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Public Service Provision and Urban Development (Routledge Library Editions: Urban Studies #14)
by Andrew Kirby Paul Knox Steven PinchOriginally published in 1984. The authors of this study address a number of major themes related to the analysis of public services: the role of public choice theory, the importance of professors and organisations, the value of neo-Marxist theories and the importance of space. These issues are considered in the context of case studies of school closures, the provision of medical care, the relationships between Federal outlays and presidential politics, the provision of nurseries, demand-making in local government and the fiscal crisis facing many American cities. The subject of public service provision is of great interest not only to political scientists but also to geographers and to sociologists. This book presents a great deal of new thinking and new research from both North America and Britain.
Public Service Reforms in a Small Island State: The Case of Malta (Public Administration, Governance and Globalization #22)
by Frank Bezzina Emanuel Camilleri Vincent MarmaràThis book provides a detailed examination of public service reforms in Malta. Focusing on both the trajectory and substance of the reforms, the volume provides a holistic treatment of the public sector in the European Union’s smallest member state. The book is divided into four parts. Part I covers the historical background of public service administration and management in Malta from the 1500s to the 2010s. Part II focuses on recent reforms, begun in 2013, after the election of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Each chapter in this part addresses a particular reform theme: transparency and accountability; civil service systems and HR management; service delivery and digitalisation; organisation and management of government reforms; policy making, coordination, and implementation. Part III investigates the internal and external impact of the reforms, reporting and analyzing the results of a survey carried out among government employees and the Maltese population. The book concludes with a chapter on global reform trends that are likely to impact public service delivery in the future. Providing an in-depth view of public service in a small island state, this volume will be useful to researchers and students interested in public sector management, administration, and public policy as well as practitioners, consultants, and government employees.
Public Service Values
by Richard C. BoxPublic service values are too rarely discussed in public administration courses and scholarship, despite recent research demonstrating the importance of these values in the daily decision making processes of public service professionals. A discussion of these very tenets and their relevance to core public functions, as well as which areas might elicit value conflicts for public professionals, is central to any comprehensive understanding of budget and finance, human resource management, and strategic planning in the public sector. Public Service Values is written specifically for graduate and undergraduate courses in public administration, wherever a discussion of public service ideals might enrich the learning experience and offer students a better understanding of daily practice. Exploring the meaning and application of specific values, such as Neutrality, Efficiency, Accountability, Public Service, and Public Interest, provides students and future professionals with a ‘workplace toolkit’ for the ethical delivery of public services. Well-grounded in scholarly literature and with a relentless focus on the public service professional, Public Service Values highlights the importance of values in professional life and encourages a more self-aware and reflective public practice. Case studies to stimulate reflection are interwoven throughout the book and application to practice is cemented in a final section devoted to value themes in professional life as well as a chapter dedicated to holding oneself accountable. The result is a book that challenges us to embrace the necessity of public service values in our public affairs curricula and that asks the important questions current public service professionals should make a habit of routinely applying in their daily decision making.
Public Services and EU Competition Law: The Social Market Economy in Action (Routledge-Giappichelli Studies in Law)
by Daniele GalloThis monograph, which was also designed as a short reference book for specialized undergraduate and graduate courses on EU law, intends to shed light on, and legally frame, the evolution of the doctrine of services of general economic interest (SGEIs). The book emphasizes the pivotal role played by SGEIs in striking a fair balance between market and social objectives. To this end, the book claims, first of all, that SGEIs have a dual nature inasmuch as they act as a limitation to/derogation from the free market and, simultaneously, as a value and positive obligation addressed at national authorities, undertakings, and EU institutions. The EU notions of access to public services and universal service are the clearest signal of such phenomenon. Secondly, the book claims that the transfer of competences from the Union to the Member States and the reaffirmation of Member States’ sovereignty in crucial sectors of the economy are not the only solutions to foster social rights. In fact, this narrative is apt to undermine the foundations, spirit, and purpose of the process of European integration, especially at a time like the present, when new forms of populism and anti-Europeanism are on the rise, and when a European response is imperative to counter the spread of the coronavirus in European countries. The book concludes that SGEIs’ regulation is an area of law where the EU institutions have generally successfully put into action and consolidated the social market economy principles on which the EU was founded. This is even further proof that the EU is not merely the reflection of interests linked to market completion, but also and foremost a ‘Community based on the rule of law’. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in EU Law, European Public Law and EU competition law.
