Remember the Flicking Tail of the Lizard: how matauranga Maori is being woven into place-based regulatory decisions in Aotearoa. Te Mana Rauhï Taiao, the Environmental Protection Authority, is adopting a new and comprehensive approach to bringing mätauranga – the Mäori knowledge system – into its regulatory practice. This will potentially have an impact on decision-making on environmental protection in your local area.

he various facets of “measurement,” “comparison,” “evaluation,” and “monitoring” of government performance stubbornly continue to be topics of international relevance. Within this context, debates focusing on the subnational level of governance have been claiming more and more space in the academic and policy arenas. The extra attention given to the “local” is easier to explain. The decisions and actions of local executives have a very real and immediate impact on people’s lives. Local governments are the closest link to the State for the majority of the world population. They are responsible for crucial policy sectors such as spatial planning, transport, and utility services and are also the enablers of many social and cultural activities (LSE Cities 2016). While most people already lives in cities, urbanization trends will continue to put strain, but also relevance, on local government institutions around the globe. In fact, the decentralization of powers from nation states to local governments can currently be observed across jurisdictions.

The Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia (IPWEA) has recently published the Australian Infrastructure Financial Management Guidelines. The Guidelines provide new assistance to link the technical (engineering) and financial aspects of managing infrastructure and services, and to assist infrastructure owners such as local government to develop sustainable long-term asset and financial management plans. Financial management for long-life infrastructure assets (such as roads, water, sewerage, and stormwater networks, and community buildings) is about ensuring sustainability in the provision of services required by the community. These new Guidelines offer advice for every organisation and individual with responsibility for the management of infrastructure assets. 

Andrew Sancton combines his own broad knowledge of global changes with an outline and comparison of the viewpoints of prominent social scientists to argue that city regions in western liberal democracies will not and cannot be self-governing. Self-government requires a territory delineated by official boundaries, but the multiple boundaries of city-regions, unlike the clear and undisputed boundaries of provinces and states, continue to move outward due to the constant growth and expansion of urban populations and services.