Imagine Boston 2030

Today, Boston is in a uniquely powerful position to make our city more affordable, equitable, connected, and resilient. We will seize this moment to guide our growth to support our dynamic economy, connect more residents to opportunity, create vibrant neighborhoods, and continue our legacy as a thriving waterfront city.Mayor Martin J. Walsh's Imagine Boston 2030 is the first citywide plan in more than 50 years. This vision was shaped by more than 15,000 Boston voices.

Today, citizens advocate greater environmental sustainability, better services and the improvement of urban quality by promoting safer mobility and health. Addressing these issues, Pedestrians, Urban spaces and Health contains the papers presented at the XXIV International Conference "Living and Walking in Cities" (Brescia, Italy, 12-13 September 2019). The contributions discuss town planning issues, look at best practices and research findings across the broad spectrum of urban and transport planning, with particular attention to the safety of pedestrians in the city. The main topics of the book are: Walking experiences Urban spaces and Redevelopment Healthy cities (as Urban resilience and for Weakest users) Pedestrians, Urban spaces and Health is a powerful plea for a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive approach to urban mobility and planning, and will be of interest to academics, consultants and practitioners interested in these areas.

Arguing that climate injustice is one of our most pressing urban problems, this volume explores the possibilities and challenges for more just urban futures under climate change. Whether the situation be displacement within cities through carbon gentrification or the increasing securitization of elite spaces for climate protection, climate justice and urban justice are intimately connected. Contributors to the volume build theoretical tools for interrogating the root causes of climate change, as well as policy failures. They also highlight knowledge produced within communities already seeking transformative change and demonstrate meaningful learning from activist groups working to address the socionatural injustices caused by the impact of climate change. The editors’ introduction situates our current climate emergency within historical processes of colonization, racial capitalism, and heteropatriarchy, while the editors’ conclusion offers pathways forward through abolition, care, and reparations. Where other books focus on the project of critique, this collection advances real-world politics to help academics, practitioners, and social justice groups imagine, create, and enact more just urban futures under climate change.

This book investigates the dynamics and the role of green urban regeneration using nature-based solutions (NBS) in contributing to the cultural aspects of public spaces. In the first part of the book, insights on analytical methods, planning strategies and shared governance examples are given, as well as, an assessment tool, namely public space index (PSI), is given for successfully measuring sociability impact while using a placemaking approach to green urban regeneration processes. In the second part, the case study (Rose Kennedy Greenway of Boston, MA, USA) has been extensively researched during many years of observations and analysis which gives a realistic taste of the implementation of the proposed PSI. The book’s last part reflects on PSI to measure its adaptability and replicability in other contexts, whereas NBS are playing a major role in physical and spatial green urban regeneration in current cities contexts’.

The Right Place explains why firms succeed in one country and fail in another, irrespective of their inner drivers, and suggests potential initiatives that governments can take to help the private sector create jobs and, consequently, make their countries more prosperous. The competitiveness race is not unlike a cycling race. If you want to ride fast, you need three things: a good bike, to be in good shape, and a smooth and fast road. In a collaborative model, you might say the business is the bicycle, the business leader is the cyclist, and the road is the government and the external environment. The responsibility of a government is to design and build the best possible road. It turns out that when the road is good, good cyclists suddenly appear and want to race on it. In this book, competition and macroeconomics expert, Arturo Bris, provides the analysis of country competitive performance based on 30 years advising countries on this topic. The typical mistakes that countries make are revealed and the pillars necessary in building a competitive economy: economic performance as a necessary condition for prosperity; government efficiency, so the public sector can create the conditions for a productive economy; business efficiency, so companies can create jobs; and infrastructure, both tangible and intangible, so businesses and individuals can operate efficiently. With contemporary case studies throughout, the book provides an illuminating read for politicians, business leaders and students of macroeconomics.

The Smart Sustainability Transformation Playbook aims to demystify the socio-technical systems and processes of sustainability transitions through the study of 12 smart cities — Auckland, Boston, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Medellin, Melbourne, Milan, Seoul, Tokyo, and Vancouver, selected from the IMD-SUTD 2021 Smart City Index. The selection encompasses a range of smart cities and developments on selected critical areas in economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. The analysis draws on literature review, secondary data, interviews with city officials, and case studies of smart city projects in the 12 cities to better understand how people, organisations, and technologies interact to achieve the city's smart vision for sustainability. Attention is pivoted towards clarifying the characteristics and conditions that help smart cities formulate their visions and strategies on selected issues of economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability; unpacking the processes and outcomes of smart city innovations and transformations with case examples; developing a checklist of critical success factors and pitfalls when implementing smart city innovations; and consolidating a micro-foundation of good practices on success factors and pitfalls in smart city development for long-term change.

Illuminating and timely, this book explores several theoretical and empirical issues related to the potential for increasing capacities for innovation, knowledge and entrepreneurship. It highlights the current academic and political consensus that calls for policy interventions targeted towards more balanced, inclusive and regionally cohesive growth.

Expert analysis of American governance challenges and recommendations for reform Two big ideas serve as the catalyst for the essays collected in this book. The first is the state of governance in the United States, which Americans variously perceive as broken, frustrating, and unresponsive. Editor James Perry observes in his Introduction that this perception is rooted in three simultaneous developments: government's failure to perform basic tasks that once were taken for granted, an accelerating pace of change that quickly makes past standards of performance antiquated, and a dearth of intellectual capital that generate the capacity to bridge the gulf between expectations and performance. The second idea hearkens back to the Progressive era, when Americans revealed themselves to be committed to better administration of their government at all levels—federal, state, and local. These two ideas—the diminishing capacity for effective governance and Americans' expectations for reform—are veering in opposite directions. Contributors to Public Service and Good Governance for the Twenty-First Century explore these central ideas by addressing such questions as: what is the state of government today? Can future disruptions of governance and public service be anticipated? What forms of government will emerge from the past and what institutions and structures will be needed to meet future challenges? And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, what knowledge, skills, and abilities will need to be fostered for tomorrow's civil servants to lead and execute effectively? Public Service and Good Governance for the Twenty-First Century offers recommendations for bending the trajectories of governance capacity and reform expectations toward convergence, including reversing the trend of administrative disinvestment, developing talent for public leadership through higher education, creating a federal civil service to meet future needs, and rebuilding bipartisanship so that the sweeping changes needed to restore good government become possible. Contributors: Sheila Bair, William W. Bradley, John J. DiIulio, Jr., Angela Evans, Francis Fukuyama, Donald F. Kettl, Ramayya Krishnan, Paul C. Light, Shelley Metzenbaum, Norman J. Ornstein, James L. Perry, Norma M. Riccucci, Paul R. Verkuil, Paul A. Volcker.