A neglected dimension of housing policy is how municipalities use it as a gatekeeping mechanism to exclude vulnerable groups and thereby control their territory. To examine this topic, we apply a systematic review that draws on the international academic literature and utilizes three bibliometric analyses. First, statistical analysis reveals the field’s growth and how it is characterized by publications often combining an impressive set of data and methods. Second, the material is explored through network analysis, emphasizing how a few important journals lead the distribution of knowledge. Finally, a thematic analysis highlights consistency in the detrimental effects of exclusionary policies across different contexts. A distinction between planned excluding practices and policies with such unintended effects are also evident. The analysis underscores the conflict between individual responsibilities and societal obligations, where current policies tend to place substantial burdens on the individual.

In the past five years, there has been a striking increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness, including unsheltered homelessness, across Canada (Infrastructure Canada, 2024). Facing this growing crisis, local governments are changing and expanding their responses. An important innovation is tiny homes, a form of deeply affordable and supportive housing for people leaving homelessness. In this brief article, I ask what explains local government's increased leadership and innovation with respect to homelessness and housing crises. Drawing on interviews and document analysis regarding the development of a tiny homes community in a mid-sized BC municipality, I identify three factors that have contributed to local government's policy innovation: 1) local officials are keenly aware of the inadequacies of federal and provincial responses and of the need for alternative approaches; 2) they hold important resources, notably local knowledge and land; and 3) they are facing pressure to respond from citizens and service providers.

Our knowledge of the institutional features of local government in Canadian cities is surprisingly fragmentary. The academic literature has long identified dominant tendencies in Canadian local institutions, but systematic empirical data has been missing. In this article, we address this gap in knowledge in two ways. We introduce the Canadian Municipal Attributes Portal (CMAP), a new open-access database that contains information on dozens of institutional features of local government for nearly 100 of the most populous municipalities in Canada. We then propose a new multidimensional index of authority concentration, which is designed to capture variation in the local structure of decision-making authority in a systematic and nuanced manner. We apply this index to a systematic pan-Canadian subsample of 65 CMAP municipalities. The result is a rich portrait of institutional variety, one that both corroborates and substantially extends our current understanding of the shape of municipal institutions in Canadian cities.

This article aims to analyse the finances of the Coimbra city council from 1557 to 1836. Our objective is to examine the causes of long-term changes in municipal revenue and expenditure, particularly during the extended period of decline that occurred between the mid-17th century and the late 18th century. This study will focus on the composition of revenue and expenditure, as well as on revenue collection mechanisms. We aim to present the empirical data on the revenue and expenditure components that allow us to understand the changes that took place. Finally, we hope to be able to explain the causes that led to significant variations in revenue and expenditure in a dialogue with existing literature. The primary sources used correspond to municipal revenue and expenditure books, supplemented by other sources such as legislation, correspondence and auction books.

The Global Yield Gap Atlas (GYGA) is an international project that addresses global food production capacity in the form of yield gaps (Yg). The GYGA project is unique in employing its original Climate Zonation Scheme (CZS) composed of three indexed factors, i.e. Growing Degree Days (GDD) related to temperature, Aridity Index (AI) related to available water and Temperature Seasonality (TS) related to annual temperature range, creating 300 Climate Zones (CZs) theoretically across the globe. In the present study, the GYGA CZs were identified for Japan on a municipality basis and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on irrigated rice yield data sets, equating to actual yields (Ya) in the GYGA context, from long-term government statistics. The ANOVA was conducted for the data sets over two decades between 1994 and 2016 by assigning the GDD score of 6 levels and the TS score of 2 levels as fixed factors. Significant interactions with respect to Ya were observed between GDD score and TS score for 13 years out of 21 years implying the existence of favourable combinations of the GDD score and the TS score for rice cultivation. The implication was also supported by the observation with Yg. The lower values of coefficient of variance obtained from the CZs characterized by medium GDD scores indicated the stability over time of rice yields in these areas. These findings suggest a possibility that the GYGA-CZS can be recognized as a tool suitable to identify favourable CZs for growing crops.

Municipal fragmentation is a real historical issue in Italy but its relevance has been differently perceived over time. With a focus on the municipal unions and amalgamations as the main tools for defragmentation, we will present an overview of the last quarter century (1990–2017) of territorial policy at the local level. The reforms introduced since 2010 marked a step change in this area: in fact, empirical evidence shows that the most recent defragmentation attempts have had a certain success. This article, by maintaining a descriptive approach, will try to answer why the most recent defragmentation policy achieved some results, in contrast to those of the past. Some explanatory factors will be presented by reviewing the stances of the main actors in this policy field and their interaction with national policy-maker goals and approaches as well as with normative elements and external conditions.

Responsibility for health and social care services is being delegated from central to local authorities in an increasing number of countries. In the Netherlands, the planned transfer of responsibility for day care for people with dementia from the central government to municipalities is a case in point. The impacts of this decentralisation process for innovative care concepts such as day care at green care farms are largely unknown. We therefore interviewed representatives of municipalities and green care farms to explore what consequences they expected of decentralisation for their organisations and people with dementia. Our study shows that communication and collaboration between municipalities and green care farms is relatively limited. Consequently, municipalities are insufficiently aware of how green care farms can help them to perform their new tasks and green care farmers know little about what municipalities expect from them in the new situation. We therefore recommend that municipalities and green care farms keep each other informed about their responsibilities, duties and activities to ensure a tailored package of future municipal services for people with dementia.