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In the past few years, a growing numbers of urbanists, planners, technology companies, and governance experts have started to use the term “smart city.” Some define smart cities in terms of using emerging and established technologies to improve the performance of municipal systems. Others take a more expansive view that embeds these new systems in a broader vision of urban regions characterized by innovation-based economic activity, a highly educated labour force, and policy-making that leverages these new technologies to confront stubborn urban problems.
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Taxation is critical to rebuilding infrastructure and ensuring sustainable peace and development in conflict-affected countries. However, when policymakers and international donors approach the task of rebuilding fiscal systems, they base their ideas on the experience of developed countries.
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Sydney is Australia’s largest metropolis with 5 million people and faces serious challenges of infrastructure and service provision, environmental management, and spatial inequality. Its metropolitan governance lacks focus.
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In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, both politicians and public finance economists focused their attention on ways to control public budget deficits and debt. Around the world, detailed and precise regulations affected how governments could deal with public deficit and debt.
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What are the consequences of home rule authority on fiscal sustainability? What lessons does this hold for Canadian municipalities?
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As experience with decentralization has accumulated, perceptions of both the problems that often accompany decentralization and the best ways to deal with them have evolved. This book draws on experiences in developing countries to bridge the gap between the conventional textbook treatment of fiscal decentralization and the actual practice of subnational government finance.
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This video features a panel discussion held on March 27, 2018, on the challenges and opportunities of the 1998 Toronto Amalgamation.  Speakers include Shirley Hoy (former City Manager, City of Toronto), John Matheson (former Chief of Staff to Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing), Alexandra Flynn (Assistant Professor, University of Toronto), Zack Taylor (Assistant Professor, Western University), and Enid Slack (event moderator, Director, Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance).
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Fracking has revolutionized international oil and gas markets practically overnight, but its impact on local public finance and governance have largely been overlooked. While operating under federal and state constraints, the key ongoing policy question is whether and to what extent local governments can – and should – have the power to manage the industry’s effects on their communities.
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