L’impacte social dels plans i dels projectes territorials. El cas de Catalunya

L’article analitza l’impacte social dels plans i dels projectes territorials entès com la percepció que una societat local té de les conseqüències que comportarà una intervenció determinada sobre el territori. La configuració d’un quart poder territorial format per moviments socials i la crisi del sistema de representació ciutadana han refermat la importància de l’impacte social, el qual té una incidència notable en les intervencions que afecten el territori, i això en provoca ben sovint la paralització o la modificació. Calen mecanismes per incorporar l’impacte social des que es comença a plantejar un projecte per evitar situacions d’estancament, per estudiar alternatives més òptimes i per reconèixer els valors territorials tal com són percebuts per la societat local

Transportation Program Management System, HR-394, 2003

HR-394 was a software and database development project. Via funding provided by the Iowa Highway Research Board, the Iowa County Engineer's Association Service Bureau oversaw the planning and implementation of an Internet based application that supports two major local-government transportation project activities: Project programming and Development tracking. The goals were to reduce errors and inconsistencies, speed up the processes, link people to both project data and each other, and build a framework that could eventually support a 'paperless' work flow. The work started in 1999 and initial development was completed by the fall of 2002. Since going live, several 'piggy back' applications have been required to make the Programming side better fit actual work procedures. This part of the system has proven adequate but will be rewritten in 2004 to make it easier to use. The original development side module was rejected by the users and so had to be rewritten in 2003. The second version has proven much better, is heavily used, and is interconnected with Iowa DOT project data systems. Now that the system is in operation, it will be maintained and operated by the ICEA Service Bureau as an ongoing service function.

La transformació d'una administració local cap a una administració electrònica sense papers

Aquest treball analitza en què consisteix l'administració electrònica i quines són les adaptacions que ha de realitzar una administració local per transformar-s'hi. El present document també recull quins són els elements clau que cal adaptar dins de l'organització, detallant-los i veient els beneficis d'utilitzar-los. Atès que la inversió econòmica per fer la transformació cap a l'e-Administració pot ser elevada, s'analitzen els serveis que ofereix de forma gratuïta el consorci d'Administració Oberta de Catalunya (AOC), els quals poden ajudar a abaratir la despesa.

Peatlands and plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia : Complex realities for resource governance, rural development and climate change mitigation

Peatlands play a crucial role in Indonesia's economic development, and in its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Improved peatland management - including a national moratorium on the granting of any new conversion licenses - forms a cornerstone of Indonesia's climate change mitigation commitment. At the same time, rapid expansion of the plantation sector is driving wide-scale drainage and conversion of peat swamp ecosystems. The province of Riau, in central Sumatra, finds itself at the crossroads of these conflicting agendas. This essay presents a case study of three islands on Riau's east coast affected by industrial timber plantation concessions. It examines the divergent experiences, perceptions and responses of communities on the islands. A mix of dramatic protests, localised everyday actions and constructive dialogue has succeeded in delaying or perhaps halting one of the concessions, while negotiations and contestation with the other two continue. With the support of regional and national non-governmental organisations and local government, communities are pursuing alternative development strategies, including the cultivation of sago, which requires no peat drainage. While a powerful political economy of state and corporate actors shapes the contours of socio-environmental change, local social movements can alter trajectories of change, promoting incremental improvements and alternative pathways.

Urbanités marchandes : le commerce dans la production de la qualité urbaine et ses régulations : le cas de Lausanne

While collective identity markers are constantly evolving in today's city, the hyper-consumption society has allowed retail, even though greatly transformed, to remain a community hub for socialization. Society's commodification takes shape precisely within the public realm and the urban scene: sprawling analogous drivable retail-only suburbs and turning city centers into bland, soulless and undefined places displaying homogeneous frontages characterized by the same retail storefronts worldwide. More than ever, urban policies on retail oriented servicescapes seem crucial to urban and regional planning from a sustainable perspective. Thorough the study case of Lausanne, our research focuses on how the urban planning model and its policies could set into place spatial strategies to enhance urban quality and to reorganize retail centralities without succumbing to the prevailing commodification of the public realm. -- Les indicateurs d'identité collective se reformulent dans la ville actuelle, mais la société de l'hyperconsommation a permis au commerce, aussi transformé soit-il, de rester un lieu d'échange et de brassage social. La marchandisation de la société prend des formes précises dans l'espace et a un impact certain sur le paysage urbain : multipliant les espaces marchands périphériques monofonctionnels ou encore transformant nos centres-villes en paysages anodins, présentant des vitrines semblables quel que soit le pays où elles se situent. Plus que jamais, une régulation des espaces de consommation semble incontournable pour l'aménagement du territoire et l'urbanisme dans une perspective de durabilité. À travers le cas lausannois, cette thèse s'interroge sur la façon dont les modèles urbanistiques de régulation des jeux d'acteurs privés peuvent participer à la mise en place de stratégies de qualification urbaine et d'organisation des centralités commerciales sans céder à la tentation de la marchandisation des espaces publics.

