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hanks to everyone who has shared links and leads to webinars and other programs! To clarify. I will post the final list of FREE webinars and other distance learning programs late next week. I will also post separate lists of FOR-FEE online degree programs, certification programs, and fee-based distance learning programs. Examples of these include Ryerson University's Certificate in Food Security and Green Mountain College's new Masters in Sustainable Food Systems. So, please do continue to send me examples of all of the above! Cheers, Duncan -----Original Message----- From: Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group [mailto:SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU] On Behalf Of Duncan Hilchey Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 12:59 PM To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU Subject: [SANET-MG] Food System Webinar Compilation Dear SANET List, Below is what I've collected so far toward a compilation of free webinars and distance learning programs of potential interest to food system and agricultural development professionals.  I do not believe this is exhaustive by any means. However, this is based on what folks (on COMFOOD, SANET, and FOOD PLANNING lists) led me to and what I was able to glean on my own from the Internet. I excluded some recommendations which I felt were too limited in scope. On the whole, the sustainable/organic agriculture and "good food" communities seems to have done an excellent job getting comprehensive programs online. I was less successful in identifying webinars and distance learning programs on food security. I do not know if there's a niche to produce these or whether I was simply not looking in the right place. In any case, please continue to send me links and leads-as well as corrections (I did this rather hastily). I will post the final compilation in the next few weeks-once your suggestions are exhausted. I would eventually like to see a one stop shopping clearing house created where e

Building communities from the inside out: a path toward finding and mobilizing a community's assets John P. Kretzmann, John L. McKnight, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.). Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Neighborhood Innovations Network 6 Resenhas Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University, 1993 - 376 páginas "Building Communities from the Inside Out" is a new guide to "asset--based community development." Authors John Kretzmann and Jhon Mcknight summarize lessons learned by studying successful community--building initiatives in hundreds of neighborhoods across the United States. The book outlines in simple, "neighborhood--friendly" terms what local communities can do to start their own journey down the path of asset--based development: How communities can rediscover and "map"all of their assets; How they can combine and mobilize these rediscovered strenghts to build stronger, more self--reliant and powerful communities; How "outsiders" in goverment or the philanthropic sector can contribute sensitively and effectively to the process of asset--based development. This guide will be helpful to local community leaders, leaders of local associations and institutions, goverment officials, and leaders in the philanthrophic and business communities who wish to support effective community--building strategies.

Linguistics professor George Lakoff at the Free Speech Movement Café. (BAP photos) Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 27 October 2003 BERKELEY - With Republicans controlling the Senate, the House, and the White House and enjoying a large margin of victory for California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's clear that the Democratic Party is in crisis. George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive science, thinks he knows why. Conservatives have spent decades defining their ideas, carefully choosing the language with which to present them, and building an infrastructure to communicate them, says Lakoff. The work has paid off: by dictating the terms of national debate, conservatives have put progressives firmly on the defensive. George Lakoff dissects "war on terror" and other conservative catchphrases Read the August 26, 2004, follow-up interview In 2000 Lakoff and seven other faculty members from Berkeley and UC Davis joined together to found the Rockridge Institute, one of the few progressive think tanks in existence in the U.S. The institute offers its expertise and research on a nonpartisan basis to help progressives understand how best to get their messages across. The Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the College of Letters & Science, Lakoff is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," first published in 1997 and reissued in 2002, as well as several other books on how language affects our lives. He is taking a sabbatical this year to write three books - none about politics - and to work on several Rockridge Institute research projects. In a long conversation over coffee at the Free Speech Movement Café, he told the NewsCenter's Bonnie Azab Powell why the Democrats "just don't get it," why Schwarzenegger won the recall election, and why conservatives will continue t

Building the ecological city Rodney R. White 0 Resenhas Woodhead, 2002 - 238 páginas Our cities are plagued by problems of congestion, waste, and pollution that deplete natural resources, damage the environment, and reduce the quality of life for their citizens. The irony is, as this fascinating new study shows, it doesn't have to be like this. Building the Ecological City describes the problems we face and puts forward solutions to the question - how can we build cities that provide an acceptable standard of living for their inhabitants without depleting the ecosystems and bio-geochemical cycles on which they depend?The book suggests and examines the concept of urban metabolism which characterizes the city as a set of interlinked systems of physical flows linking air, land, and water. A series of chapters looks at the production and management of waste, energy use and air emissions, water supply and management, urban land use, and air quality issues. Within the broader context of climate change, the book then considers a range of practical strategies for restoring the health of urban ecosystems from the remediation of 'brownfield' land to improving air quality and making better use of water resources.A major contribution to better urban management and planning for both citizens and the environment, Building the Ecological City is an invaluable sourcebook for urban and national planners, architects, and environmental agencies

