Search results for ""Author Richard Stren""

Cities are a locus of human diversity, where people with varying degrees of wealth and status share an association within a particular urban boundary. Despite the common geography, sharp social divisions characterize many cities. High levels of urban violence bear witness to the difficult challenge of creating socially cohesive and inclusive cities. The devastated inner cities of many large American urban centres exemplify the failure of urban development. With an enlightened democratic approach to policy reform, however, cities can achieve social sustainability. Some cities have been more successful than others in creating environments conducive to the cohabitation of a diverse population. In this collection of original essays, case studies of ten cities (Montreal and Toronto in Canada, Miami and Baltimore in the United States, Geneva and Rotterdam in Europe, Sao Paulo and San Salvador in South America, and Nairobi and Cape Town in South Africa) are presented and analysed in terms of social sustainability. The volume as a whole looks at the policies, institutions, and planning and social processes that can have the effect of integrating diverse groups and cultural practices in a just and equitable fashion. The authors conclude that policies conducive to social sustainability should, among other things, seek to promote fiscal equalization, weave communities within the metropolis into a cohesive whole, and ideally, provide transport systems that ensure equal access to public services and workplaces, all within the framework of an open and democratic local governance structure.

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The network is the pervasive organizational image of the new millennium. This book examines one particular kind of network - the 'knowledge network' - whose primary mandate is to create and disseminate knowledge based on multidisciplinary research that is informed by problem-solving as well as theoretical agendas. In their examination of five knowledge networks based in Canadian universities, and in most cases working closely with researchers in developing countries, the authors demonstrate the ability of networks to cross disciplinary boundaries, to blend the operational with the theoretical, and to respond to broad social processes. Operating through networks, rather than through formal, hierarchical structures, diverse communities of researchers create different kinds of knowledge and disseminate their results effectively across disciplinary, sectoral, and spatial boundaries. Analysis of networks in health, environment, urban, and educational fields suggests that old categories of 'north' and 'south' are becoming blurred, and that the new structures of knowledge creation and dissemination help to sustain collaborative research.

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