Local/Municipal government

AggregAzioni urbAne ed equilibri regionAli in Ticino 93 3. La nuova Lugano OSCAR MAzzOLenI e AnDReA PILOTTI La nuova politica ticinese sulle aggregazioni degli anni Duemila è stata all'origine concepita quale fattore di rilancio delle realtà periferiche del cantone. Essa diventa ben presto anche lo strumento per il rilancio dei poli urbani ticinesi, e soprattutto un volano del dinamismo istituzionale di cui ha dato prova Lugano negli anni recenti. Nel configurare uno dei maggiori mutamenti della storia cantonale degli ultimi due secoli, che non ha eguali nel resto della Svizzera almeno dalla fine dell'Ottocento, esso trova le sue radici nello sviluppo economico e demografico. Se la città sul Ceresio ha svolto un ruolo cruciale di polo cantonale sin dai primi del Novecento, nel periodo più recente è cresciuto nettamente il divario tra la città e la regione rispetto agli altri centri urbani e, più in generale, al resto del cantone. Nel 2013, nel solo comune di Lugano si concentra quasi un abitante su cinque del cantone, ossia 65.000 abitanti 29 , e un posto di lavoro su quattro occupato nel territorio ticinese. L'obiettivo di questo capitolo è mostrare quali sono le premesse economiche e demografiche che hanno segnato questo importante cambiamento degli 29 Il dato, relativo al 14 aprile 2013, è reperibile sul sito www.lugano.ch.

Surat is one of the fastest growing cities in India with a total population of 48, 49,213 (2011 Census), of which, the migrant population constitutes 58 per cent. Disaster-prone Surat witnessed a remarkable change in its governance by Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) after the floods in 1994 and the subsequent plague outbreak. This study assessed how urban governance by the SMC evolved in the aftermath of the plague outbreak. The assessment was conducted through the thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with key informants who included officials of SMC, members of the Surat Climate Change Trust, academics and citizens. The study traced various factors that led to the institutional transformation in public health management by the SMC after 1994. These include the revamping of SMC structure to instate a decentralized approach to governance, the commitment of SMC towards the welfare of citizens, strengthening of disease surveillance systems, involvement of academic institutions in research projects, working with international agencies on health and climate issues, e-governance initiatives, setting up an early warning system, trust of community members in the city’s leadership and the “Surati” attitude of cooperation.

This book sets out to explore the political and social potential of intercultural policy for cities by bringing together advances in the areas of urban planning and intercultural theory. In recent years, demographic changes in cities in many parts of the world have led to increasing concerns about inter-ethnic tensions, social inequality, and racial discrimination. By virtue of their intermediate status, cities are in a particularly good position to design policy and programs that contribute to the well-being of all citizens, regardless of their origins. Certain cities have made significant advances in this domain, but until now very little work has been done to understand the specificity of work in the area of intercultural policy frameworks. The overall goal of this volume is to facilitate conversations between researchers and practitioners in their efforts to make cities more inclusive. This volume is the result of a series of on-going collaborations between academics and practitioners and it includes a number of original case studies that explain the evolution of intercultural policy from the point of view local actors. This collection will be of interest especially to policymakers and urban planners, but also to scholars and students in the areas of urban studies, public policy, anthropology, sociology, globalization and social sciences more generally. By leveraging recent advances in the field of intercultural policy and practice, this volume sheds light on the conditions and strategies that make intercultural cities a part of a common future.

District heating networks are commonly addressed in the literature as one of the most effective solutions for decreasing the greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector. These systems require high investments which are returned through the heat sales. Due to the changed climate conditions and building renovation policies, heat demand in the future could decrease, prolonging the investment return period. The main scope of this paper is to assess the feasibility of using the heat demand – outdoor temperature function for heat demand forecast. The district of Alvalade, located in Lisbon (Portugal), was used as a case study. The district is consisted of 665 buildings that vary in both construction period and typology. Three weather scenarios (low, medium, high) and three district renovation scenarios were developed (shallow, intermediate, deep). To estimate the error, obtained heat demand values were compared with results from a dynamic heat demand model, previously developed and validated by the authors. The results showed that when only weather change is considered, the margin of error could be acceptable for some applications (the error in annual demand was lower than 20% for all weather scenarios considered). However, after introducing renovation scenarios, the error value increased up to 59.5% (depending on the weather and renovation scenarios combination considered). The value of slope coefficient increased on average within the range of 3.8% up to 8% per decade, that corresponds to the decrease in the number of heating hours of 22-139h during the heating season (depending on the combination of weather and renovation scenarios considered). On the other hand, function intercept increased for 7.8-12.7% per decade (depending on the coupled scenarios). The values suggested could be used to modify the function parameters for the scenarios considered, and improve the accuracy of heat demand estimations. Abstract This study aims to examine the nonsterilized fermentation conditions for coproduction of pectinases and lipase enzymes using several fruit wastes as an energy source. Thermophilic fungal strain, Penicillium expansum CMI 39671 was used as a fermenting strain. The effect of process conditions including; nitrogen sources, pH, temperature, time and moisture contents, on the production of both enzymes were studied. The highest activities of pectinase and lipase (2817, 1870 U/g dry substrate) enzymes were found with orange peel feedstock, whereas the lowest activities of 1662 U/g and 1266 U/g were found with banana peel and papaya peel feedstocks respectively. Overall, pectinase showed higher enzymatic activities than lipase enzymes, both having similar increasing and decreasing trends, at all studied conditions. The optimum process conditions of peptone as a nitrogen source, pH 7, 40°C, 5 days and 70% moisture contents, were found to show highest enzymatic activities for both enzymes. The orange peel feedstock showed no significant difference in both enzymes' activities at sterilized and nonnotarized process conditions. Pectinase and lipase enzymes showed (13791 U/g) and (8114 U/g) for sterilized and (14091 U/g) and (8324 U/g) for nonnotarized process conditions respectively. In addition, the fungal strains also produce bacteriocin-like compounds that could inhibit microbial growth. These findings will help to design and develop robust, cost-effective and less energy intensive enzyme production processes and consequently an efficient fruit waste to energy system through open fermentation. Abstract This study aims to examine the nonsterilized fermentation conditions for coproduction of pectinases and lipase enzymes using several fruit wastes as an energy source. Thermophilic fungal strain, Penicillium expansum CMI 39671 was used as a fermenting strain. The effect of process conditions including; nitrogen sources, pH, temperature, time and moisture contents, on the production of both enzymes were studied. The highest activities of pectinase and lipase (2817, 1870 U/g dry substrate) enzymes were found with orange peel feedstock, whereas the lowest activities of 1662 U/g and 1266 U/g were found with banana peel and papaya peel feedstocks respectively. Overall, pectinase showed higher enzymatic activities than lipase enzymes, both having similar increasing and decreasing trends, at all studied conditions. The optimum process conditions of peptone as a nitrogen source, pH 7, 40°C, 5 days and 70% moisture contents, were found to show highest enzymatic activities for both enzymes. The orange peel feedstock showed no significant difference in both enzymes' activities at sterilized and nonnotarized process conditions. Pectinase and lipase enzymes showed (13791 U/g) and (8114 U/g) for sterilized and (14091 U/g) and (8324 U/g) for nonnotarized process conditions respectively. In addition, the fungal strains also produce bacteriocin-like compounds that could inhibit microbial growth. These findings will help to design and develop robust, cost-effective and less energy intensive enzyme production processes and consequently an efficient fruit waste to energy system through open fermentation.