Building the Renewable City - Architecture, Property and Infrastructure - University of Liechtenstein, 3 May 2012 The architecture of our cities and regions faces a great transformation, worldwide. In many cities and communities this change is already manifest, in the search for buildings and property investments fit for future generations. New projects thrive without coal or nuclear power, conserve water and resources, respond to local history, culture and social aspirations. Such qualities ensure the highest expectations for efficiency, profitability and investment security. Tomorrow's property and wider development investments literally come alive: they are resource minimising and bio-climatic, generate renewable energy locally and secure both income and value. Biodiversity and local food security are a priority in today's search for sustainable settlement design and development. The aesthetics of our architectural and urban projects follows these principles - articulation the true meaning of a New Modern. The conference is dedicated to successful international initiatives in sustainable urban and regional design, from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland to the United States. About the Liechtenstein Congress 2012 Awaken by environmental, energy, financial, and political challenges the global economy is transforming fast, from short-term thinking and a systemic reliance on non-renewable resources, to building an innovative, just, sustainable and prosperous future, manifested in sustainable assets, healthy communities and social equity. Since 2008 The Liechtenstein Congress provides an international platform for practical research and informed practice in Sustainable Development and Responsible Investing, guided by effective policy and enlightened by a deep sense of responsibility. This year we will present and discuss a) the role of foundations in the larger frame of financial institutions and their responsible investment paths, b

The cost of auto orientation MONDAY, JANUARY 2, 2012 | CHARLES MAROHN In the United States we've proceeded for sixty years with reconfiguring our public spaces to accommodate the automobile. The built in assumption of this approach, especially when it comes to commercial property, is that the more cars driving by the better. What we've overlooked in our haste to "modernize" is the lower return on investment we get from this approach, even under ideal conditions. Today we need the humility to acknowledge that our ancestors -- who built in the traditional style -- may have known what they were doing after all. After a nice break, we want to welcome everyone back and wish you all a fantastic 2012. We're still dedicated to publishing this blog at least three days a week (typically Monday, Wednesday and Friday) as well as releasing a podcast every week or two. We've got one other channel here we'll be starting next week, so stay tuned. If you'd like to stay informed with what's going on with the Strong Towns movement, sign up for our newsletter. We don't share your address and we don't spam. We do bite though, at least rhetorically. Highway 210 runs east/west through downtown Brainerd. In the hierarchical road system, it is the top of the pyramid and would be classified in most places as a "major arterial". It is designed as a STROAD (a street/road hybrid), attempting to apply highway design standards to what otherwise would be an urban street. In doing so, it has dramatically transformed the land use pattern of the area. The picture below highlights two blocks that front the highway corridor. The one on the left, which we've labeled "old and blighted", is a block that has retained its traditional development pattern. To the right we have identified the "shiny and new" area, the block that has recently been transformed to an auto-oriented development style, to the glee of city officials and local economic development advocates. In between is a hybrid of the two; part

THE NEW URBAN QUESTION Urbanism beyond Neo-Liberalism Conference Themes | The New Urban Question | The New Urban Economy | The Urbanized Society | Urban Technologies and Sustainability | | The Transformation of Urban Form | The Design of the New Urban Space | The New Metropolitan Region | | New Approaches of Urban Governance | Changing Planning Cultures | [ Click here to download all papers at once] Table of contents Introduction Jürgen Rosemann The New Urban Question Beyond The Crisis: Towards a New Urban Paradigm Laura Burkhalter and Manuel Castells Bridging the Ecologies of Cities and of Nature Saskia Sassen Looking Forward to Architecture of the New Millennium Wu Liangyong Fibercity as a Paradigm Shift of Urban Design Hidetoshi Ohno Dutch Spatial Planning and Hierarchy: Making Differences, Think-do-act, and Renewed Re-activism Henk W.J. Ovink The Formation of the West Coast Metropolitan Region of Taiwan in the Network Society Chu-Joe Hsia ^ back to top The New Urban Economy Full papers Studies on Asian Mixed Use Urban Blocks and Their Applications on the Mono-functional Office Districts in the Netherlands Tsaijer Cheng, Changfang Luo Mega-event Strategy As a Tool of Urban Transformation: Sydney's Experience Yawei Chen, Marjolein Spaans The Strength of Connections: Innovation Engines in Creative Industries A.P. Drogendijk, M. J. W. van Twist Tracing the Roots of Cultural Industries: Employment Trends in Cultural Industries in Dutch Cities Since 1899 Michaël Deinema and Robert Kloosterman Tourism and Urban Economy: Branding Cities and Producing Contradictory Spaces of Consumption L. Girardi, P. F. Meliani The Decline of The Industrial City: the Limits of Neoliberal Urban Regeneration Tahl Kaminer The Mall in the Online Shopping Era Cristian Suau, Margarita Munar Bauzá Macau's Urban Image Production - Before and After the Credit Crunch Hendrik Tieben Global Capitals Role in the (De)Structuration of Urban Space Nikolaos T

