Green infrastructure and public policies: An international review of green roofs and green walls incentives

Worldwide, green infrastructure is increasingly used to mitigate the impacts of dense urban areas, contributing towards the naturalization of the built environment. However, for investors, these systems often emerge as requiring substantial upfront cost (high installation costs) and, depending on the solution, might also have significant maintenance costs. On the other hand, policymakers are placing green infrastructure on the agenda, as a solution to consider in urban planning and design. There is a mismatch between the economic/social/environmental value of green infrastructure and their financial analysis. As the quantified benefits of these solutions may not compensate the high implementation costs, discouraging building owners to invest in them. The alignment of both expectations, public and private agents, regarding the development of green infrastructure, is done through the use of incentives, with distinct configurations and nature, that promote and facilitate the adoption of green infrastructure by private investors. This research aims to identify and analyse the incentive policies used by several municipalities to promote the installation of green roofs and/or green walls. The data set includes 113 cities in 19 countries. The incentive policies were classified into six different categories: tax reductions, financing, construction permit, sustainability certification, obligations by law and agile administrative process. The results show that incentive policies are mainly concentrated in Europe and North America, and most incentive policies focus on the promotion of green roofs, as no exclusive incentive policies for the promotion of green walls were found. From all incentive policies studied, financial subsidies and obligations by law are the most used ways to promote green infrastructure worldwide.     

Regime changes and fiscal sustainability in Kenya

Kenya's fiscal policy landscape is characterized by primary deficit spending forcing the government to rely on debt to meet its objectives. The justification often being that as a developing economy, annual growth rates and future prospects may in the short run justify the uptake of debt to finance infrastructural development. However, given potential fiscal limits, fiscal cycles usually alternates between sustainable and unsustainable regimes and this has a bearing on long run sustainability. This study therefore sought to investigate the nature of fiscal policy regime in Kenya and the extent to which fiscal policy is sustainable in the long run taking into account periodic regime shifts. Markov switching models were used to endogenously determine fiscal policy regimes. Regime switching tests were used to test whether No-Ponzi game condition and debt stabilizing condition were met. The results established that regime switching model was suitable in explaining regime sustainable and unsustainable cycles. An investigation of fiscal policy regimes established that both sustainable and unsustainable regimes were dominant, and each lasted for an average of four years. There was evidence to imply the existence of procyclical fiscal policy in Kenya. Regime switching tests for long run sustainability suggested that the No-Ponzi game condition weakly holds in the Kenyan economy. Regime-based sensitivity analysis indicated that persistence of unsustainability regime for more than 4 years could threaten long-run fiscal sustainability.     

Five scale challenges in Ecuadorian forest and landscape restoration governance

The forest and landscape restoration (FLR) targets set as part of the Bonn Challenge draw attention to the governance arrangements required to translate national FLR targets into local action. To achieve the targets, actors at multiple levels of the governance scale aim to influence relevant processes on the ecological scale. In this article, we focus on the scale challenges relating to the implementation of Ecuador’s restoration targets, by analysing the implementation of the 2014–2017 National Forest Restoration Plan in the montane Chocó Andino and Bosque Seco landscapes. From 54 semi-structured interviews, a document review, and geographical data analysis, we identified two temporal (i, ii) and three spatial scale challenges (iii, iv, v): i) Political cycles mismatch with FLR timelines; ii) Planning horizons mismatch with FLR timelines; iii) National restoration objectives mismatch with decentralised land use planning realities; iv) The governance level of existing FLR efforts mismatches with the level receiving restoration funds; and v) Tensions exist between the spatial dimensions of biodiversity and water-related restoration efforts. The findings highlight that more attention must be given to scale-sensitive governance to make the process in which national FLR targets are translated into local action more effective.     

Fiscal decentralization and government size: The role of democracy

This paper examines how the level of democracy in a country affects the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government size. We argue that political regimes, proxied by their democracy levels, are important for different decentralization theories to predict the impact of fiscal decentralization on government size. We test this argument using panel data from 76 developed and developing countries during 1972–2013. We find strong and robust evidence that fiscal decentralization is negatively associated with government size and that a higher level of democracy tends to mitigate the negative impact of fiscal decentralization. Therefore, our study contributes to the literature by offering a novel insight on mixed results regarding the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government size in the literature.     

“五年规划”该规划什么,不该规划什么?

