This book ambitiously presents the current directions and goals of the Chinese idea of modernization in education. Searching for a neutral way to understand educational reform and policy-making in the midst of many different theories in the field, the authors combine the theories of ecology, regional studies, and educational philosophy to focus on the hot topics relating to the current problems in Chinese education. In addition to the theory of education, it offers an interdisciplinary approach to educational policy and administration, including perspectives from history, evaluation and (big) data processing, modernization, planning-making, curriculum and teaching, element analysis etc. within or beyond the limits of education. This book is a valuable resource for policy-makers and administrators as well as teachers and students majoring in education or related fields. It is also beneficial to those interested in interdisciplinary approaches to educational theory studies and regional studies in education, and practitioners in schools and higher education institutes as well as anyone wanting insights into Chinese education from the perspective of regional studies.

This book, an accessible resource for busy practitioners, is a unique hybrid of two genres. As a "tourist guide," it shows you how to prepare for the journey, what to pay attention to upon arrival, and how to deal with the unexpected. As a "consumer report", it helps you identify some of the best tools and sources about change, access useful information about the change process, and find information about the strengths and challenges of various strategies. Thorough and comprehensive, it offers essential information about how to form leadership teams, identify high stakes problems, build commitment, create a school-wide vision and establish school-wide goals, handle setbacks, maintain the vision and sustain change, and evaluate and assess comprehensive school change. Also included is a section called "Ports of Call," which provides sources of information to help you implement comprehensive school reform at your site.

This book provides a comparative analysis of the regional development strategies of east, west, northeast and central China and the development of important economic regions including the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Chengdu-Chongqing and central-southern areas of Liaoning Province. The book reveals some key issues faced in China's regional development and analyzes their causes while delving into new trends of regional development since the 18th CPC National Congress. The book concludes by proposing new ideas for regional development under the new normal and analyzing experiences of other major powers in carrying out coordinated regional development. This book will be of interest to urbanists, journalists, and China scholars.

The book addresses the impact of the European Union (EU) on subnational mobilization in small unitary states. Located at the intersection of contributions from the literatures on multilevel governance and Europeanization, this book offers a new theoretical framework to account for state rescaling processes in small unitary states. By means of a comparative analysis of eight small unitary states in Europe, this book shows that the impact of the EU on subnational mobilization is filtered through domestic mediating factors which can lead to three possible outcomes: decentralization, recentralization or no change. The book offers a balanced combination of analytical clarity and the richness of empirical accounts in a wide diversity of case studies. It sheds a new light on the ‘hybrid nature’ of the European polity and demonstrates that member state governments have remained the most important pieces of the European puzzle. Overall, it arrives at two conclusions: first, that we are witnessing a ‘transformation of the state’ rather than its demise; second, the notion of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ in small unitary states was no more than a ‘damp squib’. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Regional & Federal Studies.

The sixth edition of the highly successful The City Reader juxtaposes the very best classic and contemporary writings on the city to provide the comprehensive mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies and Planning old and new. The City Reader is the anchor volume in the Routledge Urban Reader Series and is now integrated with all ten other titles in the series. This edition has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary areas included and in topical areas such as compact cities, urban history, place making, sustainable urban development, globalization, cities and climate change, the world city network, the impact of technology on cities, resilient cities, cities in Africa and the Middle East, and urban theory. The new edition places greater emphasis on cities in the developing world, globalization and the global city system of the future. The plate sections have been revised and updated. Sixty generous selections are included: forty-four from the fifth edition, and sixteen new selections, including three newly written exclusively for The City Reader. The sixth edition keeps classic writings by authors such as Ebenezer Howard, Ernest W. Burgess, LeCorbusier, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and Louis Wirth, as well as the best contemporary writings of, among others, Peter Hall, Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, and Kenneth Jackson. In addition to newly commissioned selections by Yasser Elshestawy, Peter Taylor, and Lawrence Vale, new selections in the sixth edition include writings by Aristotle, Peter Calthorpe, Alberto Camarillo, Filip DeBoech, Edward Glaeser, David Owen, Henri Pirenne, The Project for Public Spaces, Jonas Rabinovich and Joseph Lietman, Doug Saunders, and Bish Sanyal. The anthology features general and section introductions as well as individual introductions to the selected articles introducing the authors, providing context, relating the selection to other selection, and providing a bibliography for further study. The sixth edition includes fifty plates in four plate sections, substantially revised from the fifth edition.

African regional trade integration has grown exponentially in the last decade. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the legal framework within which it is being pursued. It will fill a huge knowledge gap and serve as an invaluable teaching and research tool for policy makers in the public and private sectors, teachers, researchers and students of African trade and beyond. The author argues that African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are best understood as flexible legal regimes particularly given their commitment to variable geometry and multiple memberships. He analyzes the progress made toward trade liberalization in each region, how the RTAs are financed, their trade remedy and judicial regimes, and how well they measure up to Article XXIV of GATT. The book also covers monetary unions as well as intra-African regional integration, and examines free trade agreements with non-African regions including the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.