SPRAWL Sick of the suburbs: How badly designed communities trash our health 21 BY SCOTT CARLSON 23 JAN 2012 7:36 AM Richard Jackson, from the PBS miniseries, Designing Healthy Communities. This story is excerpted from a longer piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Researchers can have revelatory moments in remarkable places - the African savannah, an ancient library, or the ruins of a lost civilization. But Richard J. Jackson's epiphany occurred in 1999 in a banal American landscape: a dismal stretch of the car-choked Buford Highway, near the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Jackson, who was then the head of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC, was rushing to get to a meeting where leading epidemiologists would discuss the major health threats of the 21st century. On the side of the road he saw an elderly woman walking, bent with a load of shopping bags. It was a blisteringly hot day, and there was little hope that she would find public transportation. ((At that moment, Jackson says, "I realized that the major threat was how we had built America." His center had already been dealing with problems that he suspected had origins in the built environment - asthma caused by particulates from cars and trucks, lead poisoning from contaminated houses and soil, and obesity, heart conditions, and depression exacerbated by lack of access to fresh food, stressful living conditions, long commutes, and isolating, car-oriented communities. Treatments could come in the form of pills, inhalers, and insulin shots, but real solutions had bigger implications. "More and more, I came to the conclusion that this is about how we build the world that we live in," he says. Jackson, who is now a professor and chair of environmental health sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles' School of Public Health, has since become one of the leading voices calling for better urban design for the sake

Mechanisms of Growth Today, there are four primary mechanisms that have fueled the current growth pattern within our towns and neighborhoods. None of these are financially sustainable. 1. Transfer payments between governments. Nearly every city in America is reliant, to one degree or another, on intergovernmental subsidies to finance infrastructure. Whether the money comes through an established program, an earmark or a block grant, the result is the same: a land use pattern that does not reflect local economic realities. Local values and priorities are distorted when there is little pressure to generate a return on public infrastructure investments. The result: inefficient growth patterns that cannot be financially sustained. At the same time our infrastructure maintenance liabilities are ballooning, our federal and state legislatures are struggling to reconcile huge budget shortfalls. Even if it were good policy, the reality is that we do not have the ability to build Strong Towns with intergovernmental transfer payments as they are currently designed. 2. Demand-driven transportation spending. Transportation improvements today are made primarily to increase safety and reduce congestion. After two generations of trying to build our way out of congestion, we not only have massive maintenance liabilities but congestion is actually worse. An approach to transportation spending that pits federal and state priorities (transportation) against local priorities (land use) when we should be linking them is a recipe for waste and inefficiency. To add to this disconnect, federal transportation policy actually rewards states with additional funds for building additional roads, regardless of their efficiency. Political meddling, often in the form of earmarks, further distorts transportation spending by prioritizing improvements based on political clout, not overall return on the public investment.  3. Debt, both public and private. Where we once paid for infrastructure

Local Food in Retail: Two Models, One Goal - filed under: Subject_ValueChain, Webinar, Subject_Retail/Food service Fair Food, a non-profit and Weavers Way, a co-op, both in Philadelphia, have a similar commitment to selling local food at retail, but have different and complementary approaches. Contents Description Recording Slides Presenter Bios June 16, 2011: Local Food in Retail: Two Models, One Goal Description In order to build a thriving local food system it takes actors from different sectors, each working to their strengths. Philadelphia is, in many ways, a national leader for innovative approaches to retail. Fair Food is a non-profit with a long history of championing local food in Philadelphia. Their many market-based programs and services are a model and stepping stone for local food retail from very small to very large. Weaver's Way Co-op is a thriving retail cooperative with three locations in Philadelphia, including one in an underserved community. Their commitment to selling local food has supported many small farmers, and secured a loyal membership. Learn how these two organizations with similar commitment to an idea, but very different approaches, are building Philadelphia's local food economy.

