2012

Economic inequality is a continuing challenge for China. According to a recent World Bank report, China's Gini Coefficient rose to .47 in 2009, from .28 thirty years ago, indicating rising income inequalities. The rising rural-urban income gap is particularly challenging, as incomes of urban residents are now 3.3 times greater than ....

Throughout the world, the number of festivals has grown exponentially in the last two decades, as people celebrate local and regional cultures, but perhaps more importantly as local councils and other groups seek to use festivals both to promote tourism and to stimulate rural development. However, most studies of festivals have tended to focus al ....

This paper explores the concept of community resilience and outlines recent frameworks and tools developed to understand and measure it. This paper was written to assist service providers, practitioners and policy makers working with regional and rural communities vulnerable to natural disasters. Sections include: community vulnerability; under ....

Australia's recent resources boom has promoted much popular discussion and debate about the economic, social and environmental consequences for those regions in which mining occurs. Perhaps nowhere are the outcomes of the resources boom more evident than in Western Australia, where the diversity and scale of projects is fundamentally reshaping ma ....

Recent research on the intertemporal dynamics of poverty using microeconomic data often hints at the existence of poverty traps, where some find themselves trapped at a low-level stable equilibrium while others enjoy a higher stable equilibrium. Without a sizable positive shock to well-being, those trapped at the low equilibrium will not automati ....

Regional policy is not a choice between supporting high growth areas or propping up struggling regions. OECD evidence shows that strong economic growth is possible in all types of regions regardless of their current levels of development or previous performance. To tap the potential for growth and prosperity in each region, Australia needs better ....

Published in November 2001, Peel Away the Mask: A Study of the Social Condition of the Peel Region (PATM) provided an overview of socio-economic trends and drivers in the Peel region. The region has grown and changed substantially in the intervening decade. This report, Peel Away the Mask II (PATM II), is a follow-up study to the 2001 document. ....

The Pilbara Planning and Infrastructure Framework defines a strategic direction for the future development of the Pilbara region over the next 25 years. It seeks to ensure that development and change in the Pilbara is achieved in a way that improves people’s lives and enhances the character and environment of the region. Report LocationClick ....

In most European countries planning in rural areas has largely been restricted to protecting the countryside and agricultural land from built development. Rural planning has often been driven by programmes to foster food production, and there seems to be little willingness to change the traditional 'productivist' agricultural approach. ....

Faced with ever increasing pressures for better performance and financial bottom line, governments around the world are devolving more responsibilities to subnational governments. Especially in developing countries, this trend has coupled with increased demands for greater democracy and disaffection with the services provided by the central gover ....

This dissertation discusses the relationship between the evolution of the political economy, the movements for social changeand attempts at alternative development in El Salvador. Since the 1970s, that country has experienced an exceptionally rich history of social and revolutionary movements, and interesting attempts to build alternative an ....

The working relationship between the Mayor as the leader of the council and the chief executive officer (CEO) leading the council organisation is one of the most important relationships in local government. Mayors and CEOs recognise that the breakdown in this relationship can have long lasting, negative impacts on the capacity of a ....

Report Locationhttp://www.rdv.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/192759/Victorian-Impacts-of-the-proposed-Basin-Plan-RMCG-20120220.pdf ....

The chronic diseases associated with overweight and obesity are major contributors to the excess disease burden of Aboriginal Australians. Surveillance of overweight and obesity is required to monitor these conditions, and to develop and evaluate interventions to improve health and wellbeing. Remote Aboriginal communities in Austra ....