scholarly journals Review: Directly Elected Mayors in Urban Governance: Impact and Practice edited by David Sweeting

Author(s):  
Andrew Walker

The introduction of directly elected mayors is one of the most significant recent developments in the structure of governance of the UK. The first mayor of London was elected in 2000, and the model has spread slowly but surely to other cities across the country, with varying powers and parameters attached. In May 2017 there were elections in six English city-regions for directly elected metro mayors. These new positions as figureheads of combined authorities were a prerequisite of the transfer of powers from Whitehall arranged by George Osborne when he was at the treasury. Mayoral roles and responsibilities are fairly clearly defined and circumscribed in legislation and the contractual arrangements with government, but there are still plenty of unknowns within what is a novel form of governance and power in the UK. David Sweeting’s volume is a timely and useful guide to the issues and argument. It takes a number of the key debates around the salience of directly elected mayors in urban governance and fleshes them out with useful case studies that look in-depth at cities around the world.

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 198-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Hodson ◽  
Andrew McMeekin ◽  
Julie Froud ◽  
Michael Moran

In a context of globalisation, the emergence of city-regions and the politics and dynamics of their constitution has been debated for almost two decades. Recent writings have extended this focus to seeing city-regions as a geopolitical project of late capitalism where the state takes a critical role in the re-design of city-regions to make them amenable to international competition and to secure strategic inward investments in the built environment and infrastructure. We explore this issue in the context of state redesign of sub-national space in England and focus on Greater Manchester, as the de facto exemplar of ‘devolution’ to English city-regions. We argue that though re-scaling in Greater Manchester is a long-term historical process this has been punctuated by the UK state’s process of ‘devolution’ since 2014, this has involved a re-design and formalisation of Greater Manchester’s governing arrangements. It has also involved invoking a long dormant role for city-regional planning in articulating the future design of the material city-region over the next two decades as an attempt to formalise and continue a pre-existing, spatially selective growth trajectory by new means. Yet, the disruption of new hard governing arrangements also provides challenges to that trajectory. This produces tensions between, on the one hand, the pursuit of a continuity politics of growth through agglomeration, material transformation of the city-region and narrow forms of urban governance and, on the other hand, a more disruptive politics of the future of the city-region, its material transformation and how it is governed. These tensions are producing new political possibilities and spaces in the transformation of Greater Manchester. The implications of this are discussed.


Author(s):  
Christine Gledhill ◽  
Julia Knight

This book examines film history with the goal of reframing it to accommodate new approaches to women's filmmaking. It brings together a wide range of case studies investigating women's work in cinema across its histories as they play out in different parts of the world from the pioneering days of silent cinema through recent developments in HD transmissions of live opera. It also tackles a range of conceptual and methodological questions about how to research women's film history—how, for example, to reconceptualize film history in order to locate the impact of women in that history. Furthermore, the book looks at the debates over relations among gender, aesthetics, and feminism. In this introduction, a number of interrelated themes and issues that can be grouped into four broad problematics are discussed: evidence and interpretation; feminist expectations of both contemporary and past women's filmmaking; the impact of women's film history on existing historical narratives and theories; and factors that determine the visibility of women's films and build audiences for them.


1995 ◽  
Vol 154 ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Ray Barrell ◽  
Nigel Pain ◽  
Julian Morgan

Indications from the first half of the year suggested that the present cyclical expansion was starting to slow in much of the OECD. The pace of activity moderated particularly sharply in North America. Canadian GDP fell slightly in the second quarter of the year and inventory levels rose considerably. Trade growth was also lower than expected, although this partially reflected the regional impact of recent developments in Mexico. Within Europe, GDP growth slowed in the UK, France and Italy, although growth proved unexpectedly robust in a number of the smaller economies, particularly Ireland, Sweden and Finland. Output also continued to grow sharply in Australia and South East Asia.


