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The opioid epidemic in the USA, the new psychoactive substances emerging on the market and the recent increase in cocaine treatment demands in Western Europe, all emphasise the importance of monitoring the use and harms of drugs over time. To be informed about new consumption patterns, this study aims to study the trends among people entering treatment for substance use in Belgium.

Belgian data from the Treatment Demand Indicator collected between 2015 and 2019 were used. A reference group of treatment units was selected to allow for comparisons between the different years. Trend analysis was performed by using a joinpoint regression among different regions and groups of clients.

The drugs of choice that were most frequently mentioned among the 23,000 analysed treatment episodes were alcohol and cannabis. Both remained relatively stable over time. Heroin seemed to be decreasing significantly at the national level, but increased in Brussels. Benzodiazepines decreased significantly in Flanders and Brussels, but not in Wallonia. On the other hand, reports of crack cocaine increased significantly in the three regions with a more pronounced trend in Wallonia and Brussels. Substances such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, ketamine or volatile inhalants have been mentioned significantly more by people entering treatment in 2019, although their contribution to the total number is still limited.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to evaluate trends for all drugs of choice at a national and regional level. These results might not only benefit national policymakers but also other countries with similar alcohol or drug use patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the quality movement in the framework of an organizing taxonomy model from six perspectives: global trend, national mandate, industry trend, organizational strategy, operational strategy, and personal philosophy.

The authors use the organizing taxonomy model to analyze the quality movement from each of the six perspectives in terms utilizing a diverse range of key questions, characteristics, and issues which must be addressed.

The analysis shows that viewing the quality movement from these various perspectives can help practitioners in developing an understanding of the quality movement not only from a historical standpoint, but also in terms of current requirements and future demands. This can also benefit quality management researchers in terms of organizing the focus of their research on the various perspectives. The organizing taxonomy model can also be used to assess other phenomena such as lean, supply chain management, knowledge management, and business analytics which are similarly impacting organizations across all industries and throughout the world.

The paper presents a fresh look at the quality movement from a range of perspectives and provides insight into an organized method of assessing major movements that continue to impact businesses globally.

Through an examination of macro-historical studies on the governance of Iran, the purpose of this study is to identify the most significant and important events and trends in the rise and fall of Iranian governments and introduce alternative futures in a range of possible, plausible and preferable forms of future governance. To carry out a foresight study of alternative futures of Iranian governance, the authors used futures studies, based on the detection of the most critical driving forces, which are also the most important uncertainties. Futures studies as an interdisciplinary field of study help to identify the events and trends that affect political change and offer scenarios of four alternative futures for the governance of Iran: Smart and Stable Government, Authoritarian Development-oriented Government, Irrational Government and Irrational Breakable Government. The authors believe that Iran’s endeavors to promote democracy, taking the changing international trends into account, make a more trustworthy future for Iran both possible plausible.

Based on macro-history approach and by using “shared history”, future triangle and then scenario planning, the future of Governance in Iran has been analyzed.

Whenever the government has distanced itself from the public and has neglected the trend of international change, it has been faced with a period of collapse and annihilation. And whenever these two important factors are understood, the result is a trend of development and growth. Therefore, the most favored image of Iran’s future relies on the maintenance and promotion of public participation and on increasing attention to the sustainable realities of international relations.

The complexities of events and trends affecting the rise and fall of previous governments of Iran make it necessary to use an interdisciplinary approach to understand the events that have emerged or are emerging in its governance. In this study, from futures studies point of view, transformation of governance has been studied.

There is little tradition of regional studies in the field of industrial relations. Most of the existing work with a regional flavour is on comparative labour markets. The reason for the absence of structural or institutional studies is because of the obvious methodological problem of disaggregating purely regional influences from broader national factors—economic, political, social or legislative.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a much‐overlooked aspect of the rise of China: when will it end? Obviously, the Chinese economy will not grow at an annual rate of 10 percent forever. At some point Chinese growth will stabilize. When is of vast importance for the political, economic, and ecological future of the world.