Public Services and Financial Austerity
by Roger Latham Malcolm ProwleAs countries across the Western world struggle to deal with the financial stability of their public services, there is no doubt that the current crisis affecting the public sector is not only the worst post-war, but perhaps the worst in the last hundred years. The current thinking about the economy and the public sector has not only contributed to the financial difficulties but may even have created some of the problems in the first place. As public sector reforms try to find a solution to the crisis, it seems unlikely that continuing with the same approach will provide a solution to the issue of public debt that will be politically or socially acceptable. This book argues that current policies may have some measure of success, but it may be "at a price we cannot afford. " It proposes a radical alternative based upon a sound understanding of how organisations and the economy work and discusses practical ways it could be implemented. It also explores the threats, as well as the opportunities, that such an approach will face.
Public Services in EU Law
by Wolf SauterIn the EU public services, utilities and welfare services can be seen as both building blocks for the internal market and as a persistent irritant in the integration process. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the EU law on public services within the context of European integration. It brings together important analysis of the primary Treaty law, mainly on the internal market and competition, and of the secondary legislation at EU level, including different sector specific regimes. Particular attention is given to case law of the EU courts. This will be essential reading for those looking to have a broader understanding of the subject.
The Public Services under Reconstruction: Client experiences, professional practices, managerial control (Routledge Studies in Management, Organizations and Society)
by Marja GastelaarsThis book examines the services in and around the public domain. The author analyses a number of socio-cultural changes that are generally considered relevant to these services, including the rationalising efforts of the New Public Management and the introduction of IT. The book particularly addresses the diversity of services. It focuses on the local complexities of their day to day processes of service delivery, and on the diversity of client experiences and professional roles associated with various client relationships. A practical objective of this book is to encourage its readers to ‘redefine’ the services they professionally deal with, and move beyond the standard requirements of the New Public Management that are so often taken for granted as a starting point. Professional managers are, for instance, invited to reconsider their currently quite dominant ‘technical’ managerial perspective. Service professionals are encouraged to make sense of the risks and responsibilities involved with their day to day negotiations, including the impact of the services on the lives of their clients. Gastelaars adopts and interpretive approach to her subject, combining discourse analysis and ethnographic research to concentrate on the actual practices associated with service delivery, rather than on theories and justifications.
Public Space: The Management Dimension
by Matthew Carmona Claudio De Magalhães Leo HammondIn both the UK and the US there is a sense of dissatisfaction and pessimism about the state of urban environments, particularly with the quality of everyday public spaces. Explanations for this have emphasized the poor quality of design that characterizes many new public spaces; spaces that are dominated by parking, roads infrastructure, introspective buildings, a lack of enclosure and a poor sense of place, and which in different ways for different groups are too often exclusionary. Yet many well designed public spaces have also experienced decline and neglect, as the services and activities upon which the continuing quality of those spaces have been subject to the same constraints and pressures for change as public services in general. These issues touch upon the daily management of public space, that is, the coordination of the many different activities that constantly define and redefine the characteristics and quality of public space. This book draws on three empirical projects to examine the questions of public space management on an international stage. They are set within a context of theoretical debates about public space, its history, contemporary patterns of use and changing nature in western society, and about the new management approaches that are increasingly being adopted.
Public Space: notes on why it matters, what we should know, and how to realize its potential
by Vikas MehtaPublic Space: notes on why it matters, what we should know, and how to realize its potential journeys a vast territory and presents a panoramic view of public space—an understanding from numerous disciplines—under one cover in an incisive and concise manner. As a dialogue between the social-political and the material-physical, the book brings together the key ideas that encompass the social, political, and physical issues in the making and experience of public space. The book is at the same time a primer and a progressive text. It makes the case for public space, digs deep into understanding what public space is, followed by three sections that present the inherent paradoxes, the possibilities, and propositions for a more meaningful public space. The book presents ideas in concise and approachable ways—from established tenets to new propositions—that are constructive and thought-provoking, with many that will challenge the reader’s preconceived notions. Students and scholars in the built environment disciplines and social sciences, public space managers, public and private sector practitioners, and civic leaders, but also residents who want to better understand and make an impact in their communities and cities will find Public Space to be a valuable resource.
