Municipalismo e política urbana: a Influência da União na Política Urbana Municipal

A política urbana, em seus vetores de regulação, serviços públicos e fomento, é o conjunto de princípios, diretrizes e ações que orientam a atividade econômica de urbanização, podendo determinar condutas à iniciativa privada através da função social da propriedade. Por afetar diretamente a vida das pessoas e a conformação da propriedade nas cidades, a política urbana é, por essência, municipal. A tradição da força municipalista no Brasil, que data do período imperial, ainda que em alguns momentos sufocada, manejou tornar os Municípios entes federados, assegurando- lhes, na Constituição de 1988, autonomia e atribuições, como a execução da política urbana traçada em diretrizes gerais por leis nacionais. As diretrizes nacionais para a política urbana, elaboradas em processo participativo, deveria pautar as ações da União, Estados e Municípios no tocante aos três mencionados vetores. No entanto, notando-se a quase total ausência dos Estados, verifica-se que a União, após a Constituição de 1988, rompeu com a própria ideologia de planejamento construída com a criação do Ministério das Cidades pelo Governo Lula e, atropelando o tempo de formação das diretrizes nacionais da política urbana, lançou programas de fomento a moradias e saneamento básico, cuja execução deve ser organizada pelos Municípios, que são tecnicamente frágeis e carentes de recursos para implementar a própria política urbana. Este recorte temático permite estudar a atuação mais recente da União em política urbana que, mesmo pretendendo dar conta de mazelas históricas do país, não destoa muito do período centralizador de formulação da política urbana do Regime Militar. Em Municipalismo e Política Urbana, analisa-se a influência da União na Política Urbana Municipal.

Linking energy policy, electricity generation and transmission using strong sustainability and co-optimization

The design of a sustainable electricity generation and transmission system is based on the established science of anthropogenic climate change and the realization that depending on imported fossil-fuels is becoming a measure of energy insecurity of supply. A model is proposed which integrates generation fuel mix composition, assignment of plants and optimized power flow, using Portugal as a case study. The result of this co-optimized approach is an overall set of generator types/fuels which increases the diversity of Portuguese electricity supply, lowers its dependency on imported fuels by 14.62% and moves the country towards meeting its regional and international obligations of 31% energy from renewables by 2020 and a 27% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, respectively. The quantity and composition of power generation at each bus is specified, with particular focus on quantifying the amount of distributed generation. Based on other works, the resultant, overall distributed capacity penetration of 19.02% of total installed generation is expected to yield positive network benefits. Thus, the model demonstrates that national energy policy and technical deployment can be linked through sustainability and, moreover, that the respective goals may be mutually achieved via holistic, integrated design. ©2009 IEEE.

Can evidence-based healthy housing interventions be put into practice in the UK's private housing sector?

The UK’s public health agenda has encouraged enhanced housing and health interventions. The private housing sector (privately rented and owner occupied) is the favoured and majority UK tenure, but is it seen as a primarily health promoting environment, or a commercial asset? There has been a growing interest in integrating health and housing policy in recent years. However, housing and public health fall under separate government departments and funding regimes. Partnership working has sought to overcome silo working and encourage evidence-based practice, yet is particularly challenging for interventions in the private housing sector, with an increased emphasis on ‘personal responsibility’ for conditions. Strategic public health frameworks are in place, but barriers remain and there is pressure for organisations to revert to core activities. An accessible, continually updated evidence base specific to private sector housing is recommended, to help estimate health gain arising from interventions to prioritise activities and address inequalities.

Housing Rural Communities: Connecting Rural Dwellings to Rural Development in Ireland

This paper explores the interaction between rural development policy and spatial planning policies for rural housing within the context of the island of Ireland. It draws on research commissioned by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive for a high level review of its rural housing policy. The paper highlights issues of wider relevance comprising a strained relationship between rural communities and rural planning, and argues for the adoption of cultural, environmental and community values within the rural planning policy arena.

An Introduction to the Special issue - Housing in Hard Times: Marginality, Inequality and Class, with Kim McKee

‘Housing in Hard Times’ was the theme of the Housing Studies Association annual conference in April 2011. The papers featured in this special issue are drawn from that conference. They examine the uneven impact of economic change on housing policy and related areas, with reference to conceptual ideas pertaining to urban marginality, inequality and class. Whilst the empirical focus of the papers is the UK, their intellectual contribution represents an attempt to ‘bring class back in’ to the housing studies literature and encourage more critical, theoretically informed scholarship.

Is everybody happy? The politics and measurement of national wellbeing

This article explores the political and intellectual influences behind the growth of interest in happiness and the emergence of the new 'science of happiness'. It offers a critique of the use of subjective wellbeing indicators within indexes of social and economic progress, and argues that the proposed United Kingdom's National Well-being Index is over-reliant on subjective measures. We conclude by arguing that the mainstreaming of happiness indicators reflects and supports the emergence of 'behavioural social policy'.