Author(s):  
Michael Newman

Following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, countries around the world struggled to implement their versions of social democracy. ‘Beyond the dominant orthodoxies’ looks at recent developments in China (successful, but too business-oriented and inflexible to be the future of socialism), the UK (weakened by the ‘third way’ of the late 1990s and lack of engagement with political parties), and other European countries (threatened by lack of support for social democratic parties and the rise of the far right). None of the new movements in Spain, Greece, Latin America, or the UK was entirely successful, but many succeeded in embedding elements of socialism in their countries’ politics.


Author(s):  
Val Jackson ◽  
Alex Perry

Purpose – Open dialogue (OD) is an innovative approach to mental health crises based on close collaboration between services and an individual’s family and social network. The approach was originally designed by Jaakko Seikkula and his colleagues in Tornio, Finland and is now being developed in many countries around the world, in particular Denmark, Germany, Norway and the USA. OD describes both a way of being with families and also a way of organising services aimed at maximising communication and connection. The purpose of this paper is to describe the principles of OD, it’s development in Finland and here in the UK. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a description of the principles and outcomes of OD as practised in Western Finland. It also describes the recent developments in the UK using the approach. Findings – This paper is descriptive of the model and is not of a research project. Originality/value – Whilst care must be taken in assuming that these remarkable results are transferable to the UK, other countries and several Mental Health trusts in England are actively engaged with developing an OD approach.


Dramatherapy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-151
Author(s):  
Jason Ward

As Great Britain reaches 50 years of LBGTQ+ legislation, making it illegal to persecute an individual based on their sexual identity, not everywhere in the world is so enlightened. In some parts of the world, the act of homosexuality is punishable by law, with people sentenced to incarceration or even death. For some people, trying to leave their country and claim asylum in another part of the world is the only way people can truly be themselves. This paper is based on the case studies of two male clients who are both waiting for an asylum decision, with both cases based on their sexuality, and the approach used in therapy sessions, specifically focusing on not only coming to terms with their own persecution, moving from shame of their own culture, but also working with frustration and the re-shaming effects of proving one's sexuality. The overall objective is to create an argument for Dramatherapy when working with complex trauma, shame and raising awareness of the lesser-known work of Dramatherapy and asylum seekers.


10.1068/a4067 ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (11) ◽  
pp. 2734-2750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne M Cronin

Based on ethnographic work, this paper examines the market research practices of the outdoor advertising industry in the UK and their commercial production of space. I focus on the role of calculation in the performance of market relations between a range of actors in the field and the use of marketing research's classificatory practices as a currency which enacts those relations. In many accounts of urban governance, city space is produced by various statistical and classificatory devices as calculable and hence governable. But with recent developments in commercial enterprises, the performative quality of market relations engenders calculative space, a nexus of people-in-space, commercial imperatives, and a calculative energy or orientation to calculation. This is understood by the industry as a kind of commercial vitalism—an enlivening of market relations and of objects of commercial calculation—which firms aim to exploit by tapping into and channelling the energy they perceive it generates.


2021 ◽  

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is an innovative approach to language teaching which emphasises the importance of engaging learners' natural abilities for acquiring language incidentally. The speed with which the field is expanding makes it difficult to keep up with recent developments, for novices and experienced researchers alike. This handbook meets that need, providing a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the field, written by a stellar line-up of leading international experts. Chapters are divided into five thematic areas, and as well as covering theory, also contain case studies to show how TBLT can be implemented in practice, in a range of global contexts, as well as questions for discussion, and suggested further readings. Comprehensive in its coverage, and written in an accessible style, it will appeal to a wide readership, not only researchers and graduate students, but also classroom teachers working in a variety of educational and cultural contexts around the world.


1991 ◽  
Vol 138 ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Gregg

Since unemployment began to rise again last year, the need for a response from government is once again being discussed. As the unemployment total rises toward 2 1/2 million and threatens to continue to rise next year, it will be repeatedly in the headlines for some time to come. One policy response to persistently high unemployment in the UK, and by governments around the world, has been the use of Special Employment Measures. It is therefore surprising that direct special measures in Britain are now at a seven year low and are facing further funding cuts of around 18 per cent in real terms during the next financial year. Here we take a look at recent developments in Special Measures in the UK, and assess the adequacy of current programmes to meet the needs of the 1990s.


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