Governing Urban Regions Through Collaboration

Governing Urban Regions Through Collaboration
Author: Joël Thibert
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317125460

With the demise of the Old Regionalist project of achieving good regional governance through amalgamation, voluntary collaboration has become the modus operandi of a large number of North American metropolitan regions. Although many researchers have become interested in regional collaboration and its determinants, few have specifically studied its outcomes. This book contributes to filling this gap by critically re-evaluating the fundamental premise of the New Regionalism, which is that regional problems can be solved without regional/higher government. In particular, this research asks: to what extent does regional collaboration have a significant independent influence on the determinants of regional resilience? Using a comparative (Canada-U.S.) mixed-method approach, with detailed case studies of the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Montreal and trans-national Niagara-Buffalo regions, the book examines the direct and indirect impacts of inter-local collaboration on policy and policy outcomes at the regional and State/Provincial levels. The book research concentrates on the effects of bottom-up, state-mandated and functional collaboration and the moderating role of regional awareness, higher governmental initiative and civic capital on three outcomes: environmental preservation, socio-economic integration and economic competitiveness. In short, the book seeks to highlight those conditions that favor collaboration and might help avoid the collaborative trap of collaboration for its own sake. More specifically, this research concentrates on the effect of bottom-up, state-mandated and functional collaboration, the moderating role of regional awareness, governmental initiative and civic capital on environmental preservation, socio-economic integration and economic competitiveness. In short, the book seeks to understand whether and how urban regional collaboration contributes to regional resilience.

Paying the Toll

Paying the Toll
Author: Louise Nelson Dyble
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2011-10-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0812206886

Since its opening in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge has become an icon for the beauty and prosperity of the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as a symbol of engineering achievement. Constructing the bridge posed political and financial challenges that were at least as difficult as those faced by the project's builders. To meet these challenges, northern California boosters created a new kind of agency: an autonomous, self-financing special district. The Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District developed into a powerful organization that shaped the politics and government of the Bay Area as much as the bridge shaped its physical development. From the moment of the bridge district's incorporation in 1928, its managers pursued their own agenda. They used all the resources at their disposal to preserve their control over the bridge, cultivating political allies, influencing regional policy, and developing an ambitious public relations program. Undaunted by charges of mismanagement and persistent efforts to turn the bridge (as well as its lucrative tolls) over to the state, the bridge district expanded into mass transportation, taking on ferry and bus operations to ensure its survival to this day. Drawing on previously unavailable archives, Paying the Toll gives us an inside view of the world of high-stakes development, cronyism, and bureaucratic power politics that have surrounded the Golden Gate Bridge since its inception.

Architecture and Regional Identity in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1870-1970

Architecture and Regional Identity in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1870-1970
Author: Lance V. Bernard
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780773453401

This work offers an examination of the creation and expression of the San Francisco Bay Area's sense of regional identity as it is manifested in the unique architectural idiom. This work should appeal to scholars interested in cultural identity and architectural studies. Area's sense of regional identity, which it expressed through its unique architectural idiom - the Bay Tradition. In the late nineteenth century, Bay Area elites developed a sense of what Bay Area living meant, based on contact with (and appreciation of) the region's attractive landscapes and mild climate, and from this emerged an architectural style that expressed eclecticism, cultivation, and appreciation for the physical environment. Architects such as Willis Polk, Bernard Maybeck, William Wurster, and Ernest Kump used urban landscapes as a means of regional self-expression, much like Appalachia expressed its regional identity through music and folk arts, the Deep South through literature, and New England through history-based tourism. identity through its use of native woods (particularly redwood), large windows, and open, airy spaces that allowed comfortable contact with the mild, clement outdoors. In the 1940s and '50s, the Bay Tradition was popularized by Sunset Magazine, which began in the Bay Area and conflated its concept of the region's lifestyle into its larger vision of Western living; although the Bay Tradition fell out of favor by 1970, its influence remains widely visible.