Self-rule Index for Local Authorities (Release 1.0)

Local autonomy is a highly valued feature of good governance. The continuous attempts of many European countries to strengthen the autonomy of local government show the importance given to decentralisation and far-reaching competences at the lowest units of a state. Measuring and comparing local autonomy, however, has proven to be a difficult task. Not only are there diverging ideas about the core elements of local autonomy, there are also considerable difficulties to apply specific concepts to different countries. This project suggests a comprehensive methodology to measure local autonomy. It analyses 39 European countries and reports changes between 1990 and 2014. A network of experts on local government assessed the autonomy of local government of their respective countries on the basis of a common code book. The eleven variables measured are located on seven imensions and can be combined to a "Local Autonomy Index" (LAI). The data show an increase of local autonomy between 1990 and 2005, especially in the new Central and Eastern European countries. Countries with a particularly high degree of local autonomy are Switzerland, the Nordic countries, Germany and Poland.

Online and Offline Participation at the Local Level : A Quantitative Analysis of the Catalan Municipalities

This paper presents a first analysis on local electronic participatory experiences in Catalonia. The analysis is based on a database constructed and collected by the authors. The paper carries out an explanatory analysis of local initiatives in eparticipationand off line participation taking into account political variables (usually not considered in this kind of analysis) but also classical socio-economic variables that characterise municipalities. Hence, we add a quantitative analysis to the numerous case studies on local e-participation experiences. We have chosen Catalonia because is one of the European regions with more initiatives and one that has enjoyed considerable local governmental support to citizen participation initiatives since the 80s. The paper offers a characterisation of these experiences and a first explanatory analysis, considering: i) the institutional context in which these experiences are embedded, ii) the characteristics of the citizen participation processes and mechanisms on-line, and iii) a set of explanatory variables composed by the population size, thepolitical adscription of the mayor, the electoral abstention rate, age, income and level ofeducation in the municipality. The model that we present is explanatory for the municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants but it is not for the fewer than 20,000inhabitants. Actually, the number of participatory activities developed by these last municipalities is very low. Among all the variables, population size becomes the mostinfluential variable. Political variables such as political party of the mayor and the localabstention rate have a certain influence but that have to be controlled by population size.

Empirical analysis of solid management waste costs: Some evidence from Galicia, Spain

This paper analyses the factors that determine solid waste service costs. The empirical analysis is based on information derived from a survey conducted in a sample of Galician municipalities. The results reveal economies of scale in municipalities of fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, such that cooperation between these municipalities could lead to cost savings. It also appears that private delivery is not cheaper than public delivery. Finally, designating a larger proportion of the total waste volume to recycling does not imply greater costs.

¿Por qué se privatizan servicios en los municipios (pequeños)? Evidencia empírica sobre residuos sólidos y agua

Este artículo examina los factores que influyen en la privatización de los servicios de residuos sólidos y suministro de agua. Se aprovecha la disponibilidad de datos para una muestra de municipios de Aragón para identificar los aspectos de mayor importancia en municipios de pequeña dimensión. Los resultados del análisis empírico muestran que, para ambos servicios, la situación financiera de los municipios influye de forma significativa en la decisión de privatizar de los municipios pequeños, mientras que los aspectos ideológicos no parecen tener importancia. Las motivaciones referidas a los costes varían en función de las características específicas del servicio considerado. En este sentido, la dispersión de los núcleos de población y la cooperación inter-municipal juegan un papel particularmente relevante en municipios de pequeña dimensión.

Public and Private Production in a Mixed Delivery System: Regulation, Competition and Costs

Academics and policy makers are increasingly shifting the debate concerning the best form of public service provision beyond the traditional dilemma between pure public and pure private delivery modes, because, among other reasons, there is a growing body of evidence that casts doubt on the existence of systematic cost savings from privatization, while any competition seems to be eroded over time. In this paper we compare the relative merits of public and private delivery within a mixed delivery system. We study the role played by ownership, transaction costs, and competition on local public service delivery within the same jurisdiction. Using a stochastic cost frontier, we analyze the public-private urban bus system in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. Our results suggest that private firms tendering the service have higher delivery costs than those incurred by the public firm, especially when transaction costs are taken into account. Tenders, therefore, do not help to reduce delivery costs. Our results suggest that under a mixed delivery scheme, which permits the co-existence of public and private production, the metropolitan government and the regulator can use private delivery to contain costs in the public firm and, at the same time, benefit from the greater flexibility of private firms for dealing with events not provided for under contract.

