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Purpose – This chapter aims to advise the public as well as municipal, state and national agencies about how pedestrian safety can be improved through changes in our built environment. Higher safety can lead to more walking and thereby a more sustainable society.

Methodology – The chapter is based on a review of literature, including a review of published papers and field studies by the author himself.

Findings – To reach ‘acceptable’ safety levels, all arterials and collector roads – at least segments with more than 50 pedestrians a day – should have sidewalks. The sidewalks should be separated from the roadway by a curb if speeds are low and by a barrier or wide separation strip in high-speed areas; that is, where speeds are higher than 50 km/h. Local roads also need sidewalks unless traffic volumes and speeds are very low. The major safety issue for pedestrians is, however, where they cross streets. Elderly pedestrians and pedestrians in a great hurry or under the influence of intoxicants in particular need streets to be narrow and have low speeds for them to be able to cross safely. Marking crosswalks or even signalising them will have only marginal safety effects at best. Posting them for low speed is also not enough unless we have photo speed-enforcement ensuring that everyone drives slowly. Rather, using narrow cross-sections or speed cushions at the approaches ensuring that 90-percentile speeds are no more than 30 km/h at crossing points is key to safety. In between crossing points a speed of 50 km/h is acceptable with pedestrians on adjacent sidewalks.

Social implications – We as a society need to encourage walking as a mode of transportation since walking promotes better health and a cleaner environment; that is, a more sustainable society. However, it has to be safe to walk or people will prefer to drive to their destinations. Also, distances between destination points have to be kept reasonably short and the environment, where people walk needs to be interesting and aesthetically somewhat pleasing to encourage walking.

The drive to improve learning and safety in our nation’s public schools has resulted in the widespread adoption of zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. The practice of punishing any school infraction regardless of extenuating circumstances has been particularly detrimental to students of color. Black and Latino students are more likely to be suspended, expelled, and/or referred to law enforcement for nonviolent and/or minor infractions. Students who are removed from school fall behind academically and have an increased risk of being arrested and thrust into the criminal justice system. This reality has moved the Obama administration to urge school officials to abandon overly zealous disciplinary policies. However, the recommendations set forth by the Obama administration are nonbinding and fail to address the root causes of racially discriminatory school discipline practices.

Any meaningful effort to understand and/or disrupt the pattern of pushing students out of schools and funneling them into the criminal justice system must consider the adverse effects of the following three factors: (1) unchecked racial biases among school personnel, (2) inadequately resourced poor performing schools, and (3) the ever-expanding economic inequality in society. Omitting of any of these items from the guidelines and recommendations represents a glaring limitation of the Supportive School Discipline Initiative as a tool for addressing racial disparities in school discipline and the school to prison pipeline.

We aim to show that students of color would benefit from “need-based” educational reforms, a Presidential Administration that directly addresses racial inequality, and economic policies that target the most financially strapped communities.

This study looked at the relationship between good governance and trust in government. We used data on government trust across a sample of 29 European countries over the period 2004–2015, as well as six different aspects of governance as captured by the Worldwide Governance Indicators. We also consider GDP growth and income inequality and their correlation with trust in government. The results showed that voice and accountability, which captures freedom of expression and citizen involvement in the democratic process, was significantly related to government trust, across all specifications of our regression models. None of the other indicators yields significant results, although the coefficient for control of corruption is significant in some specifications. We also found that real GDP growth rates have a significant relationship with trust in government. A comparison of the standardised regression coefficients indicated that voice and accountability is a stronger correlate of trust in government than GDP growth. Therefore, our results suggested that good governance was a key determinant of trust in government, over and above economic considerations. We discussed the implications of these findings in light of declining levels of public trust in government around the world.

The Monsoon Asian region has a much wider rainfall distribution than other regions of the world. The countries in this region are characterized mostly by floods and typhoons, which result from the interplay among the ocean, the atmosphere, and the land. Thus, many factors affect the strength of the rainfall, including sea surface temperatures in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, variations in solar output, land snow cover and soil moisture over the Asian continent, and the position and strength of prevailing winds. The links between these factors and monsoons appear to wax and wane over time, and the observational record is too short to explain this longer-term variability. Precipitation and surface wind maps of Asia during the summer months of June to August show the average spatial patterns of monsoon circulation and moisture.

Government service delivery is undergoing change as a result of innovations in information technology (IT). Scholars and practitioners have paid attention to electronic-government (e-government) as a strategic tool for delivering services through the Internet and thus enhancing service quality, as well as streamlining internal operations (Council for Excellence in Government [CEG], 2000; Center for Technology in Government, 1999; Ho, 2002; Norris & Moon, 2005; West, 2004). Many local governments have also initiated e-government development and taken advantage of internet-based applications to facilitate community development and communication with constituents (Benjamin, 2001; Modesitt, 2002), as well as to provide online application services (Ho, 2002; Norris & Moon, 2005). E-government brings with it the potential for greater cost-efficiency, enhanced citizen involvement, improved service quality, and increased transparency. Although e-government has the potential to provide many benefits, little research has been conducted on e-government performance and the influence of public management on e-government performance in local government.

A great deal of economic knowledge comes in the form of statistics, tables, graphs, and reports. In government, such materials often abound and point policymakers into different directions. Nonetheless, some materials evidently are more effective than others. Why is that? This chapter examines how high-level administrators reconfigure an institutional setup, so that it produces effective economic materials. A range of other supply-side strategies are discussed, too. The chapter takes a historical approach and focuses on actual practices. It examines activities and materials by rivaling actors in the American military administration of Germany, OMGUS, during 1945/46. The chapter finds that actors make materials effective through two interlocking strategies. First, actors re-engineer an institution in order to control which materials it produces and disseminates; second, actors align and adapt the specific content, form, and delivery of materials to their broader aim. The chapter supplements the economic history of Germany after World War II with a historical epistemologist perspective. It shows that the shift of US policy from economic restriction to reactivation was facilitated by a group of actors in OMGUS. By re-engineering the institution and creating official materials with a consistent narrative, they succeeded in transmitting their view, the need for economic reactivation, to the Washington administration.

This chapter examines one of the most contested issues in Public Administration, namely political–administrative relationships. The first part of the chapter begins with a brief overview of the features of an ideal-type bureaucracy. Next is a literature review of political–administrative relationships. This is followed by an analysis of typologies of political–administrative relationships, with particular reference to developing countries. The second part of the chapter analyses the evolution of political–administrative relationships since the dawn of South African democracy in 1994. It examines the growing politicisation of the public service, the weakening of the powers of public officials vis-a-vis Ministers and the emasculation of the PSC. Data indicate that the government is unable to fill posts at the Senior Management Service (SMS) level and that there are a high number of acting HoDs, an indicator of instability. Finally, it uses Dasandi and Esteve’s typology of political–administrative relationships in developing countries to interpret the South African case.