The objective of the study is to assess the level and regional diversity of low-carbon investments and in renewable energy sources in urban public transport in Poland co-funded by the European Union ...within the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014–2020. In Poland city transport is responsible for ¼ of greenhouse gas emissions and over 1/3 of electricity consumption. For this reason results of this study fill the research gap concerning implementation of EU co-funded investments of local urban governments in low-emission and renewable energy sources in public transport, as well as conditions determining such an activity. Results of this study are of importance also for the execution of future programmes in the development of low-emission economy and renewable energy sources, in Poland comprised in the National Reconstruction Plan, referred as the recovery and resilience plan within the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility. These analyses are highly topical, since the cost eligibility period concluded in 2023. A total of 778 projects aimed at the broadly understood development of green transport, with a total value of EURO 7.4 billion, have been implemented across Poland by local governments and their subordinate units. They accounted for less than a tenth of the total number of projects in Poland in the field of low-carbon economy development, but in terms of value, they accounted for as much as nearly a half of the total value. Cities, especially those in the Mazowieckie and Śląskie provinces, are the biggest beneficiaries of EU funding for the development of green public transport.
•Greenhouse gas emissions from transport are a problem for the EU's climate policy.•The challenge for Polish cities is to reduce emissions from transport.•Polish cities are the most polluted in the European Union.•Cities' investments in green urban transport support the development of a low-emission economy.
Universities have a key influence on society in a two-fold manner: they train and educate people and they participate in governance at the national and regional level. This paper focuses on ...universities and how they function to foster sustainable development. It identifies their actual and potential roles in fulfilling educational, research, governance, and economic development functions, as well as facilitative and mediating functions. A set of seven hypotheses has been derived from the literature and used to develop an analytical framework for considering the three main functions: education, research and governance. The framework distinguishes the individual and the societal educational functions, knowledge creation and knowledge transfer within the research function, and finally the internal and external governance functions. This framework has been applied to a particular case study – the University of Graz, which hosts a Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development. The case study analysis allowed a first test of the hypotheses. For this specific case a couple of prerequisites were identified as helping universities act as facilitators for sustainable development at the regional level. A diverse institutional set-up, a committed leadership as well as alliances with particular bridging organizations such as the Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development are only a few of the factors that were found to be facilitative in the case under study.
► We focus on universities as facilitators for sustainable development. ► The case study analyzes the institutional set-up and its effects. ► Competent bridging institutions provide network opportunities for universities. ► Besides this a committed leadership has been identified as supporting factor.
Despite the institutionalization of the issue of inner areas with the National Strategy for Inner Areas (Strategia Nazionale per le Aree Interne, SNAI), a reflection on their spatial organisation is ...still missing. Our paper aims at filling this gap by providing a methodology for identifying the citizens' Daily Life Spaces (DLS) in the Italian Abruzzo region, which can be used as the spatial unit of analysis of cohesion policies. Their identification results from a multi-step algorithm based on an original definition of central places and on the notions of geographical and organised proximity which consider both citizens’ isochrones and commuting flows. Our methodology is able to provide the internal spatial organisation of both Labour Market Areas and Project Areas and is consistent with a historical perspective. Finally, it questions the SNAI classification, calling for a revision of its methodology of identification.
•EU Cohesion Policy must be based on appropriate target areas to improve its effectiveness.•This is particularly important for inner areas, suffering from a stigmatising spatial representation.•We provide a methodology able to describe how inner areas are spatially organised based on the notion of citizens' Daily Life Space.•Daily Life Spaces can be used as the territorial unit of analysis for planning local development and cohesion policies.