Scales, networks and uncertainty : an examination of environmental policy-making in Ontario

Through a case-study analysis of Ontario's ethanol policy, this thesis addresses a number of themes that are consequential to policy and policy-making: spatiality, democracy and uncertainty. First, I address the 'spatial debate' in Geography pertaining to the relevance and affordances of a 'scalar' versus a 'flat' ontoepistemology. I argue that policy is guided by prior arrangements, but is by no means inevitable or predetermined. As such, scale and network are pragmatic geographical concepts that can effectively address the issue of the spatiality of policy and policy-making. Second, I discuss the democratic nature of policy-making in Ontario through an examination of the spaces of engagement that facilitate deliberative democracy. I analyze to what extent these spaces fit into Ontario's environmental policy-making process, and to what extent they were used by various stakeholders. Last, I take seriously the fact that uncertainty and unavoidable injustice are central to policy, and examine the ways in which this uncertainty shaped the specifics of Ontario's ethanol policy. Ultimately, this thesis is an exercise in understanding sub-national environmental policy-making in Canada, with an emphasis on how policy-makers tackle the issues they are faced with in the context of environmental change, political-economic integration, local priorities, individual goals, and irreducible uncertainty.

Space System Architecture: Final Report of SSPARC: the Space Systems, Policy, and Architecture Research Consortium (Thrust I and II)

The Space Systems, Policy and Architecture Research Consortium (SSPARC) was formed to make substantial progress on problems of national importance. The goals of SSPARC were to: • Provide technologies and methods that will allow the creation of flexible, upgradable space systems, • Create a “clean sheet” approach to space systems architecture determination and design, including the incorporation of risk, uncertainty, and flexibility issues, and • Consider the impact of national space policy on the above. This report covers the last two goals, and demonstrates that the effort was largely successful.

Análisis del arrendamiento como alternativa en la política de vivienda de interés social en Colombia. Lecciones y reflexiones aprendidas a partir de la experiencia de Sudáfrica

Los esfuerzos de la presente investigación se concentran en el cumplimiento del objetivo principal, el cual consiste en analizar el arrendamiento como un programa que puede ser incorporado en la política de vivienda en Colombia, para dar respuesta de forma transitoria y/o temporal de alojamiento a los hogares con ingresos iguales o inferiores a dos salarios mínimos, ya que actualmente la política sectorial no incorpora esta forma tenencia de la vivienda para ofertar soluciones habitacionales. El arrendamiento tiene rasgos interesantes e importantes de destacar, tales como que él mismo constituye una forma de tenencia de vivienda eminentemente urbana. Además, es un mercado al que acuden todos los estratos socioeconómicos, por lo cual no es un mercado segregado. Igualmente, al relacionar ésta tenencia con el territorio y por ende con la economía espacial, se puede decir que no existe segregación socio-espacial muy pronunciada frente a la distribución urbana de la tenencia de la vivienda en arrendamiento. En este sentido, la tenencia de la vivienda en forma de arrendamiento se presenta en todo el territorio urbano de Cali, Medellín y Bogotá.

Advances and limitations in the attention to the problems of housing and urban land in Mexico. An approach from the legal-institutional frame

In this work we analyze the reforms carried out by the Mexican state in the nineties of the 20th century, in the items concerning the policies of housing and urban land, based on an exhaustive review of the main actions, programs and changes in the legal and institutional frame that applies for each of these fields. The nineties represent a "breaking point" in the way the State considers the satisfaction of the right to the housing and attends the offer of urbanized land for a tidy and sustainable urban development. In this period of time, the approach of direct intervention in developing and financing housing and creation of land reserves has changed into another one, ruled by the logic of the market. The balance to the first decade of the 21st century is ambiguous, as neither the housing policy has solved the housing shortage for low-income population, nor the land policy has eliminated the illegal urban growth.

Housing supply and planning controls: the impact of development control processing times on housing supply in England

The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit commissioned Professor Michael Ball of Reading University to undertake empirical research into how long it was taking to obtain planning consent for major housing sites in England. The focus on sites as opposed to planning applications is important because it is sites that generate housing.

Community mix, affordable housing and metropolitan planning strategy in Melbourne

Income segregation across Melbourne’s residential communities is widening, and at a pace faster than in some other Australian cities. The widening gap between Melbourne’s rich and poor communities raises fears about concentrations of poverty and social exclusion, particularly if the geography of these communities is such that they and their residents are increasingly isolated from urban services and employment centres. Social exclusion in our metropolitan areas and the government responses to it are commonly thought to be the proper domain of social and economic policy. The role of urban planning is typically neglected, yet it helps shape the economic opportunities available to communities in its attempts to influence the geographical location of urban services, infrastructure and jobs. Under the current metropolitan strategy ‘Melbourne 2030’ urban services and transport infrastructure are to be concentrated within Principal Activity Centres spread throughout the metropolitan area and it is the intention that lower-income households should have ready access to these activity centres. However, the Victorian state government has few housing policy instruments to achieve this goal and there are fears that community mix may suffer as house prices and rents are bid up in the vicinity of Principal Activity Centres, and lower-income households are displaced. But are these fears justified by the changing geography of house prices in the metropolitan region? This is the key research question addressed in this paper which examines whether the Victorian practice of placing reliance on the market to deliver affordable housing, while intervening to promote a more compact pattern of urban settlement, is effective.

Energy policy and standard for built environment in China

Trends in China's energy future will have considerable consequences for both China and the global environment. Though China's carbon emissions are low on a per capita basis, China is already ranked the world's second largest producer of carbon, behind only America. China's buildings sector currently accounts for 23% of China's total energy use and is projected to increase to one-third by 2010. Energy policy plays an important role in China's sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to provide a broad overview of energy efficiency issues in the built environment in China. This paper, firstly briefly, reviews the key national policies related to the built environment and demonstrates the government's environmental concern. Secondly, the authors introduce recent energy policies in the built environment. Energy efficiency and renewable energy in the built environment, which are the key issues of the national energy policy, have been reviewed. Discussion of the implementation of energy policy has been carried out.