Using the ADI St Mary’s site to explore long standing issues in the planning and management of urban development, this paper identifies the generic nature of issues such as constraining the scale of development and empowering people in specific contexts, resulting from a complex interplay of individuals, community groups, firms, local governments, state agencies

This paper examines the changes in policy and governance style favoured by Australian governments from the 1940s to 90s, and the shifts to and away from utilization of the market, government intervention, localism and participation over that time. It proposes a set of “governance technologies” to better structure analysis and inform policy choices.

This paper explores tensions in the idea of citizenship from a theoretical stance and from a perspective anchored in the local experience of neighbourhood houses, and reminds us that being a citizen engaged in governance of a place is more difficult than the much more common notions of citizen as political slogan or legal identity.

Circle sentencing was first developed in Canada in 1992 for the sentencing of Indigenous offenders in a community setting, with aims including empowering and healing communities, providing more meaningful sentencing options, supporting offender rehabilitation, and supporting victims. In response to the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Australian courts, the process has now been trialled in...

This paper tells the stories of 11 small and medium cities in Canada, the United States and Europe that have made dedicated and creative efforts to turn local assets into a community-wide strategy for economic renewal and a better quality of life.