Data from the World Development Indicators database are used to benchmark the recent economic growth of China (and India) to the long‐term trajectory of Brazil. A structuralist approach derived from world‐systems analysis predicts that Chinese growth will stabilize once China reaches an equilibrium income level characteristic of the semiperiphery of the world‐economy.

Based on recent trends, the structuralist perspective suggests that China's extraordinary rate of economic growth will fall back to global norms after 2020. China is unlikely to reach US or EU levels of total national income before mid‐century.

The research presented here is highly speculative. The data are of very poor quality and the assumptions are quite heroic. That said, the China 2020 prediction is relatively robust to variations in data and assumptions.

The rise of China is unlikely to have much impact on the structure of the modern world economy or the continuation of US hegemony for the foreseeable future, and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions may be less than anticipated.

This study will hopefully open a debate about planning for the end game of rapid Chinese economic growth.

Thinking and deciding about the future of the city as a combination of complex and uncertain systems is extremely difficult. This complexity, uncertainty and difficulty will be increased when our thoughts and decisions address the city’s long-term future. Considering these issues, the need for future thinking and alternate thinking in the process of urban management and planning becomes even more necessary. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the alternate futures of Tehran.

For this purpose, this study have tried to study alternate future images of Tehran in an archetypal form of “growth, collapse, disciplined society and transformed society” using “Dator’s Four Generic Alternate Futures” method.

These alternate futures, after identifying their key trends and drivers, have been narrated in the form of four scenarios called: “capital business center,” “crossing the fate of ray,” “Tehran family” and “Tehran investigators.” Increasing the authority and responsibility of the local governance, modification of Tehran urban management model and development of voluntary cooperation and democratic participation, are among the policy recommendations made on the basis of these images.

Achieving these images in parallel with identifying the most important challenges and opportunities in alternate futures will provide the basis for policy-making in Tehran’s future urban governance. It can be a creative model for developing future images for other cities.

Rapidly increasing school enrolments present a major problem in forward planning in many parts of the world. One aspect of this problem is the provision of buildings and classrooms. This paper describes the procedures adopted for the siting, planning and erection of school buildings by the Auckland Education Board, a local education authority responsible for 100,000 primary children. The board employs a full‐time planning and research officer whose chief duty is predicting enrolment trends from national census returns, figures on population mobility, immigration and birthrate and other sources. School sites are selected and purchased to provide for long‐term needs. Buildings are erected under a national “white‐lines” policy, adapted from English practice. This policy, which is designed to give local authorities scope for initiative and imagination in planning, lays down minimum standards for buildings and establishes maximum costs for schools of various sizes. There is some danger in standardization of this type, but regular discussions on design are held with teachers and other professional people associated with schools.

The skill mismatch between the pool of long‐term unemployed and job vacancies in the Hull travel to work area is focused on, with data provided by a survey, the Training Agency and the National On‐line Manpower Information Service (NOMIS). A brief account of the industrial and employment structure of Humberside is given, together with an overall view of unemployment trends in the area and the various trends in the demand for labour as revealed by official statistics.

Most analyses of strike activity in Western Europe suggest that it has declined quite dramatically since the early 1970s. The contention of this article is that this decline has been exaggerated, largely as a result of an inadequate recognition of the deficiencies of the statistical data on which these analyses are based. Recognising this, the article argues that strike activity in many countries in Western Europe may be considerably higher than previously thought.

This paper aims to explore how the Celtic Tiger economic boom and Great Recession influenced drug and alcohol use in one Irish city.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 48 people, living in Cork City, who had previously used drugs and/or alcohol problematically. All participants had engaged with services for their problematic use and had at least one year of abstinence at time of interview.

Some participants reported that their drug and/or alcohol consumption increased during the economic boom; others, who were already in (self-defined) active addiction, reported how full employment lessened some of the harms of their problematic use. For others, problematic use struck once the economy entered a downturn and, heavy drink and drug use became a means of soothing the strains of economic recession.

The paper provides two key contributions. Methodologically, it demonstrates how large-scale national quantitative data can mask local idiosyncratic tendencies, suggesting the need for mixed-method approaches for understanding drug market trends. The paper also provides insights into the impact of global and local economic conditions on drug and alcohol consumption in Ireland.