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2018-10-16
Rockefeller Archive Center;
I visited the Rockefeller Archive Center to research the William H. Whyte papers for my doctoral dissertation, "Transactional Terrains: Partnerships, Bargains and the Postwar Redefinition of the Public Realm, New York City 1965-1980," that traces the architectural and urban history of the privatization of the public realm. At the center of the research is New York City during the "urban crisis" years of the 1960s. The period saw an ongoing shift in how city and state governments initiated, financed, and managed architecture and urban development. As an administrative apparatus of crisis management, the public-private partnership was the fiscal and legal device that was at the center of this shift. With the public-private partnership, there was an increased emphasis on transactions between jurisdictional authorities and private sector actors. The 1960s witnessed the beginnings of organized cultivation of private sector participation by city and state governments, in the funding, management, and provision of public goods (parks, plazas, and housing). By examining the ecology and economy of these public-private partnerships, the dissertation seeks to examine the privatization of the public realm in New York City as a series of complex intersections between the city's economic, political, urban, architectural and real-estate histories beginning in the 1960s. Urbanist William H. Whyte's writings, research, and speeches on the design and value of public spaces in New York City have shaped policy and theory in architecture, urban design, and planning since the early 1960s. He was a prominent figure, specifically for my first chapter.
2018-10-11
Rockefeller Archive Center;
When the Ford Foundation entered India in 1951, its focus was overwhelmingly rural. As its presence expanded over time, it branched out to other areas such as education and culture, small-scale industrial development, manpower and management, population control and family planning, and technical training. Historians of development and U.S. foreign relations have over the past decade explored various facets of the foundation's activities in India. However, thus far, its role in the urban sphere in India and perhaps even globally has not received much scholarly attention. I began my research at the Rockefeller Archive Center in September 2017, with the intention of studying a very specific urban project in India: the Ford Foundation's planning assistance to Calcutta (now Kolkata) from 1961 to 1974, then India's largest and industrially most important city. Given the lack of secondary references on this topic, I came in with some basic questions. 1) Why did the Ford Foundation get involved in Calcutta's urban renewal project? 2) What was the nature of the Foundation's involvement? More specifically, was it a grant for training or simply a planning program? At that stage in my dissertation research, I had hoped to have a chapter on the Ford Foundation and use it as a contrast to study the response of locally-based Indian and British businesses to Calcutta's civic and infrastructural problems, which had started to make international headlines by the late 1950s. In fact, my main focus was on Calcutta's businesses. However, as I will chart out in this report, the archival materials at the RAC persuaded me to reorient and broaden my core research questions and framework.
2018-10-04
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation;
How did misinformation spread during the 2016 presidential election and has anything changed since? A new study of more than 10 million tweets from 700,000 Twitter accounts that linked to more than 600 misinformation and conspiracy news outlets answers this question.
The report reveals a concentrated "fake news" ecosystem, linking more than 6.6 million tweets to fake news and conspiracy news publishers in the month before the 2016 election. The problem persisted in the aftermath of the election with 4 million tweets to fake and conspiracy news publishers found from mid-March to mid-April 2017. A large majority of these accounts are still active today.
2018-10-02
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
This paper raises three issues on the relationship between intellectual property and inequality. The first is a simple logical point. Patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property are public policy. They are not facts given to us by the world or the structure of technology somehow. While this point should be self-evident, it is rarely noted in discussions of inequality or ways to address it.
2018-09-13
WaterAid;
Businesses are crucial in bringing about the step change needed to end the global water crisis. The social, moral and macro-economic case for investing in water, sanitation and hygiene is clear. In order to drive transformational change, we need more companies to leverage their tremendous influence across the supply chain. This new guide will provide the evidence businesses need to scale up action.
2018-09-11
European Policy Centre (EPC);
Labour mobility within the European Union continues to be a limited phenomenon. This concerns both long-term intra-EU mobility and more temporary forms of mobility such as posting of workers, i.e. workers posted to another member state in the framework of cross-border service provision. Yet, despite the limited nature of posting, this topic is far from being absent from the public and political debates. Several factors contribute to this. Firstly, a surge in the number of posted workers has been noticed over the recent years and increased attention has therefore been paid to this issue. Quite a few economic sectors, including construction, manufacturing, and social work, are very concerned by this trend. Secondly, several types of abuses have been recorded such as letter-box companies, bogus self-employment and exploitation of the posted workers' vulnerable situation. Thirdly, questions have been raised as to whether the balance struck by the EU legislator in 1996 (when adopting the Posted Workers Directive) between the freedom to provide crossborder services and the workers' social rights is still valid today. These elements highlight the need for a policy adjustment in order to preserve the legitimacy of the citizens' and workers' freedom to move and, to a certain extent, of the social dimension of the European project. In this context, the European Commission published a proposal to revise the 1996 Directive in order to strike a better balance between economic and social rights. But is this proposal sufficient to ensure a level playing field between economic actors and equal treatment between workers? How will this proposal affect the implementation of other EU initiatives aiming to tackle fraud and abuse? What else is needed to address the tensions between the Single Market principles and the EU's social objectives? This discussion paper, published in the context of the Dutch Presidency and the ongoing negotiations of a revised Directive on posted workers, focuses on these questions while proposing some concrete solutions for a fairer policy framework.
