Public Management of Urban Change in Transitional Cities
John Driscoll: Lecturer and Course Development, 2004-2008
For the past 5 years, John Driscoll, together with faculty drawn from the region, has prepared and taught a course for the summer program at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary focused on current urban and city development strategies. The course offers young faculty and practitioners a conceptual framework for discussing, distinguishing and evaluating planning methods and practices at the local government level. It reviews the theoretical underpinnings of current urban policy, planning and management practices by providing participants with a broad range of international case studies that reflect the current state of the discipline.
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Urban Development in Older Neighborhoods
Paris, France, 2004-2005
John Driscoll and François Vigier collaborated with the Centre de Recherches sur l'Habitat (CRH) in Paris on the documentation of community development strategies and neighborhood initiatives in the South End of Boston and La Goutte d'Or in Paris. Activities included the organization of a study tour of Boston community-based organizations for 21 French local government and NGO representatives and the participation of John Driscoll in a seminar in Paris. The research was supported in part by PUCA (Le Plan Urbanisme, Construction et Architecture), an agency of the French Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing.
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Urban Planning and Local Economic Development,
2003
In support of a World Bank Study on rural-urban linkages in Romania, John Driscoll, together with Liviu Ianasi and Andrei Luncan, organized a workshop on local area development in Zalu, Romania in January 2003. The workshop combined presentations on emerging practices in local area development in the European Union and Romania with interactive working sessions where participants provided recommendations on planning and institutional issues related to micro-regions. The territorial competitiveness concept is changing the definition of local areas from zones falling neatly within administrative boundaries to areas based on spatially oriented interestes and linkages. The presentations described recent efforts among local governments in Romania to associate and cooperate in local economic areas of medium and large city regions as well as smaller towns and micro-regions comprised of associated rural communes. Workshop participants included Salaj County Council staff and officials and communes associating under the World Bank’s Rural Development Program, staff and officials from Zalu, and smaller cities and local NGOs.
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Strategic Urban Management for the City of
2003
This course consisted of two five-day training sessions with extensive preparation and consultation activities with the participating city staff. Course instruction and guest speakers reviewed important states of city management from strategic planning to project implementation and service delivery based on regional and international examples. After each session, the course participants worked with a “city development committee” to develop recommendations to the mayor and city council on development priorities and to support strategic management interventions. The city development committees included 25 representatives of the business community, the educational sector, NGOs, the tax authority and other public institutions. The project was organized by the Polish Association of Economic Development Officials (SRGG) and financed by the Local Government Initiative in