Empowering local democracy in Catalonia: tools and policy domains to implement a top-down solution

This article is the result of an ongoing research into a variety of features of Spanish local government. It aims, in particular, at providing a profile of the tools implemented by local authorities to improve local democracy in Catalonia. The main hypothesis of the work is that, even though the Spanish local model is constrained by a shared and unique set of legal regulations, local institutions in Catalonia have developed their own model of local participation. And the range of instruments like these is still now increasing. More specifically, the scope of this research is twofold. On the one hand, different types of instruments for public deliberation in the Catalan local administration system are identified and presented, based on the place they take in the policy cycle. On the other hand, we focus on policy domains and the quality of the decision-making processes. Researching the stability of the participation tools or whether local democracy prefers more 'ad hoc' processes allows us to analyze the boundaries/limits of local democracy in Catalonia. The main idea underlying this paper is that, despite the existence of a single legal model regulating municipalities in Catalonia, local authorities tend to use their legally granted selfmanagement capacities to design their own instruments which end up presenting perceivable distinct features, stressing democracy in different policy domains, and in diverse policy cycles. Therefore, this paper is intended to identify such models and to provide factors (variables) so that an explanatory model can be built.

Regulatory framework of local citizen participation: Instruments of Direct and Participative Democracy in the Municipal Field

This article focuses on the analysis of the regulatory framework of citizen participation in the local government, which organises direct and participatory democracy at the local level, and identifies the laws and mechanisms through which the constitutional requirements for participation are accomplished. Mu nicipalities, the authority closest to citizens, are the best level of government since they directly involve civil society in the decision-making process experiencing the scope and appropriateness of the instruments by which it is channeled.

Intermunicipal cooperation and privatization of solid waste services among small municipalities in Spain

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of intermunicipal cooperation and privatization on the delivery costs of urban solid waste services. The results of our empirical analysis, which we conducted among a sample of very small municipalities, indicate that small towns that cooperate incur lower costs for their waste collection service. Cooperation also raises collection frequency and improves the quality of the service in small towns. By contrast, the form of production, whether it is public or private, does not result in systematic differences in costs. Interestingly, the degree of population dispersion has a significant positive relation with service costs. No evidence of scale economies is found because, it would seem, small municipalities exploit them by means of intermunicipal cooperation.

Efectos de la reforma contable en la administración local

L' any 2006 entra en vigor una nova instrucció de comptabilitat per a l' administració local que provocarà alguns efectes que s' intenten analitzar en aquest article. En primer lloc, s' analitza el pas de dos models comptables a tres, després s' estudien les modificacions més importants,i s' acaba amb les principals conclusions obtingudes i la repercussió en la gestió comptable

Plan de seguridad y salud para el suministro y montaje del Parque Eólico Rancho Viejo en el T.M. de Medina-Sidonia (Cádiz)

No hace más de 3 años se podía leer en las revistas especializadas que España había pasado a ocupar el tercer puesto en el ranking mundial por potencia eólica instalada. La industria eólica española a su vez ha pasado a ocupar el tercer puesto en la fabricación e instalación de aerogeneradores, con una cuota de mercado del 13%, siendo así un sector con gran capacidad de exportación. Por otra parte, tras diez años de promulgación de la Ley 31/95, de 8 de noviembre, de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales, y después su desarrollo reglamentario, es un hecho incontestable que, pese a todo, y a los ingentes esfuerzos realizados por los distintos actores implicados en la prevención de riesgos laborales (Estado, Comunidades Autónomas, Agentes Sociales, Entidades especializadas, etcetera), existe un sector como el de la construcción que, constituyendo uno de los ejes del crecimiento económico de nuestro país, está sometido a unos riesgos especiales y continúa registrando una siniestralidad laboral muy notoria por sus cifras y gravedad. La legislación de prevención, los manuales sobre las distintas disciplinas preventivas, los libros especializados, los expertos... han abordado ya, con mayor o menor acierto, muchas de las cuestiones generales y específicas que afectan a la seguridad y salud: la evaluación de riesgos, las medidas higiénicas, los equipos de trabajo y equipos de protección individual, la planificación, la formación, los servicios de prevención , los sistemas de gestión de la prevención, las auditorías ... forman parte de los contenidos que se han ido creando en torno a este tema. No obstante, resulta de gran interés la elaboración de un estudio de Seguridad y Salud, en el que partiendo de un desarrollo técnico concreto, pero sobre todo integral, es decir, que comprenda todas las fases para el suministrp e instalación de aerogeneradores para un parque eólico, vayamos desgranando cada uno de los puntos desarrollados en su construcción. Entre las conclusiones más destacadas de este trabajo, se encuentra la definición de las condiciones relativas a la prevención de accidentes y enfermedades laborales durante la ejecución de los trabajos de suministro e instalación de un parque eólico y la gestión de su prevención, las características de las instalaciones preceptivas para higiene y bienestar de los trabajadores, así como directrices básicas mínimas, que deben reflejarse y desarrollarse en el Plan de Seguridad y Salud que las empresas contratistas deberán presentar para su aprobación por el director de obra, antes del comienzo de los trabajos, de forma que sea posible la disminución de accidentes laborales así como evitar las posibles sanciones administrativas y/o penales.