Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

The Impact Of Casino Revenue-Sharing On Tourism Efforts In Niagara Falls Usa: 2006-2016, Anthony L. Astran

Public Administration Master’s Projects

This qualitative case study examines the intersection of a Native-owned casino, revenue-sharing with its host community, and the impact of tourism marketing efforts vis-à-vis funds provided to the community’s tourism agency. Specifically, this report studies downtown Niagara Falls USA from the time period between 2006 and 2016, and seeks to determine whether and how funds from Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino boosted tourism marketing efforts by Niagara Tourism & Convention Corporation (NTCC). Background research and a series of elite interviews with city officials and tourism agency leaders uncovered overall positivity in terms of growth in Niagara Falls USA’s tourism efforts …

Environmental Advocacy: Insights From East Asia, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad

Municipal Resource Guide To Leading Practices In Cost Savings, Martin Horak, Andrew Sancton, Rachna Goswami, Umera Ali

Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance – Publications

Ontario municipalities of all sizes face pressure to “do more with less.” Commissioned by the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs, this Resource Guide provides municipal officials with single-source information about a range of current leading practices in cost savings in small and mid-sized Ontario municipalities. Municipalities across the province are continually developing innovative practices that save costs without incurring service level reductions. Most of these practices involve small-scale initiatives that result in modest savings. Yet even modest savings add up over time, and multiple small initiatives in a single municipality can make a big difference. In addition, by providing an …

Governing The Urban Water Commons : Essays On Collaborative Policy Networks In A Polycentric Ecology Of Urban Water Policy Games., Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Governing social-ecological systems, such as the urban water commons, is a multi-scale and multi-sector (polycentric) human-environment process. This dissertation interrogates this process by situating itself within the Ecology of Games Framework by Norton Long (and updated by Mark Lubell) and the literature on polycentric governance by the Bloomington School of Political Economy. The dissertation’s three essays 1) offer both theoretical and methodological means to enact polycentric public economies within the ecology of games framework, and 2) explicate the conditions under which interoganizational collaboration is fostered within a polycentric ecology of policy games in governing the Middle Rio Grande urban watershed. …

Carbon Pricing In Climate Policy: Seven Reasons, Complementary Instruments, And Political Economy Considerations, Andrea Barranzini, Jeroen C.J.M. Van Den Bergh, Stefano Carattini, Richard B. Howarth, Emilio Padilla, Jordi Roca

CSLF Articles

Carbon pricing is a recurrent theme in debates on climate policy. Discarded at the 2009 COP in Copenhagen, it remained part of deliberations for a climate agreement in subsequent years. As there is still much misunderstanding about the many reasons to implement a global carbon price, ideological resistance against it prospers. Here, we present the main arguments for carbon pricing, to stimulate a fair and well-informed discussion about it. These include considerations that have received little attention so far. We stress that a main reason to use carbon pricing is environmental effectiveness at a relatively low cost, which in turn …

Green Taxes In A Post-Paris World: Are Millions Of Nays Inevitable?, Stefano Carattini, Andrea Barranzini, Philippe Thalmann, Frederic Varone, Frank Vohringer

CSLF Articles

Turning the Paris Agreement’s greenhouse gas emissions pledges into domestic policies is the next challenge for governments. We address the question of the acceptability of cost-effective climate policy in a real-voting setting. First, we analyze voting behavior in a large ballot on energy taxes, rejected in Switzerland in 2015 by more than 2 million people. Energy taxes were aimed at completely replacing the current value-added tax. We examine the determinants of voting and find that distributional and competitiveness concerns reduced the acceptability of energy taxes, along with the perception of ineffectiveness. Most people would have preferred tax revenues to be …

Impact Of Bike Facilities On Residential Property Prices, Wei Shi

PSU Transportation Seminars

As many cities are investing in street improvement or transportation infrastructure upgrade projects to provide better bike access or more complete bike networks, the economic value of bike infrastructure and bike facilities remains an area where many practitioners, planners and policy makers are seeking more conclusive evidence. Using residential property values as indicators of consumer preferences for bicycle infrastructure, this study focuses on advanced bike facilities which represent higher levels of bike priority or bike infrastructure investments that have been shown to be more desirable to a larger portion of the population. Estimating ordinary least squares hedonic pricing models and …

Engaging Nonprofit Sector To Ensure Social Justice In Local Housing Marketplaces, Joshua Odetunde

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

The essay attempts to fill the gaps found in knowledge and practice for conceptualizing local housing marketplaces in public policy administration. Dichotomous conceptualization in terms of homeownership and rental housing led to inefficient local housing marketplaces and affordability issues. The rationally evolving economic concept of local housing marketplaces is to financially leverage every family and stimulate investing in landed properties for decent homes. Hence, the Housing Act of 1949 reasonably envisaged every American family having access to a decent home as the great equalizer. Social change to rational conceptualization of local housing marketplace would help resolve affordability issues. Then, complementary …