CITIES This old house: Why fixing up old homes is greener than building new ones 19

ESTUDIOS Un número de estudios han sido preparados para entender cómo los conceptos de eficiencia ecológica se pueden aplicar a las ciudades o sectores en el contexto de los países en desarrollo de Asia y América Latina, y en particular a: Revisar los marcos conceptuales y metodologías existentes disponibles para integrar los criterios de eco-eficiencia en los procesos de desarrollo de la infraestructura, la identificación de fortalezas y debilidades de cada método, y Revisar las prácticas actuales y los criterios utilizados para integrar los aspectos ambientales y sociales en los procesos de desarrollo de infraestructura urbana, con el fin de determinar cuáles eran las herramientas más exitosas y procesos para la eco-eficiencia de las opciones de la infraestructura urbana y cuáles son los obstáculos para su aplicación en los países en desarrollo en Asia y América Latina ESTUDIOS / DOCUMENTOS BORRADOR IDIOMA DESCARGA Revisión de las prácticas existentes en los Estados Unidos y Canadá Inglés Revisión de marcos y metodologías de infraestructura urbana ecoefieciente (ALC) Español Mecanismos de financiación y los criterios de ecoeficiencia Español Revisión de las prácticas existentes en Chile Español Revisión de las prácticas existentes en Colombia Español Examen de los marcos y las metodologías existentes de e coeficiencia ( Asia) Inglés # Examen de las prácticas actuales en Europa Inglés # Examen de las prácticas actuales en Asia-Pacífico Inglés # PROCEEDINGS OF MEETINGS The project will develop a methodology to assess the eco-efficiency of urban infrastructure in an integrated manner and develop strategies and policies to improve this. The methodology will be tested in a number of pilot cities/regions in both Asia and Latin America (see ac

Project Community Publications Report One PART I, A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF WEST SIDE PARK West Side Park Revitalization Plan, May 1, 1998 Principal Investigators: Alexandre Bradford, Julie Burkley, Mark Feild, Manuel Maysonet, John Van Decker, Jia Wei Faculty Advisors: Stephen Finn, Lisa J. Servon Report Two PART II, A STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK FOR COMMERCIAL REVITALIZATION West Side Park Revitalization Plan, May 1, 1998 Principal Investigators: Josephine T. Jover, Helena Soprano, Nina Richardson, Henrietta Owusu, Jacob Avidon, Betsy Wallace Faculty Advisors: Stephen Finn, Lisa J. Servon Report Three PART III, COMMERCIAL REVITALIZATION PLAN FOR SPRINGFIELD AND SOUTH ORANGE AVES West Side Park Revitalization Plan, May 11, 1998 Principal Investigators: Jacob E. Avidon, Julie Burkley Faculty Advisors: Stephen Finn, Lisa J. Servon Report Four VOLUME I: ISLANDS OF STRENGTH, REASONS FOR HOPE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE SPRINGFIELD AVENUE COMMERCIAL CORRIDORS Strategic Revitalization Plan for the West Side Community of Newark, NJ, May 12, 1997 Principal Investigators and Authors: John D. Fussa, David A. Lewis, Zofia Nowakowski, Allie Ries Faculty Advisors: Norman Glickman (Ph.D.), Renee Sieber (Instructor), Project Manager & Editor: Stephen Finn Report Five VOLUME II: SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: A STUDY OF THREE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS Strategic Revitalization Plan for the West Side Community of Newark, NJ, May 12, 1997 Principal Investigators and Authors: Michele Alonso, Melina Patterson, Michael Cummings Faculty Advisors: Norman Glickman (Ph.D.), Renee Seiber (Instructor) Project Manager & Editor: Stephen Finn (M.S.W.) Report Six VOLUME III: MARKETS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR RESIDENTIAL DEVELPOMENTS Strategic Revitalization Plan for the West Side Community of Newark, NJ, May 12, 1997 Principal Investigators and Authors: Laura V. Arce, Timothy S. Doherty, Brenda Gilbert, Toshiko Nagazumi Faculty Advisors: Norman Glickman (Ph.D.), Renee Sieber (Instructor) Project Manager & Editor:

