A Focus on the How not the Who: localism in Aotearoa through a community-led lens. Emerging localism discussions in Aotearoa must look further than a structured devolution of roles and responsibilities from central to local government. New operating models are needed that build from local wisdom and leadership to actively involve and empower local communities and iwi/Mäori as genuine partners in decision- and solution-making for their places. Taking a ‘learning by doing’ focus to incentivise and support local stakeholders to better work together is essential. Future localist success will require greater power sharing and concerted trust building at all levels.

Localism is widely supported as an antidote to what are seen as the adverse impacts of globalisation and one-size-fits-all, top-down central government. But interpretations of localism and views on how it should be practised vary greatly. This presents particular challenges for local government, which typically sees itself as the rightful beneficiary of a localism agenda focused on devolution and decentralisation, but must then confront difficult questions about its own institutional frameworks, its revenue base, and sharing power with local communities. While local government in New Zealand is exploring these issues through a national Localism project, its counterparts in Australia seem ill-prepared to follow suit.

Localism is about citizens, not town halls. It engages, encourages and empowers citizens and their formal, semi-formal and informal groupings, street level to citywide, including not-for-profits. To be effective and constructive, citizen-centric localism needs to be bottom-up, not just top-down, driven by iterative interaction to fashion thought-through decisions. Digital technology enables this in ways not possible a decade ago. Local councils are the right level of government to develop and refine that interaction and thereby revitalise local – and in time national – democracy.

This paper analyses poor service delivery at local government level, which is attributed to the politicisation of administrative components in municipalities, resulting in poor local governance. The public service delivery system has been perceived as one of the most important ways of reducing poverty through poverty alleviation programmes. As part of the South African government's cooperative system, key stakeholders in municipalities ought to adopt an integrated approach to public service delivery. An integrated approach to public service delivery demands that local municipalities, together with relevant stakeholders, integrate processes and services to ensure effective and efficient service delivery. This ultimately will result in an improved standard of living and sustainable livelihood for communities. With regard to public service delivery, local municipalities have the obligation of creating income opportunities people, especially the poor, with the sole aim of contributing towards poverty reduction and the realisation of the expectations of people, as stated in the South African government's White Paper of transforming public service delivery. The political interface in local municipalities greatly affects effective and efficient administration, as well as growth opportunities. Administrators, therefore, have the important function of ensuring that explicit assignments of objectives and administrative functions are wholly separated from the policymaking activities of government. This paper, therefore, suggests that municipalities adopt the merit system and abandon the spoils system that is highly characterised by political favours and political interferences. Political favours and interferences are dominant in local South African government, and they hinder the process of providing services equally.

The twenty first century has seen a rapid rise of urbanization and consumption, bringing many challenges to cities, including one of the most difficult challenges of our time - climate change. Climate change has exacerbated many natural hazards including storm surges, extreme precipitation, flooding, and sea level rise causing the loss of thousands of lives each year in addition to billions of dollars in damage. Coastal cities are especially at risk due to their vulnerable geographical location and rapid population growth. Cities also face other environmental challenges including earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes; which are often difficult to predict and can test a city’s resilience. This research analyzes the environmental hazards a coastal city may face and discuss the tools planners can use to increase a region’s resilience. Case studies of New Zealand and Vancouver Island, Canada are used to analyze disaster management and resilience strategies.