Pension reforms in EU11 countries: An evaluation of post‐socialist pension policies

This article evaluates the pension policy pathways of the 11 former state socialist nations that have joined the European Union since 2004. Focusing primarily on the post‐2004 period, the analysis discusses the most important measurable outcomes of these countries’ pension reforms, in terms of poverty alleviation, pension adequacy and fiscal sustainability. Going beyond the quantifiable concepts, we also investigate the quality of the 11 countries’ pension systems in terms of equity as well as efficiency, emphasizing the less conspicuous design errors present in these systems. Although these errors have received little attention to date, they may harm pension schemes along several dimensions, including their fiscal sustainability.     

Resistance to metropolitan institutionality and planning in Chile

In this article, the authors review and analyse two key processes conducted by the Chilean state over the past 50 years. The first process consists of the development of specific planning instruments for the particular realities of metropolitan areas. The second process consists of the successive legislative attempts to work towards a definition of a new form of institutionality for cities with metropolitan profiles. These attempts have either failed or solely become bills of law. Both processes suggest a political and technical resistance throughout history, to substantially modify institutionality, as well as planning instruments, in order to make them more appropriate and consistent with the needs of growing metropolitan areas in Chile.     

Spatial Data Usage,Spatial Thinking and Spatial Knowledge Generation: The Case of Planning Practitioners in Arequipa,Peru

Spatial thinking and spatial knowledge generation in decision-making are still not mature fields of study in planning research, despite these being crucial elements in addressing the issues of the twenty-first-century city. This article contributes to their understanding by exploring their interrelationships with spatial data usage. Through storylines, it analyzes the arguments that planning practitioners offer in support of infrastructure-led decisions in Arequipa (Peru), before and after spatial data usage. The article concludes that spatial data usage improve spatial thinking to different extents, yet suggests aligning spatial data generation and the inclusion of GIS-based spatial analyses with the spatial knowledge needed by routine planning practice.     

Understanding Client Communities Spatially for Developing Effective Interventions: Application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Technology for Program Planning in Health and Human Services Agencies

Social workers are better equipped to understand the need to incorporate geographical aspects pertaining to their clients’ lives as part of their practice, given the significant influence these factors have on client well-being. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology is a useful tool for administrators and planners to make informed decisions regarding human service programs including examining program outcomes and impact as well as streamlining program implementation. This article synthesizes the literature to date on GIS in health and human services with examples of real world applications.     

Kinship care and issues in permanency planning

Kinship caregivers are a child-care resource for families experiencing stress or temporary parenting due to illness, incarceration, or death of a parent. This article examines whether and how felt caregiver burden influences the reported propensity of caregivers to want to adopt the children in their care. Kinship caregivers who were enrolled in KinNET completed the survey (N = 102) and the data were entered anonymously into SPSS for analysis. Their mean age was 57.51 years (SD = 10.13), 95% were female (SD = .19), and two-thirds were non-white (SD = .73). Using “likelihood of adopting the child in my care,” as the outcome variable in the linear regression analysis, caregiver’s age, monthly income, and total hours employed were significant predictors. Total pressures, family service needs, and physical problems scales were not statistically significant predictors. The adjusted R square was .439 and significant (.006). Understanding the factors that are predictive of adopting children in kinship care will help programs target services more effectively. Helping kinship caregivers and the children in their care is also important in promoting their health and social well-being.     

Planning for community: understanding diversity in resident experiences and expectations of social connections in a new urban fringe housing estate,Australia

Master-planned estates are a major source of new housing for growing cities. Much research finds these residential developments lack genuine social connections between residents despite marketing of ‘close-knit’ community. Selandra Rise is a new residential development on the urban fringe of Melbourne, Australia. The estate was planned with a focus on community infrastructure and resident well-being. The resident population was younger and more culturally diverse than most other master-planned community case studies. A longitudinal research design was used to explore resident understanding, experiences and needs relating to place-based community. Interviews were conducted with residents before moving to the estate and 9–18 months after moving. Some residents considered community as an amenity provided by the master-planned environment that did not require their social participation. Others aspired to make social connections with neighbours but had varying levels of success. Past experiences which contributed to aspirations for connecting with local community, and the ways that these aims were realised or hindered, are discussed. Understanding diverse resident expectations of community and insights from their lived experience are used to make recommendations for planning new neighbourhoods and designing community development programmes.     

Getting to Where You Want to Go: Designing Information Systems and Using Your Data Through the Application of Analytics and Informatics

ABSTRACT

This article, based on the closing session from the 2017 NC Serials Conference, describes a systems perspective where data serve as both real-time and summative information and knowledge about how an organization is performing, what services and resources its users are using and interacting with, and areas for which the organization is doing well or needs improvement. The author posits that data are most useful when the context is informed by clear goals that provide a direction to where the organization is and wants to be. Applied examples are discussed for several environments, including an academic department, school of education, regional libraries, and public libraries.     

Interacting mechanisms of time inconsistency

We interact two prominent behavioral mechanisms of time inconsistency that have been used to study inadequate saving: hyperbolic discounting and short-term planning. Hyperbolic discounting is a conventional way to model impulsive decision making, and short planning horizons have been used to represent myopia. One might expect that interacting both mechanisms within the same model would compound the inadequacy of saving. However, our key finding takes the form of a paradox: hyperbolic discounting does not affect consumption and saving allocations if the planning horizon is short and fixed, although it will affect allocations if the planning horizon is equal to the remaining life span. We demonstrate analytically that this finding is robust to the shape of the disposable income path, to the coarseness of the time grid, and to alternative forms of the period utility function.     

Competing Frameworks in Planning for the Aged in the Growth Corridors of Melbourne

The Ageing in the Growth Corridors Project was initiated as a partnership between the University of Melbourne and the Department of Health in the Northwest Metropolitan Region of Melbourne, Australia. It involved a research team working with six project officers appointed to stimulate development in relation to an aging population in the sprawling outer metropolitan growth corridors. This article identifies the key lessons learned in terms of project implementation relating to attitudinal and structural barriers to the development of an age-friendly environment in areas of rapid urban growth. The findings illustrate some of the dilemmas raised by competing program conceptions, a dynamic and changing federal/state policy context, and local resource and strategic management constraints. The partnership with the university, nevertheless, provided a point of stability and continuity for the project officers in implementing their mandate.     

‘Mafia Baroque’: post‐socialist architecture and urban planning in Bulgaria

This paper traces the reception of the architectural style known as ‘Mafia Baroque’ within the professions of architecture and urban planning in Bulgaria. The debate within these professions was strongly linked to the general decline of power among former intellectual elites and the specific decline of architects and planners, who were sidelined as arbiters of ‘good taste’ and disempowered as regulators of urban growth. The reaction to this style also highlights the rise in public concern over corruption and organized crime and dissatisfaction with post‐socialist urbanization. This paper chronicles the extent of changes in construction and regulation in Bulgaria during the 1990s and argues that planners and architects were challenged not only by their professional marginalization but also by a deeper embarrassment over cultural change. It then relates this debate to broader post‐socialist anxieties over insufficient regulation of urbanization and fear of failing to meet Western European goals for economic and political change.