This paper identifies types of citizen participation in local government in Australia, in particular focusing on the past two decades when local government systems have been the focus of intense reform. The paper considers the extent to which contemporary views of participatory governance have taken root at local and sub-local levels and concludes that despite reforms intended to engage local citizens more in local government activity, citizen participation has yet to develop significantly into arrangements that reach the level of participatory governance. It also argues that for participatory governance to be further developed, leadership may often have to come from organisations outside institutional local government

Measuring Local Well-being: reflections on the Local Government (Community Well-Being) Amendment Bill. The Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill is designed to provide local authorities with greater legal freedom to make investments that will raise the well-being of their local community. The legislation is predicated on the assumption that people’s well-being is influenced by their local context. In order to identify the influence of changes in context generated by local investments, it is necessary to recognise that individuals differ in many ways and that the impact of any given investment can vary substantially from one person to the next. Indicators based on collections of individuals miss much of that variation. It is also necessary to recognise the variety of ways well-being can be measured. This short article raises both these issues by exploring three measures of well-being currently available on the 2018 Quality of Life survey.

Project management can be both complex and challenging. And when projects span multiple areas, are interdependent, and cost many millions of dollars, project managers play a mission-critical role.

Public libraries in NSW are managed by local councils in accordance with the Library Act 1939, with assistance from the State Government though the State Library. At present approximately 68 councils are party to regional library agreements which are enabled by s12 of the Act. Effectively this means that one council provides library services (or an aspect of library services) to neighbouring councils. Councils that are not party to regional library arrangements run their own public libraries, but often cooperate with neighbouring council libraries to some extent. In 2011 the Act was amended to add s12A which enables councils to propose alternate models for regional cooperation on libraries.

Integrating Amartya Sen's approach with the literature on place-based territorial development processes, this book recognises the interplay between the evolution of local development systems and the expansion of individual and collective capabilities.