In het voorjaar van 2020 zijn 3 onderzoeken gedaan naar participatietrajecten in Amsterdam: 2 onderzoeken beslaan het participatietraject dat ten grondslag ligt aan de ontwikkeling van de plannen voor de Klaprozenbuurt (Strooband, 2020; Verheugen, 2020) en een ander onderzoek is uitgevoerd naar participatie voorafgaand aan de Nota van Uitgangspunten van Agenda Amsterdam Autoluw (Windt, 2020). Deze onderzoeken hebben de participatie kwaliteit van hun casus in kaart gebracht in opdracht van de Gemeente Amsterdam, Academie van de Stad en de Universiteit van Amsterdam.

In dit rapport zijn belangrijke aanbevelingen samengevat die af te leiden zijn uit deze onderzoeken. Voor de specifieke conclusies vanuit de twee casussen verwijzen wij naar de onderzoeken.

Italo Insolera (1929–2012) was a key figure among Italian urban planners and historians. After fifty-seven years and fifteen editions and reprints in Italy, his classic, ground-breaking work in the field of historical urban studies is now published in English. A masterful, fluent narrative leads the reader through the last two centuries in the history of the Eternal City, capital of the Papal State, then of the united Italy, first under the monarchy and subsequently the republic. Rome’s chaotic growth and often ineffective urban planning, almost invariably overpowered by building speculation, saw but few short interludes of sound administration: Napoleon’s reign, Pianciani’s and Nathan’s stints as mayors, the first years of left-wing rule (1976–81). Then came the alarming and still relevant developments of the late decades of the twentieth century, when urban planning seems to have been utterly defeated. Insolera points out in desolate accusation that any “radical change becomes impossible when ideology has been renounced as a provider of aims and instruments. And I must remind those who maintain that planning is unnecessary that it is so only for the ruling class, but not for the others.” Despite the general pessimistic tone, the book ends by indicating Culture and Art as the key elements from which future Rome may eventually draw new reinvigorating life and meaning. Multi-ethnicity should be one pillar (600,000 immigrants from all over the world, a source of fresh energy from the social, cultural and economic standpoints, live in a city that was essentially cosmopolitan throughout its history). The other pillar should be the enhancement of an unequalled archaeological heritage—still unknown and buried for a large part—with the ancient Appian Way as its spine and the Fora all the way to the the Capitoline Hill as its urban appendage.

There have been advances in information systems software integrations made in the industrial sector over the past few decades. The assumption is that these enterprise solutions developed for industry will offer improvements to the automation of the water management processes in the public sector at municipalities. Enterprise systems offer information that is accurate, consistent, timeous and complete. In reality, South African municipalities face numerous challenges associated with unintegrated systems, which result in inaccuracies in water resource management. Water billing is a critical aspect of water resource management for municipalities as it is a significant part of revenue collection. The mismanagement of metering and ineffective billing systems results in an average water wastage in South Africa of 37% annually. Subsequently, municipalities need to ensure that there is effective water billing, through the integration of information systems to mitigate this wastage. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework, which municipalities can use to mitigate the challenges associated with integrating their water billing information systems. The research was conducted at the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, as a single case study, involving employees in the water billing division. Data was collected from a seven-person focus group and semi-structured interviews with two managers. The Nvivo software was used to organise the collected data. Finally, the data was analysed using the principles of thematic analysis. The findings indicate that the municipality has an unintegrated enterprise system where various disparate systems exist. The unintegrated system provides challenges in water billing systems. The challenges are identified and discussed and measures to mitigate them are presented as part of a systems integration framework. The proposed framework can be generalised to municipalities to mitigate similar challenges that they may face in integrating their water billing information systems.