[URBGEOG] CALL FOR PAPERS: Networked Regions and cities in times of fragmentation, 13-16 May 2012, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands Entrada X   Responder a todos Cristina Comunian Cristina.Comunian@regionalstudies.org para URBGEOG mostrar detalhes 10:13 (3 horas atrás) Regional Studies Association International Conference 2012 13 - 16 May 2012 - Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands Networked regions and cities in times of fragmentation: Developing smart, sustainable and inclusive places Call for papers Extended deadline for abstract submission: 20th February 2012 (early bird rates are also extended to the 20th February, after this date the full rate will apply)   http://www.regionalstudies.org/events/2012/May-Delft/    "…..Regions and cities are increasingly interdependent; economically, socially and environmentally. They are becoming more reliant on interregional flows of trade, labour and resources. Patterns of interactions between regions are experiencing rapid changes as a result of dramatic shifts in production and consumption patterns, advances in communication technologies and the development of transport infrastructure(…) The governance of regions faces multi-level, multi-actor and multi-sectoral challenges. New spatial interactions at new scales demand new approaches for consultation and coordination. More flexible forms of governance are emerging, working around traditional governmental arrangements. The result is a complex pattern of overlapping governance and fuzzy boundaries(…)"   The 2012 RSA conference in Delft provides a timely opportunity for participants to come together and reflect on the various strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities of networked cities and regions within these different contexts of fragmentation.   Gateway Themes A. EU Regional policy and practice B. Climate change, energy and sustainability

This paper describes the work of an alliance formed by three civic organizations in Mumbai to address poverty - the NGO SPARC, the National Slum Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan, a cooperative representing women's savings groups. It highlights key features of their work which include: putting the knowledge and capacity of the poor and the savings groups that they form at the core of all their work (with NGOs in a supporting role); keeping politically neutral and negotiating with whoever is in power; driving change through setting precedents (for example, a community-designed and managed toilet, a house design developed collectively by the urban poor that they can build far cheaper than public or private agencies) and using these to negotiate support and changed policies (a strategy that develops new "legal" solutions on the poor's own terms); a horizontal structure as the Alliance is underpinned by, accountable to and serves thousands of small savings groups formed mostly by poor women; community-to-community exchange visits that root innovation and learning in what urban poor groups do; and urban poor groups undertaking surveys and censuses to produce their own data about "slums" (which official policies lack and need) to help build partnerships with official agencies in ways that strengthen and support their own organizations. The paper notes that these are features shared with urban poor federations and alliances in other countries and it describes the international community exchanges and other links between them. These groups are internationalizing themselves, creating networks of globalization from below. Individually and collectively, they seek to demonstrate to governments (local, regional, national) and international agencies that urban poor groups are more capable than they in poverty reduction, and they also provide these agencies with strong community-based partners through which to do so. They are, or can be, instruments of deep democrac

REFLEXIVE METHODOLOGY a lecture series on doing post-positivist social research The Alexander von Humboldt lectures are an initiative of Prof. dr. Huib Ernste Series organisers: MSc. Bas Hendrikx, MSc. Ruben Gielis, MSc. Kathrin Birkel, MSc. Krisztina Varró, dr. Huib Ernste The Department of Human Geography of the Radboud University of Nijmegen cordially invites you to the Alexander von Humboldt Lecture series on the theme of 'Reflexive Methodology'. Under this theme, we will analyse issues of  doing post-positivist social research. In the past decade, 'reflexive methodology' has made increasing appeal to social scientists concerned with the importance and role of interpretation and reflection during the research process. The terms was originally coined by Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sköldberg (2000), In their attempt to refute positivist assumptions about a single reality and the possibility of objective knowledge. Currently, a reflexive approach has come to stand for the recognition that research findings are the result of the interaction between the researcher, the research process, and the empirical material. Accordingly, a reflexive approach implies that scientific research does not produce 'objective' truth, but truth-claims relying on particular assumptions and a necessarily selective perspective on reality. Although reflexivity has become something of a shibboleth - 'no one will brag about being unreflexive' (Crang 2002) - how we can carry out research reflexively remains still a contested issue. No wonder: It is difficult to do justice to both: the fact that social processes are complex and contingent on the one hand, and capturing these social phenomena with a transparent method of selection and analysis, as well as a coherent conceptual vocabulary on the other. According to many, no convincing response has yet been formulated to the above challenge, and accounts labeled 'reflexive' slip easily towards a relativistic, 'anything-goe

Since the 1950s, Hungarian-French architect, painter, writer, and decorator Yona Friedman (b, 1923) has worked on conceptual plans for urban housing alternatives and third world building development. He came to prominence in 1958 for his manifesto, l'Architecture Mobile, and later for his Ville Spatiale (Spatial Town) -- a housing system built off the ground based on a three-dimensional grid. His integrated socio-economic conception of architecture addressed both housing solutions for existing metropolitan areas and also for urbanizing third world cities. Friedman was also commissioned by UNESCO to design visual instructions for unskilled laborers to build structures solidly and efficiently with simple materials and techniques. This is the first monograph on his work.

