions and networks established at the English regional tier since 1997. It argues that a new form of governance is developing in the English regions, characterized by processes rather than specific policy concerns: strategic co-ordination, scrutiny, and civic engagement.
Governance of Europe's City Regions considers the changing role of the European Union in regional issues, explores how national governments have become increasingly involved at the regional scale and examines the constitutional and political contexts in which regional and local governments operate. Detailed case studies of regionals in Germany and England illustrate contrasts in European approaches to the scale of government, and the complex interactions of international, national, regional and local scales of policy intervention. The book offers a unique perspective, which links together an analysis of both regional Europe and the local economic and political factors that shape successful regions.
Today more than ever, cities matter to the economic and social well-being of the vast majority of Canadians. Canada’s urban centers are simultaneously the engines of the national economy and the places where the risks of social exclusion are most concentrated, making innovative and inclusive urban governance an urgent national priority. Governing Urban Economies is the first detailed scholarly examination of relations among governmental and community-based actors in Canadian city-regions. Comparing patterns of municipal-community relations and federal-provincial interactions across city-regions, this volume tracks the ways in which urban coalitions tackle complex economic and social challenges. Featuring an inter-disciplinary group of established and up-and-coming scholars, this collection breaks new ground in the Canadian urban politics literature and will appeal to urbanists working in a range of national contexts.
Governing England examines the state of England's governance, identity and relationship with the other nations of the UK. It brings together academic experts on constitutional change, territorial politics, nationalism, political parties, public opinion, and local government both to explain thecurrent place of England within a changing United Kingdom, and to consider how the "English constitution" is likely to develop over the coming years.At a time when questions of territory and identity have grown increasingly politicised, Governing England offers a deeper academic analysis of how England and Englishness are changing. The central questions it addresses are whether, why, and with what consequences there has been a disentangling ofEngland from Britain within the institutions of the UK state, and of Englishness from Britishness at the level of culture and national identity.This volume includes competing interpretations of what has changed in terms of English nationhood.
This is an up-to-date and topical treatment of how six major cities in Europe, North America and Asia are coping with the new demands on urban government. Population expansion, the migration of new peoples and disparities between cities and suburbs are longstanding features of the urban crisis. Today, city governments also face demands for popular participation and better public services while they struggle to position themselves in the new world economy. While each of the cities is located in its unique historical setting, the emphasis of the book is upon the common dilemmas raised by major planning problems and the search for more suitable approaches to governance and citizen involvement. A principal theme is the re-engineering of institutional structures designed to foster local responsiveness and popular participation. The discussion is set in the context of the globalizing forces that have impacted to different degrees, at different times, upon London, Tokyo, Toronto, Berlin, Hyderabad and Atlanta. Cities in Transition is a major and original addition to the comparative literature on urban governance.
