The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Foreword Ron Amann Introduction: introducing evidence-based policy and practice in public services Huw Davies, Sandra Nutley and Peter Smith Evidence and the policy process Sandra Nutley and Jeff Webb Part One: Analysis by service area: Health care: evidence to the fore Huw Davies and Sandra Nutley Education: realising the potential Carol Fitz-Gibbon Criminal justice: using evidence to reduce crime Sandra Nutley and Huw Davies Social care: rhetoric and reality Geraldine Macdonald Welfare policy: tendering for evidence Robert Walker Housing: linking theory and practice Joe Doherty Transport: beyond predict and provide Francis Terry Urban policy: addressing wicked problems Tony Harrison Part Two: Thematic analysis: A strategic approach to research and development Huw Davies, Gloria Laycock, Sandra Nutley, Judy Sebba and Trevor Sheldon Debates on the role of experimentation Huw Davies, Sandra Nutley and Nick Tilley Non-experimental quantitative methods John Hutton and Peter Smith Contributions from qualitative research Philip Davies Making a reality of evidence-based practice Sandra Nutley and Huw Davies Concluding remarks: learning from the past, prospects for the future Huw Davies, Sandra Nutley and Peter Smith.

What works?Evidence-based policy and practice in public services

Far from sweeping the globe uniformly, the 'third wave of democratization' left burgeoning republics and resilient dictatorships in its wake. Applying more than a year of original fieldwork in Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, and the Philippines, in this book Jason Brownlee shows that the mixed record of recent democratization is best deciphered through a historical and institutional approach to authoritarian rule. Exposing the internal organizations that structure elite conflict, Brownlee demonstrates why the critical soft-liners needed for democratic transitions have been dormant in Egypt and Malaysia but outspoken in Iran and the Philippines. By establishing how ruling parties originated and why they impede change, Brownlee illuminates the problem of contemporary authoritarianism and informs the promotion of durable democracy.

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Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization

For many observers, the recession of the early 1990s signaled the end of what Berry called islands of renewal in seas of decay. In the past decade, however, shifts in mortgage finance have intersected with developments in assisted housing to alter the links between gentrification and housing policy. In this article, we use field observation, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, and HOPE VI plans to analyze the resurgence of gentrification in eight U.S. cities. Between 1992 and 1997, gentrified neighborhoods attracted conventional homepurchase mortgage capital at a rate that grew at more than 2.3 times the suburban rate. Logit models confirm that mortgage capital favors gentrified neighborhoods even after controlling for applicant and loan characteristics, suggesting a new relationship between mortgage lending and neighborhood change. In some cities, gentrification has surrounded islands of decay and poverty with landscapes of renewal

Islands of decay in seas of renewal: Housing policy and the resurgence of gentrification

Recent years have witnessed the beginnings of a renaissance in the field of comparative urban studies. The paper discusses this body of work’s history, drawing on contributions from across the social sciences. Following this it highlights some of the work’s limits, namely its weak theorization of place, scale and causality. The paper then offers a relational comparative approach to the study of cities as a means of attending to these limits. This acknowledges both the territorial and relational geographies behind the production of cities.

Towards a relational comparative approach to the study of cities

Mixed-income housing represents the current direction of U.S. housing policy, but little is actually known about its social benefits, its costs, and the preconditions for its viability. Until these key questions are answered, advocacy of mixed-income housing will be based largely on faith and on dissatisfaction with the previous thrust of housing policy. This article examines various types of mixed-income housing and develops a simple analytic framework for exploring critical questions about it. The feasibility of mixed-income housing is shaped by local housing market conditions and by the physical and demographic characteristics of individual housing developments. The article also reviews the literature regarding the key questions and frames a research agenda.

Mixed-Income Housing: Unanswered Questions

The Promise of the City proposes a new theoretical framework for the study of cities and urban life. Finding the contemporary urban scene too complex to be captured by radical or conventional approaches, Kian Tajbakhsh offers a threefold, interdisciplinary approach linking agency, space, and structure. First, he says, urban identities cannot be understood through individualistic, communitarian, or class perspectives but rather through the shifting spectrum of cultural, political, and economic influences. Second, the layered, unfinished city spaces we inhabit and within which we create meaning are best represented not by the image of bounded physical spaces but rather by overlapping and shifting boundaries. And third, the macro forces shaping urban society include bureaucratic and governmental interventions not captured by a purely economic paradigm. Tajbakhsh examines these dimensions in the work of three major critical urban theorists of recent decades: Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Ira Katznelson. He shows why the answers offered by Marxian urban theory to the questions of identity, space, and structure are unsatisfactory and why the perspectives of other intellectual traditions such as poststructuralism, feminism, Habermasian Critical Theory, and pragmatism can help us better understand the challenges facing contemporary cities.

The Promise of the City: Space, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought

The promise of the city

Si les premieres elections concernant les gouvernements locaux ont eux lieu en 1999 en Iran, l'A. s'interroge quant a la transformation du regime theocratique par rapport justement a ce developpement de la democratie politique, le tout dans le contexte controverse de la societe civile

Political decentralization and the creation of local government in Iran : Consolidation or transformation of the theocratic state?

The article presents information on the role of globalization in the development of cities based on debates and conferences. Long before the 1990's tidal wave of studies on global cities and global city functions, a considerable number of urbanists studying the so-called 'third world' made considerable progress in examining the ways that global political and economic dynamics associated with empire and mercantilism imposed themselves, a phenomenon that used to be theorized as dependent urbanization. It is hard to miss the explosion of writings on cities and globalization. Almost every city function or metropolitan agglomeration and its fragments is now being conceptualized as global in some way. Globalization has even begun to dominate the vocabulary of urban policy-making and politics, with scholarly articles devoted to the study of how cities market themselves in global terms or how politicians symbolically use globalization in city electoral campaigns.

Kian Tajbakhsh

Papers

Mixed-Income Housing: Unanswered Questions

The Promise of the City: Space, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought

The promise of the city

Political decentralization and the creation of local government in Iran : Consolidation or transformation of the theocratic state?

Globalization and Cities in Comparative Perspective