A Practitioner’s Perspective on Realignment

2016 ◽  
Vol 664 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-235
Author(s):  
Wendy S. Still

This article offers a practitioner’s perspective on California’s criminal justice Realignment. Drawing on my direct experience implementing Realignment as the chief probation officer in the city and county of San Francisco, I argue that the San Francisco case illustrates how decarceration can occur without compromising public safety, and I offer a set of lessons for practitioners and policy-makers about how to achieve decarceration despite local political, organizational, and cultural barriers. Specifically, I identify interagency collaboration, investment in community corrections and a commitment to alternatives to incarceration and community engagement with the families of both victims and offenders as key facilitators of decarceration at the local level. I urge observers not to dismiss these lessons as idiosyncratic to San Francisco’s unique locale. Rather, my experience has been that even San Francisco’s exceptionally hospitable local culture is not enough to successfully implement reform; structural arrangements that institutionalize the practical implementation of cultural commitments to reduce reliance on incarceration are required.

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-143
Author(s):  
Ocean Howell

American urban historians have begun to understand that digital mapping provides a potentially powerful tool to describe political power. There are now important projects that map change in the American city along a number of dimensions, including zoning, suburbanization, commercial development, transportation infrastructure, and especially segregation. Most projects use their visual sources to illustrate the material consequences of the policies of powerful agencies and dominant planning ‘regimes.’ As useful as these projects are, they often inadvertently imbue their visualizations with an aura of inevitability, and thereby present political power as a kind of static substance–possess this and you can remake the city to serve your interests. A new project called ‘Imagined San Francisco’ is motivated by a desire to expand upon this approach, treating visual material not only to illustrate outcomes, but also to interrogate historical processes, and using maps, plans, drawings, and photographs not only to show what did happen, but also what might have happened. By enabling users to layer a series of historical urban plans–with a special emphasis on unrealized plans–‘Imagined San Francisco’ presents the city not only as a series of material changes, but also as a contingent process and a battleground for political power.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (March 2018) ◽  
Author(s):  
S.A Okanlawon ◽  
O.O Odunjo ◽  
S.A Olaniyan

This study examined Residents’ evaluation of turning transport infrastructure (road) to spaces for holding social ceremonies in the indigenous residential zone of Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria. Upon stratifying the city into the three identifiable zones, the core, otherwise known as the indigenous residential zone was isolated for study. Of the twenty (20) political wards in the two local government areas of the town, fifteen (15) wards that were located in the indigenous zone constituted the study area. Respondents were selected along one out of every three (33.3%) of the Trunk — C (local) roads being the one mostly used for the purpose in the study area. The respondents were the residents, commercial motorists, commercial motorcyclists, and celebrants. Six hundred and forty-two (642) copies of questionnaire were administered and harvested on the spot. The Mean Analysis generated from the respondents’ rating of twelve perceived hazards listed in the questionnaire were then used to determine respondents’ most highly rated perceived consequences of the practice. These were noisy environment, Blockage of drainage by waste, and Endangering the life of the sick on the way to hospital; the most highly rated reasons why the practice came into being; and level of acceptability of the practice which was found to be very unacceptable in the study area. Policy makers should therefore focus their attention on strict enforcement of the law prohibiting the practice in order to ensure more cordial relationship among the citizenry, seeing citizens’ unacceptability of the practice in the study area.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Ying Long ◽  
Jianting Zhao

This paper examines how mass ridership data can help describe cities from the bikers' perspective. We explore the possibility of using the data to reveal general bikeability patterns in 202 major Chinese cities. This process is conducted by constructing a bikeability rating system, the Mobike Riding Index (MRI), to measure bikeability in terms of usage frequency and the built environment. We first investigated mass ridership data and relevant supporting data; we then established the MRI framework and calculated MRI scores accordingly. This study finds that people tend to ride shared bikes at speeds close to 10 km/h for an average distance of 2 km roughly three times a day. The MRI results show that at the street level, the weekday and weekend MRI distributions are analogous, with an average score of 49.8 (range 0–100). At the township level, high-scoring townships are those close to the city centre; at the city level, the MRI is unevenly distributed, with high-MRI cities along the southern coastline or in the middle inland area. These patterns have policy implications for urban planners and policy-makers. This is the first and largest-scale study to incorporate mobile bike-share data into bikeability measurements, thus laying the groundwork for further research.


2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. Loiacono ◽  
Chu-Fei H. Ho ◽  
Natalie V. Sierra ◽  
Domènec Jolis ◽  
Carolyn Chiu ◽  
...  

The City and County of San Francisco (“City”) embarked upon a 30-year master planning process in part prompted by public concerns related to the neighbourhood impacts of the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant (SEP). The Sewer System Master Plan, as it is called, developed a long term Integrated Urban Watershed Management Plan for the City's treatment plants and collection system. This paper focuses on the planning framework and public input to the process, particularly as it relates to proposed changes to the SEP. The resulting improvements address issues of replacing aging infrastructure, eliminating odor emissions, and visually screening the treatment plants that are situated within an urban setting. The recommended project addresses the needed repair of the existing infrastructure; and proposes that the City move towards an integrated urban watershed approach, initially through localized rainwater harvesting and opportunistic water reclamation.