2018-09-01
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
It is ten years since we were at the peak of the financial crisis — the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an investment bank. This sent tremors throughout the world, and media outlets began talking about a return of the Great Depression. While the fear generated by politicians and media was able to get enough support for saving the financial industry, the country was left to deal with the painful fallout from a collapsed housing bubble. Millions lost their homes and jobs. Even a decade later, by some measures, most notably prime-age employment rates, the labor market has still not recovered.
This discussion makes several points concerning the bubble and its collapse. First and foremost, it argues that the primary story of the downturn was a collapsed housing bubble, not the financial crisis. Prior to the downturn, the housing bubble had been driving the economy, pushing residential construction to record levels as a share of GDP. The housing wealth effect also led to a consumption boom. The saving rate reached a record low. When the bubble burst, it was inevitable that these sources of demand would disappear and there were no easy options for replacing them, except very large government budget deficits.
2018-08-28
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO);
This paper is part of an ongoing collaboration between the World Bank and the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization to raise awareness about the importance of water management in fragile systems and to propose strategic responses. It is important to better understand these dynamics to ensure that water does not add to fragility, but rather promotes stability, and contributes to resilience in the region. This paper calls for redoubling efforts towards sustainable and efficient management of water resources, reliable and affordable delivery of water services to all and protection from water-related catastrophes.
2018-08-23
Columbia University Center for Public Research and Leadership;
This paper synthesizes the existing research on improvement networks in education and on how such networks can facilitate meaningful improvements in teaching and learning and ultimately in student outcomes. The paper's findings are drawn primarily from a critical literature review of empirical studies on education improvement networks, as well as from interviews with experts in the fields of professional networks and learning. By focusing on the networks most aligned to the NSI model, the paper is designed to provide a knowledge base for a formative evaluationof the NSI strategy, which BMGF has engaged the Columbia University Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) to conduct over the next two years.
2018-08-14
Foundation Center;
The State of Global Grantmaking Giving by U.S. Foundations is the latest report in a decades-long collaboration between Foundation Center and The Council on Foundations and aims to help funders and civil society organizations better navigate the giving landscape as they work to effect change around the world. The analysis reveals that global giving by U.S. foundations increased by 29% from 2011 to 2015, reaching an all-time high of $9.3 billion in 2015. In addition to a detailed analysis of trends by issue area, geographic region, population group, and donor strategy, this analysis also relates these trends to key events and developments, including the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, the spread of Ebola in West Africa, and the increasing legal restrictions faced by civil society in countries around the world.
2018-08-10
Oxfam;
This report examines the distribution of unpaid care and domestic work in households in the Ugandan districts of Kaabong, Kabale and Kampala. It seeks to understand the connection between social norms and the gendered division of work, including how much time women, men, boys and girls spend on paid work and unpaid care work in a day, as well as how this time use varies between urban and rural areas and between the districts in the study. The authors look closely at childcare, who undertakes it and why. They also analyse what kinds of services are available in each district that might ease the care workload for women and girls.
The report makes recommendations for the Ugandan government and relative authorities on how they can recognize, reduce and redistribute care work through policy changes, labour-saving devices and technology, better infrastructure and the provision of care services.
This publication was written by Oxfam partners in Uganda (EPRC, UWONET and the School of Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University), in collaboration with Oxfam in Uganda and the WE-Care team.
2018-08-09
FSG;
Taking personalized learning to scale in a school or district requires the difficult work of changing the way human beings do their work. Navigating the complicated relationships between students, teachers, parents, administrators, the public, and the local and state agencies is challenging enough on any given day, but aligning them all behind a new vision of how students can learn, and keeping them aligned long enough to implement that vision, is a challenge of an altogether different order. To understand and share how this journey plays out, we documented the implementation journeys of three different institutions, including their successes and challenges, their unexpected setbacks, and their sudden epiphanies.