Sprawl Repair Manual Galina Tachieva 1 Resenha Island Press, 2010 - 304 páginas There is a wealth of research and literature explaining suburban sprawl and the urgent need to retrofit suburbia. However, until now there has been no single guide that directly explains how to repair typical sprawl elements. The Sprawl Repair Manual demonstrates a step-by-step design process for the re-balancing and re-urbanization of suburbia into more sustainable, economical, energy- and resource-efficient patterns, from the region and the community to the block and the individual building. As Galina Tachieva asserts in this exceptionally useful book, sprawl repair will require a proactive and aggressive approach, focused on design, regulation and incentives. The Sprawl Repair Manual is a much-needed, single-volume reference for fixing sprawl, incorporating changes into the regulatory system, and implementing repairs through incentives and permitting strategies. This manual specifies the expertise that's needed and details the techniques and algorithms of sprawl repair within the context of reducing the financial and ecological footprint of urban growth.   The Sprawl Repair Manual draws on more than two decades of practical experience in the field of repairing and building communities to analyze the current pattern of sprawl development, disassemble it into its elemental components, and present a process for transforming them into human-scale, sustainable elements. The techniques are illustrated both two- and three-dimensionally, providing users with clear methodologies for the sprawl repair interventions, some of which are radical, but all of which will produce positive results

Martin Horak. Governing the Post-Communist City: Institutions and Democratic Development in Prague. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. xii + 270 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8020-9328-8. Reviewed by Carlos Nunes Silva (Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning , University of Lisbon) Published on H-Urban (October, 2010) Commissioned by Alexander Vari Institutional Change and Local Government Performance in Prague In Governing the Post-Communist City Martin Horak examines and assesses the performance of democratic local government in the first decade of post-communist Prague (1990-2000). In his analysis, Horak considers, among other dimensions, the process through which policies are produced, the degree of openness in the policy process, the ability to govern systematically, and the input from societal actors. The decision to use a local case and a holistic perspective to study post-communist politics proves wise as it allows a better understanding of post-communist transformations than would have been possible through a national case study. The book is organized into six chapters focused on two main research questions: 1) what impacts did the nature of the decision-making environment have on the behavior of political leaders in early post-communist Prague; and 2) what were the longer-term effects of this decision-making behavior? Horak argues, in the first case, that Prague's local politicians reacted to their unstable and institutionally incoherent environment by seeking simple, short-term solutions in key areas of urban policy. In the second case, his argument is that increasing returns processes were responsible for the maintenance of Prague's mix of institutional forms, which were created by decisions taken during the early post-communist period. Two different policy areas are examined: freeways construction and the management of Prague's historical center. In chapter 1, Horak offers an introductory account of institutional changes and governme

URBAN-NEXUS, synthesising recent and on-going urban research, rather than initiating new research European cities face many significant challenges, including the current economic crisis, urban sprawl, and the longer-term implications of climate change and resource scarcity. Cities themselves currently account for around 70% of global emissions and are major contributors to the overall ecological footprint. In order for cities to effectively face these challenges, it is essential for all concerned stakeholders to collaborate. The URBAN-NEXUS will, amongst other things, facilitate the process of bringing these stakeholders together, in view of reducing the overall ecological footprint of cities. The launch of URBAN-NEXUS This particular urban field is characterized by a multiplicity and diversity of overlapping and typically disconnected urban policy research. There is a huge potential benefit to be gained in reviewing and synthesising recent and ongoing urban research in this area, rather than initiating new research. With this coordination action, URBAN-NEXUS will facilitate a collaborative approach by means of developing a structured dialogue. This will enable rich communication and partnership building, leading to joint research and the exchange of knowledge and experience. The consortium URBAN-NEXUS will start on the 1st of September 2011 and will run for three years. The consortium will be led by Nicis Institute and brings together 13 other leading knowledge institutes, research organisations and government agencies from nine EU-countries. In its wider stakeholder group, URBAN-NEXUS is supported by a further 25 strategic partners. Its long-term perspective, as well asa dedicated contribution of partners from all across Europe will allow the consortium to elaborate extensively on the various themes connected to reducing the urban footprint and to build solid, long-lasting partnerships amongst all stakeholders. Goals of the project URBAN-NEXUS has 3 main object