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The article aims to ascertain the inclusiveness of urban governance in administering affordable housing issues; and to revisit the applicability of the one-third housing cost burden threshold in George Town World Heritage Site (GTWHS) of Penang state of Malaysia from the local perspective.

Main data was collected through a 318-respondent survey, complemented by in-depth interviews with key informants.

Findings suggest that housing in GTWHS is generally unaffordable. GTWHS is neither inclusive in its housing governance and administration, nor in terms of its urban livability and sustainability. A re-examination of the applicability of the 30-percent-of-income housing cost burden threshold reveals that the local community generally perceives a “reasonable rent” in GTWHS as being less than one-third of their earnings.

From a local perspective, the issues of affordable housing, its administration, and the applicability of the 30-percent-of-income housing cost burden threshold in GTWHS have received inadequate attention. These crucial issues are closely linked to the livelihoods of the GTWHS community.

This paper aims to present insights on the governance of sustainability transitions in higher education in Africa. The authors interrogate the research literatures on the governance of socio-technical transitions in water, electricity, transport and waste management, and identify barriers and enabling factors that enhance transformative practices in universities.

The analytical framework proposed in this paper combines the elements of governance network theory (GNT) and transition topology. The framework of this study is grounded in an actor-centric approach using GNT to understand networks conducive to sustainability transitions. Events and governance networks were mapped on a transition topology to visualise organisational and institutional changes over time. The study engaged students, management, academic and administrative staff in building a community of practice towards sustainability. This research is based on qualitative content analysis grounded in interview data, focus group discussions, workshops, webinars and secondary data analysis.

The findings show that the university has consolidated a sustainability vision and targets, but several factors prevent the community from achieving these targets, including hierarchical decision-making processes, a multitude of disjointed committees and fragmentation in the campus community.

This research adds to an emerging body of literature in the field of sustainability in higher education with two contributions. Firstly, the study presents a novel perspective(s) on the governance of sustainability transitions by combining the literatures on governance and sustainability transitions using a new methodological approach of transition topology to show organisational and institutional changes. Secondly, the study presents new empirical evidence for improving the governance of sustainability transitions in a diverse and highly unequal African university community in the process of (de)colonisation of knowledge and governance.

This study aims to make the case for real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance as a new foundation for the regulation and systemisation of multiple rights in recordkeeping for the Alternative Care of children and young people.

This article aims to make the case for real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance as a new foundation for the regulation and systemisation of multiple rights in recordkeeping for the Alternative Care of children and young people. It investigates this concept using the Australian context as a critical case study to highlight some of the current limitations in Australian Alternative Care systems in the way recordkeeping rights are represented in existing regulatory frameworks and monitored in practice. This paper will argue for the need for systemic transformations in child protection and information legislation and regulatory systems to better represent and enact alternative care recordkeeping rights.

This analysis of the legislative provisions for participation in recordkeeping and access to records of Care experiences against the Australian Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care reveals a number of limitations. While the direct provision of rights to access records and the strengthening of principles of participation in some of the jurisdictions are welcome, it illustrates how the risk-oriented focus of the legislation on child protection investigations and substantiations encodes opaque recordkeeping practices and works against the provision of the full suite of childhood recordkeeping rights envisaged by the charter. Furthermore, without provisions for systemic and dynamic oversight, those with Care experiences are left to pursue individual outcomes against significant bureaucratic odds.

In line with international recognition that active participation and proactive provision of rights are a protective factor, this article contends that governance frameworks need to be proactively designed to respect and enact recordkeeping rights, along with requiring mechanisms for real-time monitoring and oversight if the records problems of the past are not to be perpetuated.

The study’s proposal for the need for a real-time, rights-based recordkeeping governance seeks to address the systemic recordkeeping problems that have been identified in research and public inquiry related to Alternative Care systems in Australia as well as in the UK.

Adopting a governance model that prioritises real-time, rights-based principles will ultimately impact how the Alternative Care system approaches records and their value in the processes of care.

Placing real-time rights-based governance at the foundation of a reimagining of the Alternative Care recordkeeping model offers the potential to create a system that places rights in recordkeeping and ethics of care at its core. This has highly transformative potential for the overall Alternative Care system and its relationship with children in out-of-home care.

As financial firms incorporate impact strategies more extensively into their operations, they are asked to sustain their impact claims and thus face increased risks of regulatory scrutiny and lawsuits from private and public parties. The lack of reliable frameworks to measure impact gives rise to phenomena like impact washing, leading to litigations. This article aims to explore the main factors contributing to the impact litigation risk and the mechanisms employed by practitioners in the impact investing field to navigate and address this challenge.

We conducted semi-structured interviews involving three impact investors and three impact lawyers with specific knowledge of ESG and impact controversies, adopting the Gioia Methodology for the analysis. We triangulated such information with the analysis of secondary data.

The “great noise” around the impact investing world and the rise of impact washing, the lack of shared standards for measuring impacts and the misalignment of interests among actors involved in the initiatives constitute a potential “litigation bomb”. Such a scenario is detrimental to an investment strategy, which has the potential to tackle societal issues.

This study represents an initial effort to connect the academic debate on impact litigation with the expert’s active “on-field” standpoints. The identified and validated drivers of impact litigations provide valuable insight to enhance the governance and accountability of impact investing. Implementing Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) tools, participatory governance models, clear impact-focused contracts and a proactive approach could serve as prospective solutions to mitigate the risk of disputes.