The discovery of a major archaeological complex at Faughan Hill, County Meath, was first reported on in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in 2015. Comprising a series of large hilltop ...enclosures, probable burial sites, and associated features, the character and scale of the complex marked this out as an important focal centre in a region populated with some of Ireland’s largest and most spectacular monument ensembles, not least at the Hill of Tara, 15 km to the south-east. A more complete picture of the site has since been revealed through further geophysical survey followed by test excavations by the Discovery Programme’s Tara Research Project. Two trenches excavated across the hilltop enclosures in 2017 yielded evidence of four discrete phases of activity spanning some 3000 years, from the mid-4th to mid-1st millennia bc. During the Middle Neolithic the hilltop was encircled by a fenced enclosure (3635–3380 cal bc) possibly associated with the production of stone tools. At 250 m in projected diameter it is one of the largest enclosures of the 4th millennium known in Ireland. This was superseded in the Late Bronze Age by a far more substantial, 400 m diameter multivallate enclosure (1280–920 cal bc) representing the only excavated hillfort of its type in Meath. The hill was the focus of renewed activity during the Early Iron Age (800–520 cal bc) and later became central to the political ambitions of aspiring, early Uí Néill kings of Tara, achieving particular reknown as the burial place of their eponymous ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages. Developments at Faughan are illuminated further by a wealth of prehistoric settlement and ritual sites in the surrounding area, as well as early documentary sources, and, collectively, speak to a regional centre and gathering place with long-lived social, symbolic, and political significance.
Partnerships are central to the awareness, implementation and development of open and distance learning (ODL). It is an attribute that is distinct in the higher education sector, where ODL has made a ...large footprint by dispelling the notion that university enrolment is reserved for a narrow and elite demographic. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) operates to advance the uptake of ODL amongst the 54 member states of the Commonwealth. COL leverages its work through various channels, and the COL Regional Centres play a pivotal role as partners to COL and, in turn, to acquire new partners that may benefit from COL’s technical expertise. The Regional Centres, strategically located across the Commonwealth, engage primarily in capacity building for ODL. Their constituents include governments, institutions, and individual learners. This paper explores the role of COL Regional Centres to grow existing partnerships and to form new ones in the pursuit of ODL expansion. The formation of partnerships is understudied in the ODL space, yet it has been pivotal in augmenting the visibility and importance of ODL around the world. Drawing on data from an evaluation of three COL Regional Centres conducted at the end of 2019, and reporting on follow-up activities to the mid-point of 2021, this paper highlights how the RCs are achieving their mandate to engage partners and, in the process, have achieved short- and long-term outcomes since 2018. Findings provide insight into the effectiveness of RC activities, relative to the number of institutions and individuals reached, complemented with inputs from RC stakeholders, mostly comprised of RC staff. Recommendations are offered, with the paper positing that the role of the Regional Centres should continue and expand to other areas of the Commonwealth premised on their ability to build and sustain partnerships through capacity building efforts.
Effective student support services (SSS) are a vital means of enabling students to cope with the academic and personal pressures of distance education. This research explored the implementation of ...SSS at eight regional centres of the Namibia University of Science and Technology, in order to identify the challenges experienced and determine students' needs. It adopted a mixed methods approach and used a questionnaire to collect data from 109 students and semi-structured interviews for textual data from eight regional coordinators (RCs). The findings indicate that most students opt for distance education because it allows them to work and study at the same time. However, many of them take longer to obtain qualifications due to high failure and repetition rates. This could be linked to a shortage of resources and their underutilization by students, lack of collaboration between marker-tutors and lecturers, and poor attendance of tutorial classes by students and lecturers/tutors. The research proposes a model for effective implementation of SSS in order to improve students' academic experience and success rate.
The precariat and its institutional forms are ubiquitous at the youth labour market. This paper focuses on the youth labour market precarization in regional and urban centres. Cluster analysis of ...scientific publications selected from the scientometric Scopus database, as well as the interpretation of research articles made it possible for us to identify and establish five main thematic aspects (clusters) discussed in scientific literature: "mobility issues", " education", "socio-demographic problems”, “gender issues”, and “sustainability”. In the context of the analysed scientific works in the modern scientific discourse, we found that the formation of the precariat in modern regional and urban centres is associated with three key aspects: employment insecurity, insufficient income, and insufficient legal protection. Using a logit regression model, we identified factors that allows us to predict the likelihood of being included in the precariat group at the youth labour market. Overall, it appears that being a male and having a residence in the regional centre have a positive effect on the likelihood of getting into the precariat among young people, while work experience (work experience) and all types of education, especially higher education, reduce the likelihood of getting into the precariat. Our results might be important for urban planners and stakeholders as well as for the labour market strategists.
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