In 1871, the city of Chicago was almost entirely destroyed by what became known as The Great Fire. Thirty-five years later, San Francisco lay in smoldering ruins after the catastrophic earthquake of 1906. Or consider the case of the Jerusalem, the greatest site of physical destruction and renewal in history, which, over three millennia, has suffered wars, earthquakes, fires, twenty sieges, eighteen reconstructions, and at least eleven transitions from one religious faith to another. Yet this ancient city has regenerated itself time and again, and still endures. Throughout history, cities have been sacked, burned, torched, bombed, flooded, besieged, and leveled. And yet they almost always rise from the ashes to rebuild. Viewing a wide array of urban disasters in global historical perspective, The Resilient City traces the aftermath of such cataclysms as: --the British invasion of Washington in 1814 --the devastation wrought on Berlin, Warsaw, and Tokyo during World War II --the late-20th century earthquakes that shattered Mexico City and the Chinese city of Tangshan --Los Angeles after the 1992 riots --the Oklahoma City bombing --the destruction of the World Trade Center Revealing how traumatized city-dwellers consistently develop narratives of resilience and how the pragmatic process of urban recovery is always fueled by highly symbolic actions, The Resilient City offers a deeply informative and unsentimental tribute to the dogged persistence of the city, and indeed of the human spirit.


2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 953-956 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne M Boddy ◽  
Allan F Hackett ◽  
Gareth Stratton

AbstractObjectiveTo estimate the prevalence of underweight between 1998 and 2006 in Liverpool schoolchildren aged 9–10 years using recently published underweight cut-off points.Design and settingStature and body mass data collected at the LiverpoolSportsLinx project’s fitness testing sessions were used to calculate BMI.SubjectsData were available on 26 782 (n13 637 boys, 13 145 girls) participants.ResultsOverall underweight declined in boys from 10·3 % in 1998–1999 to 6·9 % in 2005–2006, and all sub-classifications of underweight declined, in particular grade 3 underweight, with the most recent prevalence being 0·1 %. In girls, the prevalence of underweight declined from 10·8 % in 1998–1999 to 7·5 % in 2005–2006. The prevalence of all grades of underweight was higher in girls than in boys. Underweight showed a fluctuating pattern across all grades over time for boys and girls, and overall prevalence in 2005–2006 represents over 200 children across the city.ConclusionsUnderweight may have reduced slightly from baseline, but remains a substantial problem in Liverpool, with the prevalence of overall underweight being relatively similar to the prevalence of obesity. The present study highlights the requirement for policy makers and funders to consider both ends of the body mass spectrum when fixing priorities in child health.


Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Catarina C. Rolim ◽  
Patrícia Baptista

Several solutions and city planning policies have emerged to promote climate change and sustainable cities. The Sharing Cities program has the ambition of contributing to climate change mitigation by improving urban mobility, energy efficiency in buildings and reducing carbon emissions by successfully engaging citizens and fostering local-level innovation. A Digital Social Market (DSM), named Sharing Lisboa, was developed in Lisbon, Portugal, supported by an application (APP), enabling the exchange of goods and services bringing citizens together to support a common cause: three schools competing during one academic year (2018/2019) to win a final prize with the engagement of school community and surrounding community. Sharing Lisboa aimed to promote behaviour change and the adoption of energy-saving behaviours such as cycling and walking with the support of local businesses. Participants earned points that reverted to the cause (school) they supported. A total of 1260 users was registered in the APP, collecting more than 850,000 points through approximately 17,000 transactions. This paper explores how the DSM has the potential to become a new city service promoting its sustainable development. Furthermore, it is crucial for this concept to reach economic viability through a business model that is both profitable and useful for the city, businesses and citizens, since investment will be required for infrastructure and management of such a market.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis Chorianopoulos ◽  
Naya Tselepi

This paper explores the urban politics of austerity in Greece, paying particular attention to ‘local collaboration’. It revisits the key austerity periods noted in the country since accession to the European Union (1981), and marks their impact in redefining central–local relations, amidst a broader rescaling endeavour. A direct link is identified between austerity-oriented pre-occupations and the introduction of territorial regulatory experimentations that rest heavily on local-level collaboration and competitiveness. The overall record of partnerships, however, has been appraised, up until recently, as underdeveloped. From this spectrum, we look at the latest re-organization of state spatial contour (2010). The influence of this rescaling attempt on local relational attributes is explored in Athens, in light of the emergent re-shuffling in the scalar balance of power rendering austerity pre-occupations a firm trait of the emerging regulatory arrangement. Examination focuses on key social policy programmes launched recently by the City in an attempt to ameliorate extreme poverty and social despair. In Athens, it is argued, a financially and regulatorily deprivileged local authority is opening up to the influence of corporate and third sector organizations. It adopts a partnership approach that is best understood as a form of ‘elite pluralism’, undermining local political agency and falling short in addressing social deprivation.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document