Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Municipal budgets in Poland and the Czech Republic are compared in the context of the institutional settings adopted for local government in each country. Wildavsky's model of budgetary behaviour for ‘poor and uncertain’ budget makers is applied to explain the financial decisions of local authorities in the circumstances of postcommunist transition. The scope of independence of local budgeting is examined in both countries with regard to legal restrictions on municipal revenues and expenditures and also in regard to the relationship between local government and the intermediary level of state administration. Two hypotheses are tested concerning the capital expenditures of the municipal governments under study. The first seeks to explain the impact of state grants on the level of municipal investments, depending on the way they are distributed—directly from the centre or through the district offices. The second hypothesis concerns the consequences of electoral rules on budgetary decisions of the respective councils. At the end, a map of municipal incomes is produced for each country, both reflecting the west—cast gradient of modernization.

This paper is an analysis of the effects of suburbanisation processes on the finances of cities in West Germany, taking the metropolitan area of Bremen as an example. The main thesis is that, under the present socioeconomic conditions, the German system of public finance and public responsibilities has led to a growing gap between the financial situations of central cities and of their surrounding communities in urban agglomerations. For the purpose of describing the differences in developments in the central city of Bremen and its suburban area, the main local tax revenues, as well as some indicators of ‘fiscal stress’, and their developments between 1982 and 1992 were analysed. The empirical results verify a significant shift of economic and financial strength to the suburban belt during the period under investigation. Although since the beginning of the 1970s a severe imbalance between the development of revenue and of expenditure needs has generated a dramatic budget situation in Bremen, in the surrounding communities in Lower Saxony budgetaty situations were sound in every respect. Similar processes, which have led to a relative weakness of revenues and increasing debts, have been observed in other central cities in Germany. Obviously the negative effect of suburbanisation processes on the financial situation of the central city is not a problem specific to Bremen. Generally, the larger cities are convinced that their functions for the hinterland and the resulting burdens have not been adequately taken into account in the systems of municipal finance and fiscal equalisation.

In this paper the influence of macrosocietal shifts on municipal reforms in metropolitan areas, as reflected by the cyclic swing from periods of increased efforts to rationalize metropolitan governance to periods of acceptance and promotion of a fragmented pattern, is demonstrated. An analogy between the changes in industrial organization and municipal organization is suggested. The paper is focused on Israel's economic core region—the Tel Aviv metropolis—with surveys of reports of commissions dealing with municipal reforms and of boundary commissions assessing claims for municipal boundary changes between 1960 and 1993. A unique feature of Tel Aviv is the region's past failure to implement proposals for major rationalization during a period when such reforms were common in countries with similar political systems. This failure was a result of specific political and geographical factors that counterbalanced the broad processes that supported reform. The subsequent period of economic stagnation weakened prospects for comprehensive reforms. Renewed growth in the 1990s has intensified pressures for municipal change but has not been associated with the comeback of old notions of metropolitan government. Rather, flexible modes of cooperation and coordination appear to be preferred, priority being given to reorganizing local government in the urban—rural fringes of the metropolis rather than dealing with the inner parts of the metropolis.

The first universal-franchise elections in South Africa, for the National Assembly and nine provincial councils, were conducted under a system of proportional representation in April 1994. The African National Congress won a substantial victory but failed to secure control of two key provinces: the Western Cape and KwaZulu—Natal. Ethnic voting patterns among the spatially concentrated Coloured and Zulu populations were at variance with the otherwise national-liberationary nature of the election. The South African experience of the significance of ethnic voting parallels that discerned in other emergent democracies, contributing to the widening field of electoral geography.

The relationship between institutional change and economic growth has been attracting great attention in recent years. However, despite some notable exceptions, researchers have been wary to approach this topic empirically. This paper represents an empirical attempt to try to unravel the impact on economic performance of what has been one of the most significant processes of institutional change in Western Europe in the past few decades—the regionalisation process—by taking the case of Spain, one of the countries where the shift from a highly centralised to a decentralised structure has been most profound. Results show that, at least in the early stages, the emergence of the Spanish regional state has had slightly beneficial effects on the relative growth performance of regions achieving the greatest level of autonomy when compared with their growth rates in the high point of Spanish centralism. Nevertheless, it is still too early to assert whether this positive influence will be a long-lasting one or can be attributed mainly to the dynamics of institutional change and, thus, will wane with time.

High-value landscapes, habitats, and species are protected increasingly through a range of local, national, and international designations and policies. Often one site may be protected by a multitude of designations. However, international designations are commonly implemented through national mechanisms. Using the Forvie Sands and Ythan Estuary area of northeast Scotland as an example, we review the effectiveness of multiple environmental designations. After an examination of existing and proposed designations for the study area, overlaps and loopholes in environmental protection are identified. We conclude that protection from more than one designation may either afford the site additional protection or emphasise the importance of the site at different levels; local, national, and international. The principal loophole relates to unregulated activities undertaken beyond the designated site which may have an adverse effect on the protected area. Possible solutions include extending the designation to include the sources of the threat or to combine an appropriate designation strategy with effective regulation of the threat itself. In developing designation strategies, environmental protection agencies should consider these options.

In this paper the detailed patterns of British property valuation and local revenue raising under the council tax are compared with those prevailing under the domestic rates. The results of matching individual council-tax valuations with rateable values for the 47000 domestic properties that make up the Inner Area of Cardiff, Wales, are reported. A geographical information system is used to identify the disaggregate pattern of properties which have been assigned higher or lower relative values after the abolition of the domestic rates. The findings are seen as significant in describing the intraurban geography of property values in Britain: properties constructed by local authorities now attract significantly lower relative valuations; pre-1919 private-sector housing is now more highly valued; and different construction types (for example, purpose-built flats, converted flats, and ends of terraces) attract quite different valuations under the two regimes. Overall, the distribution of rateable values vis-à-vis that of council-tax bands is likely to have had a multifaceted effect upon local revenue raising, and the authors begin to explore its changed geography in some detail.

The pronounced housing-market and labour-market changes which have intensified in recent decades have had a particularly severe impact upon the social housing sector. In this paper it is argued that within this tenure, social housing estates have experienced a progressive dislocation from the mainstream in economic and social terms. A generic model of Estate Development Trusts is presented which is an attempt to redress not only the balance of labour-market opportunities by targeting such issues as education, training, and (un)employment, but is equally directed at related aspects such as the housing-management, social, and health functions at the estate level. The primary purpose of the model is to provide a framework which highlights the attributes which ought to be considered when seeking to bring about the effective and holistic regeneration of social housing estates.

Around half of all the CO₂ emissions relate to the energy consumed in buildings. Management of energy demand is, therefore, a central concern of environmental policymakers. But how does local environmental policy actually shape local energy-management practices? Rather than analysing how the intensity of energy flows are shaped by institutions and regulatory forces, makers of local environmental policy have tended to adopt a ‘rational’ modelling approach, increasingly divorced from the operational realities of the restructured energy sector. Such an approach misses the way in which privatised utility companies are now reaching ‘beyond the meter’ in order to manage local energy consumption actively. In this way privatised utilities are emerging as important regulators of energy flows in the territories they serve. Local environmental policy is largely bypassed in this process. Policymakers therefore need to acknowledge the role of regional energy companies as key energy managers and to coordinate local energy policy accordingly.