Community councils as a medium for public participation: a case study in Grampian region

Planning authorities in Scotland are obliged to consult the public before finalising policies and proposals to be included in their development plans. Community councils are intended to operate as ‘the voice of a neighbourhood’ and this paper analyses an attempt by a regional planning authority to use community councils as a vehicle for consulting the public in the preparation of a structure plan for a rural area. The paper concludes that the attempt was unsuccessful because the community councils were not clear about the role they were expected to play; nor were they adequately prepared for their role. The authors believe, however, that the involvement of community councils has potential for promoting greater public participation in the preparation of development plans.     

The value of green belt land

This paper estimates the value of green belt land by assessing its output: agricultural; amenity; recreational; and savings in costs, by restricting the size of urban areas. These outputs are valued in social terms by the application of welfare economics. Some types of agriculture are shown to impose net social cost rather than benefits. Hedonic price models and contingent valuation are used to assess amenity benefits which are revealed as the most important justification for green belts. These benefits are set against the opportunity cost of the land in terms of foregone housing and industrial development. Uncertainty and irreversibility of a land-use change, from green belt, suggests that the benefits of housing or industry should substantially exceed the value of green belt land before a land-use change is sanctioned.     

International labour migration and tacit knowledge transactions: a multi‐level perspective

Abstract There has been limited research on the role of international migration in the transfer of tacit knowledge, as opposed to skills and capital. In part, this results from lack of engagement between research on migration and that on knowledge and learning, even in debates concerning the relative importance of distanciated versus localized knowledge transfers. However, positioning international migration in relation to the literature on knowledge management opens up new perspectives on its role in the overall transfer of knowledge in the economy. Starting from the premise that all tacit knowledge transactions are socially situated, in this article I set out a multi‐level approach to understanding the role of migrants in knowledge exchanges. The national, the urban and the firm constitute key levels in this study, although these are understood as interfolded rather than as discrete sites of analysis.     

While the Cat's Away,Do the Mice Play? Maternal Employment and the After‐School Activities of Adolescents*

Objective. This study determines if a relationship exists between a mother's employment and the activities in which her adolescent children participate after school. Methods. The author uses panel data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation with logit and fixed‐effects logit models to estimate this relationship. Results. Fixed‐effects models suggest a positive relationship between maternal employment and participation in lessons after school for the adolescent children of married women and also for those with at least a high school education. Maternal employment is also positively related to sports participation for the adolescent children of unmarried mothers. Conclusions. First, this article shows the importance of accounting for unobserved heterogeneity in inquiries into the links between maternal employment and adolescent outcomes. Second, it suggests that high‐socioeconomic‐status mothers may use after‐school activities, particularly lessons, as a form of after‐school care, while unmarried mothers may use sports.     

Student healthcare needs, attitudes, and behavior: marketing implications for college health centers

This article presents the findings of a 1987 cross-institutional study of the healthcare needs, attitudes, and behavior of college students, based on a comprehensive survey of 1,050 students at three different institutions. The paper focuses on student health concerns, use of facilities, and healthcare knowledge and outlook. For each of these topics, the authors present their findings and discuss the marketing implications of these findings for college health centers. In order to increase utilization rates, match services with student needs, and make maximum use of resources, the authors suggest that college health centers may need to develop and promote programs and services that better address student healthcare concerns; investigate media alternatives and effectiveness; develop aggressive promotion messages; consider joint interinstitutional development of healthcare advertising; and train and develop staff through internal marketing seminars.