Public Space and Relational Perspectives: New Challenges for Architecture and Planning
by Sabine Knierbein Chiara TornaghiTraditional approaches to understand space tend to view public space mainly as a shell or container, focussing on its morphological structures and functional uses. That way, its ever-changing meanings, contested or challenged uses have been largely ignored, as well as the contextual and on-going dynamics between social actors, their cultures, and struggles. The key role of space in enabling spatial opportunities for social action, the fluidity of its social meaning and the changing degree of "publicness" of a space remain unexplored fields of academic inquiry and professional practice. Public Space and Relational Perspectives offers a different understanding of public spaces in the city. The aim of the book is to (re)introduce the lived experiences in public life into the teaching curricula of those academic disciplines which deal with public space and the built environment, such as architecture, planning and urban design, as well as the social sciences. The book presents conceptual, practical and research challenges and brings together findings from activists, practitioners and theorists. The editors provide eight educational challenges that educators can endorse when training future practitioners and researchers to accept and to engage with the social relations that unfold in and through public space. Cover image: KARO*
Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe
by Sabine Knierbein Ali Madanipour Aglaée DegrosEuropean cities are changing rapidly in part due to the process of de-industrialization, European integration and economic globalization. Within those cities public spaces are the meeting place of politics and culture, social and individual territories, instrumental and expressive concerns. Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe investigates how European city authorities understand and deal with their public spaces, how this interacts with market forces, social norms and cultural expectations, whether and how this relates to the needs and experiences of their citizens, exploring new strategies and innovative practices for strengthening public spaces and urban culture. These questions are explored by looking at 13 case studies from across Europe, written by active scholars in the area of public space and organized in three parts: strategies, plans and policies multiple roles of public space and everyday life in the city. This book is essential reading for students and scholars interested in the design and development of public space. The European case studies provide interesting examples and comparisons of how cities deal with their public space and issues of space and society.
Public Space/Contested Space: Imagination and Occupation (The Metropolis and Modern Life)
by Kevin D. MurphyIt is not possible to be alive today in the United States without feeling the influence of the political climate on the spaces where people live, work, and form communities. Public Space/Contested Space illustrates the ways in which creative interventions in public space have constituted a significant dimension of contemporary political action, and how this space can both reflect and spur economic and cultural change. Drawing insight from a range of disciplines and fields, the essays in this volume assess the effectiveness of protest movements that deploy bodies in urban space, and social projects that build communities while also exposing inequalities and presenting new political narratives. With sections exploring the built environment, artists, and activists and public space, the book brings together the diverse voices to reveal the complexities and politicization of public space within the United States. Public Space/Contested Space provides a significant contribution to an understudied dimension of contemporary political action and will be a resource to students of urban studies and planning, architecture, sociology, art history, and human geography.
Public Space Democracy: Performative, Visual and Normative Dimensions of Politics in a Global Age (Global Connections)
by Nilüfer GöleThis volume takes a global view of the emergence of public protest movements over the last decade, asking whether such movements contribute to the globalization of civil society. Through a variety of studies, organised around the themes of public agency, public norms, public memory and public art, it considers the tendency of political contestations to move beyond national boundaries and create transnational connections. Departing from the approaches of social movements perspectives, it focuses on public space as a site of social "mixity" and opens up a new field for the study of politics and cultural controversies. An analysis of the paradigmatic change in the way in which society is made and politics is conducted, this study of the new enactment of citizenship in public space will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, geography and politics with interests in protest movements and contentious politics, citizenship and the public sphere, and globalization.
Public Space Design and Social Cohesion: An International Comparison
by Patricia Aelbrecht Quentin StevensSocial cohesion is often perceived as being under threat from the increasing cultural and economic differences in contemporary cities and the increasing intensity of urban life. Public space, in its role as the main stage for social interactions between strangers, clearly plays a role in facilitating or limiting opportunities for social cohesion. But what exactly is social cohesion, how is it experienced in the public realm, and what role can the design of city spaces have in supporting or promoting it? There are significant knowledge gaps between the social sciences and design disciplines and between academia and practice, and thus a dispersed knowledge base that currently lacks nuanced insight into how urban design contributes to social integration or segregation. This book brings together scholarly knowledge at the intersection of public space design and social cohesion. It is based on original scholarly research and a depth of urban design practice, and analyses case studies from a variety of cities and cultures across the Global North and Global South. Its interdisciplinary, cross-cultural analysis will be of interest to academics, students, policymakers and practitioners engaged with a range of subject areas, including urban design, urban planning, architecture, landscape, cultural studies, human geography, social policy, sociology and anthropology. It will also have significant appeal to a wider non-academic readership, given its topical subject matter.
Public Space, Media Space
by Chris Berry Rachel Moore Janet HarbordPublic Space, Media Space asks how media saturation are transforming public space and our experience of it. From the role of graffiti and Youtube videos of street art in the Cairo revolution, to OOH (Out of Home) advertising, the book is diverse in its approach and global in its coverage.
