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Mercury Pollution in Minamata
It overviews the poisoning which occurred in the 1950s and 1960s among the residents in Minamata who ate seafood contaminated with methylmercury discharged from the chemical factory, Chisso Corporation. It describes the history, symptoms pathogenesis and research on the causal agent, and discusses the responses of Chisso and the national and local governments to the outbreak, the victims, the compensation and environmental restructuring as well as the court ruling on claims. Based on lecture notes from a university course, it includes students’ suggestions for avoiding a repeat of the tragedy. The issue has not been settled yet, and this analysis of the incident provides useful insights into solutions to the current global mercury pollution problem.
Inter-Municipal Cooperation in Europe
This book presents an overview of inter-municipal cooperation in eight European countries. Each country study sketches its attendant forms, their institutional design, the tasks and competencies attributed to joint authorities of municipalities and the way inter-municipal cooperation operates in practice. Both performance and democratic aspects of cooperation are recurring topics. The last chapter of the book presents a comparative analysis and reflects on the future of inter-municipal cooperation.
Foundations for Local Governance : Decentralization in Comparative Perspective
Various forms of decentralization are recently pursued in the world, including developing countries. However, there has not been a coherent framework to access these intended outcomes generated by decentralization measures implemented in Asian and African countries. This book provides such a framework based on comparative analyses of different experiences of decentralization measures in six developing countries, where the policy rationale to “bring services closer to people” originated in different socio-political backgrounds. Although decentralization measures are potentially useful for attaining both political democratization and economic efficiency, what is often packaged under the umbrella of “decentralization” needs to be disaggregated analytically. Successful reforms need coherent approaches in which a range of stakeholders would become willing to share responsibilities and resources in order to achieve the ultimate outcome of poverty reduction in the developing countries.
Farewell to the Party Model? : Independent Local Lists in East and West European Countries
Local independent lists are a general phenomenon on the local level in many European countries – in established Western countries as well as in new democracies in Middle and Eastern Europe. The research is linked to the much-discussed phenomenon of the growing disenchantment with political parties and the sceptical evaluation of political parties on the local level. The edited book aims first at developing a theoretical and conceptual framework for these non-partisan lists. Second, the contributions describe and analyse for the first time comparatively presence, success, organisational structure, behaviour and performance of these local actors in twelve West and East European countries.
Designing Urban Food Policies : Concepts and Approaches
This book is for scientists and experts who work on urban food policies. It provides a conceptual framework for understanding the urban food system sustainability and how it can be tackled by local governments. Written by a collective of researchers, this book describes the existing conceptual frameworks for an analysis of urban food policies, at the crossroads of the concepts of food system and sustainable city.
Applied Remote Sensing for Urban Planning, Governance and Sustainability
Despite the promising and exciting possibilities presented by new and fast-developing remote sensing technologies applied to urban areas, there is still a gap perceived between the generally academic and research-focused spectrum of results offered by the “urban remote sensing” community and the application of these data and products by the local governmental bodies of urban cities and regions. While there is no end of interesting science questions that we can ask about cities, sometimes these questions don't match well with what the operational problems and concerns of a given city are. The authors present data from six urban regions from all over the world. They explain what the important questions are, and how one can use data and scientific skills to help answer them.
AiREAS : Sustainocracy for a Healthy City : The Invisible made Visible ; Phase 1
Describes the coming about and first results of the AiREAS "healthy city" cooperative in the city of Eindhoven and Province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. AiREAS is an initiative focused on the multidisciplinary co-creation of healthy cities using the core human value of human health and air quality as guiding principle for profound regional innovation. The unique group process that followed uses the complexity of the city of Eindhoven as living lab. It is an anthropology based initiative that invites directly to the same table of core innovative responsibility the local government, innovative business partners, scientific insights and reseach, and civilian participation.