The class of technology variously referred to as Web3 or crypto has been heralded as a democratizing force for economics and governance. This chapter argues that, to the extent such hype is justified, it is only partly due to the affordances of the technology itself. Perhaps more important is the amnesia it has induced, as an innovative paradigm whose novelty inclines people to neglect once-stable norms. In both economics and governance, crypto offers opportunities for greater democracy, but following through on them is guaranteed by neither the technology nor the amnesia it invites.

The concept of “participation” has become a buzzword in contemporary public governance models. However, despite the broad and significant interest, defining participation remains a debated topic. The aim of the current study was to explore how participants perceived and interpreted the meaning and scope of participation.

This study is part of a four-year (2019–2022) longitudinal research project investigating stakeholder participation in the context of developing and establishing a strategic regional plan in Region Skåne in southern Sweden. The research project has a qualitative approach and uses interviews with different stakeholder groups such as municipal politicians and public officials and a survey as empirical material.

The authors developed a participation spectrum including eight types of participation: to be open, to be informed, to be listened to, to discuss, to be consulted, to give and take, to collaborate and to co-create. The authors also identified four different purposes of participation: creating a joint network, creating a joint understanding, creating a joint effort and creating a joint vision. The spectrum and the purposes were related through four characteristics of participation, i.e. involvement, interaction, influence and empowerment.

The study rests on a single case, and so the results have limited transferatibility.

Researching participation in terms of the participants' perceptions contributes a new perspective to the existing literature, which has commonly focussed on the organizers' perceptions of participation. Moreover, in order to clarify what participation meant to the participants, the study puts emphasis on untangling this from the why question of participation.

The ineffectiveness of flood control in climate-impacted majority-world cities like Jakarta highlights the need for policies that integrate local knowledge and embrace water harmony rather than resistance. This study explores flood adaptation in North Jakarta's kampungs (urban informal settlements), aiming to enhance the efficacy of current flood disaster management. The outcomes of the participatory planning mechanism simulation that we propose are expected to provide valuable insights for the urban planning approach in that city.

We employed focus groups and design charrettes with a bottom-up approach to explore how local knowledge can enhance spatial flood management and urban planning policies. In total, 17 diverse participants, covering various ages and professions, engaged in these activities. Our methods aimed to be culturally sensitive and inclusive, embracing indigenous values like musyawarah and gotong royong. The research methodically examined flood implications and adaptations in informal settlements, progressing through preliminary understanding, data triangulation, and a reflective synthesis of the findings.

Amid worsening global changes like sea level rise, community-focussed, collaborative planning can help create tailored flood-resilience solutions. The research reveals that partnerships between communities and organisations promote city-wide, flood-adapted environments, aligning policy with the needs and goals of those most affected by flooding. This collaboration enhances flood disaster management and planning policies.

This research focusses on Jakarta's flood adaptation and urban planning, reflecting on historical situations relevant to urbanising majority-world countries. Whilst specific to Jakarta, it offers perspectives on managing global environmental challenges such as sea level rise. Subsequent research should prudently consider each locale's distinct geographic and social milieu and the trust in planning systems in applying these findings, methodologies and approaches.

This study clarifies the relationship between disaster management, policy and flood adaptation, focussing on local knowledge in North Jakarta, pertinent to urbanising majority-world nations. Jakarta's historical and modern dynamics, including globalisation, reveal specific prospects and obstacles to applying vernacular knowledge to planning and disaster response. It highlights crucial points for policymakers in the majority of the world to address growing flood risks and create strategies that integrate local and traditional wisdom.

This paper aims to investigate the extent of public participation of youth in strategic planning for local sustainable development, emphasising the establishment of a positive dialogue process between public administration and young people. Previous studies and international guidelines recognise youth as an essential group in the territorial sustainability process but also require a framework for processes and modalities for youth participation.

The analysis was carried out according to a multiple-case study approach conducted from the secondary sources (e.g. planning documents enabling sustainable development at the local level) developed by the 14 Italian metropolitan cities to assess the state-of-the-art and establish similarities and differences concerning the engagement levels found in the literature.

Although almost all the sample has undertaken a youth engagement process, this research demonstrates that only 6 out of 14 metropolitan cities - corresponding to 43% of the sample - have promoted highly engagement-intensive forms, underlining a total absence of a standardised and recursive approach in which the younger generation is consistently an integral part of sustainability strategies.

This research is innovative as it addresses practical and theoretical objectives simultaneously. The study underlines the adoption of engagement processes by metropolitan cities by considering the participatory methods implemented and providing a framework for enhancing forms of dialogue between young people and public authorities, contributing to the advancement of theoretical understanding and practical implementation.

This article conceptualizes and constructs a comprehensive framework that can better help to answer that question – Who is accountable for social and public problems? – theoretically and practically.

Tracing the drivers behind two phenomena “accountability hole” and “accountability black hole”, stemming from “pushing power game” and “pulling power game”, respectively, this study considers (1) the three actors of society: citizens (civil society), corporations (market) and civil servants (government), and (2) the principal-agent relationship between the three actors in the face of social and public problems. As a result, the 4CAs framework that contains the three actors’ collaborative accountabilities to one another is presented.

The 4CAs model emphasizes (1) all three actors function as agents that are accountable to one another, (2) collaborative accountability beyond collaborative governance and (3) repowering citizens and corporations beyond just empowering them, i.e. returning their inherent rights and obligations to serve one another.

The 4CAs model may function as a descriptive and prescriptive lens through which the trilemma between market failure, government failure and citizen failure can be re-assessed and balanced. The model can also be used as a set of indicators for assessing and helping a society to better resolve the social and public problems collectively.