Public Space Reader
by Mitrašinović Miodrag Mehta VikasRecent global appropriations of public spaces through urban activism, public uprising, and political protest have brought back democratic values, beliefs, and practices that have been historically associated with cities. Given the aggressive commodification of public re- sources, public space is critically important due to its capacity to enable forms of public dis- course and social practice which are fundamental for the well-being of democratic societies. Public Space Reader brings together public space scholarship by a cross-disciplinary group of academics and specialists whose essays consider fundamental questions: What is public space and how does it manifest larger cultural, social, and political processes? How are public spaces designed, socially and materially produced, and managed? How does this impact the nature and character of public experience? What roles does it play in the struggles for the just city, and the Right to The City? What critical participatory approaches can be employed to create inclusive public spaces that respond to the diverse needs, desires, and aspirations of individuals and communities alike? What are the critical global and comparative perspectives on public space that can enable further scholarly and professional work? And, what are the futures of public space in the face of global pandemics, such as COVID-19? The readers of this volume will be rewarded with an impressive array of perspectives that are bound to expand critical understanding of public space.
Public Space Unbound: Urban Emancipation and the Post-Political Condition
by Sabine Knierbein Tihomir VidermanThrough an exploration of emancipation in recent processes of capitalist urbanization, this book argues the political is enacted through the everyday practices of publics producing space. This suggests democracy is a spatial practice rather than an abstract professional field organized by institutions, politicians and movements. Public Space Unbound brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to examine spaces, conditions and circumstances in which emancipatory practices impact the everyday life of citizens. We ask: How do emancipatory practices relate with public space under ‘post-political conditions’? In a time when democracy, solidarity and utopias are in crisis, we argue that productive emancipatory claims already exist in the lived space of everyday life rather than in the expectation of urban revolution and future progress.
Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution: Shopping Malls and the First Amendment (SUNY series in American Constitutionalism)
by Anthony ManiscalcoIn spite of their public attractions and millions of visitors, most shopping malls are now off-limits to free speech and expressive activity. The same may be said about many other public spaces and marketplaces in American cities and suburbs, leaving scholars and other observers to wonder where civic engagement is lawfully permitted in the United States. In Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution, Anthony Maniscalco draws on key legal decisions, social theory, and urban history to demonstrate that public spaces have been split apart from First Amendment protections, while the expression of political ideas has been excluded from privately owned, publicly accessible malls. Today, the traditional indoor suburban shopping mall, that icon of modern American capitalism and culture, is being replaced by outdoor retail centers. Yet the law and courts have been slow to catch up. Maniscalco argues that scholars, students, and the public must confront these innovations in commercial design and consumer practices, as well as what they portend for contemporary metropolitan America and its civic spaces.
Public Sphere and Experience
by Alexander Kluge Oskar Negt Miriam HansenThe "public sphere" is a key concept in political discourse, designating a space for political action. But is this a single authoritative and universal space in which various positions compete for recognition, or does it consist of multiple local spaces spread over diverse collectivities? In Kluge and Negt's groundbreaking book they examine the material conditions of experience in an arena that had previously figured only as an abstract term: the media of mass and consumer culture.With a new, up-to-date introduction from Alexander Kluge.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Public-Spirited Citizenship: Leadership and Good Government in the United States
by Ralph KetchamAny searching look at the theory and practice of citizenship in the United States today is bewildering and disconcerting. Despite earnest concern for participation, access, and "leverage," there is a widespread perception that nothing citizens do has much meaning or influence. This book argues that for American democracy to work in the twenty-first century, renewed interest in teaching the nation's young citizens a sense of the public good is imperative.All of the nation's founders, especially Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison, addressed the question of whether and how a citizen can make a difference in the American political process. This concern harkens back even farther, to Locke, Erasmus, and Aristotle. Today, one obstacle to good citizenship is the social scientific turn in political science. Leaders in civic education in the twentieth century eschewed grand ideas and moral principles in favour of a focus on behaviourism and competitive, liberal politics. Another problem is the growing belief that the government has no business promoting the public good through the support of religious, educational, or cultural efforts.Ralph Ketcham vividly depicts the relationship of private self-interest and public-spirited action as these pertain to citizenship and good government. This is an enlightening book for the general reader, as well as for students, professional social scientists, and political philosophers.
