Neighborhood challenges to economic development

This article analyzes neighborhood-based development challenges. The article examines six explanations for such challenges: use value, social status, growth, economic and fiscal, governmental structure, and suburban. Using data derived from several sources (survey, Census, I. C.M.A.), the results indicate that cities with higher housing values and reform government structures are more likely to have neighborhood-based development challenges. The analysis is extended to investigate successful neighborhood-based development challenges. These results indicate that a city's poverty rate depresses the potential for successful challenges and that challenges are more likely to be successful in central cities. Finally, the analysis indicates that those cities in which neighborhood groups are motivated by the desire to protect housing values are more likely have successful development challenges.     

The coastal zone as an administrative entity for governing U.S. marine minerals development

The coastal zone is being promoted as a spatial unit to coordinate and administer offshore minerals development with other coastal uses. Rather than aiding the administration of minerals development , the coastal zone is being used as the reason to block such development. This paper explores the coastal zone concept as an entity for administration. It concludes that just because minerals may be found in a coastal zone does not mean that physical entity is the most appropriate vehicle for administering mineral development. Arbitrariness at to what is included or excluded from a coastal zone as well as many minerals impacts being found outside of the coastal zone militate against such an entity being the sole criterion for decisionmaking. While the coastal zone may be appropriate for some mineral decisions, the choice to implement it must be arrayed against alternative criteria to ensure a high degree of effectiveness and efficiency in those decisions.     

5.5 Transportation

Since the early 1990s, reports on topics ranging from neighbourhood renewal and low demand to social exclusion have highlighted the damaging effects of anti-social behaviour. Local authorities are urged to develop a 'holistic' response to anti-social behaviour. Recent research into the effectiveness of legal remedies reveals a tension between attempts to address the underlying causes of anti-social behaviour and the government's emphasis on legal action to control and punish perpetrators. Drawing on this research, the article examines why many landlords are still evicting perpetrators rather than dealing with the underlying causes of their behaviour. The article concludes by outlining the barriers that landlords and other agencies must overcome in order to develop a holistic approach to the problem.     

Mode of Production Analysis and Historical Production

A striking feature of Gambian society is its tripartite social structure composed of nobles, artisans and descendants of former slaves. Among the artisans, the role of the finoo, or Islamic bard, is by far the least understood. While there is hardly any documentation on finoos, indications are that they have specialized in the Islamic traditions. This article records the life story of Mariama Fatty, a successful Gambian female finoo. In addition to sketching a portrait of her profession, it provides an account of a Muslim woman’s involvement in Islamic practices, her engagement in the propagation of Islam, and her understanding of proper Muslim womanhood. By focusing on the female finoo’s manoeuvring between her cultural obligations and her religious tenets, it emerges that she exercises her profession in what is not so much a contradiction as a dialectic between submission and religious empowerment.