The Skills Agenda and the Competencies for Managing Diversity and Space

This paper evaluates skills for managing ethno-religious diversity in the context of regeneration, spatial planning and the pursuit of sustainable communities. It draws on experiences in Northern Ireland to explore the type and range of skills required in a society emerging from prolonged conflict and residential segregation. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for a more direct political engagement with agnostic practice that challenges the technical reductionism implied in generic skills frameworks. Here, the implications for practice outside the region are identified.

Family Caregivers and Palliative Care: Current Status and Agenda for the Future

The quality of life of the person confronting the end stages of their life may be severely compromised without the support of family caregivers. Indeed, most people requiring palliative care would not be able to fulfill their preferences, such as care at home, without significant family caregiver input. As a consequence, health services are mandated to support the family alongside the person diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. In short, palliative care is supposed to be family centred. However, the quality and type of support made available to family caregivers has been questioned. The purpose of this review is to outline a succinct and empirically informed account of family caregiving within the context of palliative care and to propose an agenda for the future. The appraisal is underpinned by several systematic reviews, and other seminal publications from the last decade.

Integrating Land-use Planning and Transportation in Belfast: A New Policy Agenda for Sustainable Development

Much of the interest in promoting sustainable development in planning for the city-region focuses on the apparently inexorable rise in the demand for car travel and the contribution that certain urban forms and land-use relationships can make to reducing energy consumption. Within this context, policy prescription has increasingly favoured a compact city approach with increasing urban residential densities to address the physical separation of daily activities and the resultant dependency on the private car. This paper aims to outline and evaluate recent efforts to integrate land use and transport policy in the Belfast Metropolitan Area in Northern Ireland. Although considerable progress has been made, this paper underlines the extent of existing car dependency in the metropolitan area and prevailing negative attitudes to public transport, and argues that although there is a rhetorical support for the principles of sustainability and the practice of land-use/transportation integration, this is combined with a selective reluctance to embrace local changes in residential environment or in lifestyle preferences which might facilitate such principles.

Northern Ireland:The Development Context

This article provides a contextual framework for the new agenda for development, represented in the economic strategy known as Strategy 2010, and the regional spatial plan known as Shaping Our Future. These are considered in the following two articles. This article begins by setting a perspective on the political economy of Northern Ireland and follows with an outline of the spatial planning process. In conclusion, it raises the key challenges facing attempts to renew the region.

‘A system that works for the sea’? Exploring Stakeholder Engagement in Marine Spatial Planning

This paper aims to contribute to the current debate on Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) by exploring the issue of stakeholder engagement. MSP is an emergent policy field that is subject to an increasing body of research, yet the role, scope and nature of participatory engagement within the process remains a neglected topic. This paper briefly reviews the nature of the ‘marine problem’, to which MSP is seen to be the response and describes the emergence of MSP policy in the UK with specific emphasis on participatory aspects. Drawing on the experience of terrestrial planning it discusses the potential benefits of stakeholder engagement in MSP and highlights some of the key issues that need to be taken into account when shaping stakeholder input into the process. It then goes on to describe the findings from a series of interviews with key stakeholders in the Irish Sea Region, which suggest that we need to develop a more critical and deeper understanding of how various interests frame the ‘marine problem’, and how they see their role in shaping the form of the MSP process. This highlights the importance of encouraging stakeholder involvement in MSP, the need to develop a shared vision of a ‘sea interest’. Priorities are then set for research to support this important policy agenda.

The Private Finance Initiative: An Evolving Research Agenda

This article considers the development of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and contends that it is now deeply embedded and intertwined in policies to renew and modernize the United Kingdom's public services. After briefly reviewing prior research based upon the themes proposed by Broadbent and Laughlin (1999), this article suggests a new research agenda to reflect how the PFI has matured and developed in recent years.

Governance and charities: An exploration of key themes and the development of a research agenda

The concept of governance has been widely discussed in both the business and non-business sectors. The debate has also been entered into within the charity sector, which comprises over 169,000 organizations in the UK. The UK-based Charity Commission, which describes itself as existing to ‘promote sound governance and accountability’, has taken a lead in this debate by promoting greater regulation and producing numerous recommendations with regard to the proper governance of charitable organizations. However, the concept of what is meant by governance is unclear and a myriad of ideas are placed under the umbrella of ‘good governance’. This paper explores the major themes that form the basis of much of this discussion, examining both the theoretical underpinnings and empirical investigations relating to this area (looking from the perspective of the key stakeholders in the charity sector). Based on an analysis of the extant literature, this paper presents a broad definition of governance with respect to charities and outlines a future research agenda for those interested in adding to knowledge in this area.

And We’d Like to Thank…::Romania’s Integration into the European Union, 1989-2007

Conditionality is formally a key determinant of many non-member states’ relations with the EU. It is particularly so for states intent on membership. As the case of Romania shows, the EU’s use of conditionality is far from consistent. Relations can develop and accession take place without the requisite conditions being met. This follows from the use the EU makes of the flexibility evident in its evolving and generally vague definitions of the conditions that need to be met. Hence it was often extraneous factors over which Romania had either limited or no influence that were responsible for key developments in relations. These factors include the geopolitical and strategic interests of the EU and its member states, the actions of the Commission and the agenda-setting and constraining effects of rhetorical commitments and timetables, and the dynamics of the EU’s evolving approach to eastern enlargement.