Public Square Project: Reimagining Our Digital Future
by Peter Lewis Jordan GuiaoWestern democracy has always been anchored by the idea of a public space where people gather to share ideas, mediate difference and make sense of the world. When Facebook blocked Australian users from viewing or sharing news in 2021, it sounded the alarm worldwide on our growing reliance on global tech companies to fulfil this critical role in a digital world. Facebook's hostile act, constituting a very real threat to participatory democracy, was a direct response to government attempts to regulate Big Tech's advertising monopoly and to mediate its impact on public interest journalism. The conflict sparked a new sense of urgency around the growing movement to imagine alternative digital spaces that operate in the public interest rather than simply for a commercial bottom line. Can we create sustainable media models to help us tackle society's problems? Can we engender a civic platform built on facts and civility? Can we control the power of our data and use it to promote the common good? The Public Square Project draws together leading tech scholars, industry experts, writers and activists to chart a path towards a public square worthy of the name.
Public Support for the Euro: Essays on Labor Productivity, Monetary Economics, and Political Economy, Vol. 2 (Contributions to Economics)
by Felix RothThe long-term sustainability of the euro and the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) depends heavily on their ability to attract widespread public support. The support shown for the euro throughout its first two decades has helped to shield it against populist attempts at the national level to dismantle the common currency. It has granted political legitimacy to the presidents of the European Central Bank to do “whatever it takes” whenever a serious crisis has threatened the viability of the euro.Public Support for the Euro is the second of two open-access volumes presenting a selection of the author's essays on Labor Productivity, Monetary Economics, and Political Economy. This second volume brings together eleven of the author's essays, selected with the aim of providing an overview of his research to date on public support for and the economics and political economy of the euro and EMU.
Public Systems Modeling: Methods for Identifying and Evaluating Alternative Plans and Policies (International Series in Operations Research & Management Science #318)
by Daniel P. LoucksThis is an open access book discusses readers to various methods of modeling plans and policies that address public sector issues and problems. Written for public policy and social sciences students at the upper undergraduate and graduate level, as well as public sector decision-makers, it demonstrates and compares the development and use of various deterministic and probabilistic optimization and simulation modeling methods for analyzing planning and management issues. These modeling tools offer a means of identifying and evaluating alternative plans and policies based on their physical, economic, environmental, and social impacts. Learning how to develop and use the mathematical modeling tools introduced in this book will give students useful skills when in positions of having to make informed public policy recommendations or decisions.
Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair (Thinking Out Loud)
by null Bonnie HonigIn the contemporary world of neoliberalism, efficiency is treated as the vehicle of political and economic health. State bureaucracy, but not corporate bureaucracy, is seen as inefficient, and privatization is seen as a magic cure for social ills. In Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair, Bonnie Honig asks whether democracy is possible in the absence of public services, spaces, and utilities. In other words, if neoliberalism leaves to democracy merely electoral majoritarianism and procedures of deliberation while divesting democratic states of their ownership of public things, what will the impact be?Following Tocqueville, who extolled the virtues of “pursuing in common the objects of common desires,” Honig focuses not on the demos but on the objects of democratic life. Democracy, as she points out, postulates public things—infrastructure, monuments, libraries—that citizens use, care for, repair, and are gathered up by. To be “gathered up” refers to the work of D. W. Winnicott, the object relations psychoanalyst who popularized the idea of “transitional objects”—the toys, teddy bears, or favorite blankets by way of which infants come to understand themselves as unified selves with an inside and an outside in relation to others. The wager of Public Things is that the work transitional objects do for infants is analogously performed for democratic citizens by public things, which press us into object relations with others and with ourselves.Public Things attends also to the historically racial character of public things: public lands taken from indigenous peoples, access to public goods restricted to white majorities. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, who saw how things fabricated by humans lend stability to the human world, Honig shows how Arendt and Winnicott—both theorists of livenesss—underline the material and psychological conditions necessary for object permanence and the reparative work needed for a more egalitarian democracy.
Public Transport and its Users: The Passenger's Perspective in Planning and Customer Care (Transport and Society)
by Hans-Liudger DienelPublic transport is essential to the quality of life of its passengers, both as a means to move around but also to achieve a sustainable environment. However, the passenger's position as a customer is weakened by the dominance of monopolies, regulation and political influence in our public transport systems. This book is one of the first to examine strategies for the representation of user interests in public transport from a variety of perspectives. The authors review approaches to integrating the passengers' views in the planning process and to protecting their interests in operations and customer care across a range of European countries, including Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and EU policies. The book presents the conclusions of this research and examples of good practice. In this respect it will provide useful guidance for policy makers, stakeholder organizations and planners, as well as transport researchers.