在市场经济条件下，政府制定规划的基本作用与思路为“研判未来趋势，提出发展愿景，规划政府任务”，对市场进行“负面清单管理”，对政府进行“正面清单约束”。政府应提高治理能力，努力把自己该做的事做足、做好，少搞产业政策，减少对市场干预，做真正体现小政府、大市场、由市场起决定性作用的规划。     

Political budget cycles revisited: Testing the signalling process

A widespread view in the ‘political budget cycles’ literature is that incumbent politicians seek to influence voters’ perceptions of their competence and/or preferences by using the composition of the fiscal budget as a signalling tool. However, little is known about whether voters actually receive and perceive the signal in that way. To empirically assess the relevance of the signalling channel at the municipal level, we conducted a survey among 2000 representative German citizens in 2018. Only a small fraction of voters feel well-informed about the fiscal budget signal and use the information it contains to decide whether to vote for the incumbent politician. Persons paying more attention to the signal sent by local politicians live in smaller municipalities, are more satisfied with their economic situation, are more educated, and do not feel that they are being electorally manipulated. Our analysis raises doubt about the relevance of budget composition as a signalling mechanism for voters at the local level.     

A cellular automata-based land-use model as an integrated spatial decision support system for urban planning in developing cities: The case of the Bogotá region

Bogotá and the 17 neighboring municipalities make up one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Latin America. However, despite strong functional interactions within the area, there is no official government body at this level in charge of coordinating authorities and providing solutions to the wide variety of issues arising in the regional urban land system. Aiming at providing an insight on future land-use developments linked to new transport infrastructures and at offering a tool to support territorial decision-making, this paper presents a cellular automata-based (CA) model based in Metronamica® software, that allows testing different scenarios based on potential land-use policies, environmental suitability and transport alternatives.There has not been, so far, an urban planning tool that accounts for the complexities of this region. CA-based land-use simulations constitute a useful approach to understanding the impacts of urban planning policies and regulations. This tool can help to improve inter-territorial and inter-institutional coordination, which through planning and management policies seek a spatially integrated development, with a long-term perspective.The CA-based model proposed was calibrated to reproduce land-use changes between 2007 and 2016 using different methods and indicators. The model was used to simulate and analyze eight scenarios with different policy directions of transport infrastructure in the future of the region. The results of the simulations reflect the dynamics of territorial occupation. The calibration indices in the experiment indicate a high degree of suitability for the CA Bogotá model, proving its effectiveness and potential as a useful tool for decision-making. The results show that occupation scenarios with restricted developable zones within the city, tend to have the greater dispersion rate in the study area, compared to scenarios where land development plans are promoted in Bogotá, which representing a more compact development.     

Impact of national policies on patterns of built-up development: an assessment over three decades

Globally, built-up development is taking place at unprecedented rates. To mitigate and limit its effects, recent scientific and spatial planning communities call for built-up management to be addressed on broader scales, from regional to national, and coordinated with multiple policy domains. In this paper, we aimed to analyze the evolution and impact of Romania’s national policies on built-up management during the entire period from the fall of the communist regime to the present. The new perspective offered by our study concerns the use of spatiotemporal built-up development assessment with policy analysis and visualization. Moreover, policies and built-up land changes are addressed in direct relationship with major political events and global economic influences. Our findings reveal that policies were influenced by the communist legacy, accession to the EU and the global economic crisis. Most effective were the policies adopted during the pre-EU accession period and after the economic crisis. The strongest impact on patterns of development came from policies in the domains of transportation, regional development, public administration and the environment.     

创新政策工具组合、创新能力与创新绩效研究

基于2008-2018年我国内地30个省市面板数据，采用面板固定效应模型分析创新政策工具及其交互项对创新能力及创新绩效的影响。结果发现：①供给型和环境型创新政策均有利于促进技术创新能力提升和创新数量增长，需求型创新政策对创新能力及创新绩效的影响均不显著；②需求型、环境型和供给型创新政策两两交互项能够显著提高基础创新能力和技术创新能力，并显著增加创新数量，但对创新质量均呈显著负向影响；③需求型与供给型以及需求型与环境型创新政策组合功能呈协同互补性特征，供给型和环境型创新政策组合功能呈竞争性特征；④基础创新能力在创新政策工具对创新质量的影响中发挥完全中介作用，技术创新能力在创新政策工具对创新数量的影响中发挥完全中介作用。     

中国省域科技特派员制度实施绩效评估

2016年5月《国务院办公厅关于深入推行科技特派员制度的若干意见》发布实施，但其实施效果如何有待验证。构建科技特派员制度实施绩效评估指标体系，利用改进熵值法和官方统计数据，对中国省域科技特派员制度实施绩效进行实证评估，并对评估结果进行聚类分析。结果表明，中国大多数省份科技特派员制度实施绩效水平较低；根据实施科技开发项目、形成利益共同体、服务农民情况、推广服务和扶贫成效5个绩效评估维度，可以将中国内地31个省份划分为5种类型；即使是总绩效水平较高的地区，在科技特派员制度实施绩效方面也存在一些短板。