Adapting (Municipal) Form to (Provincial) Function: City–County Separation and the Introduction of the Consolidated Municipal Service Manager System in Ontario,Canada

In 1998, the province of Ontario introduced the Consolidated Municipal Service Manager (CMSM) system, which effectively downloaded the responsibility for delivery and partial funding for a range of social services to municipalities. Separated cities and counties—a unique system of municipal organization in Ontario that draws a sharp institutional distinction between urban and rural areas—were given a particularly wide range of discretion over the implementation of these services. A number of these jurisdictions experienced an array of problems reaching a local solution. Some even wound up in arbitration. This article examines the implementation of the CMSM, focusing specifically on the unique institutional arrangement found in counties with separated cities, finding that the provincial government overlooked the institutional design of city–county separation, hindering the policy downloading process. Overall, it is argued that the local institutional environment is key when shifting policy responsibility from central to local actors.     

身体、情感与空间：老年人休闲旅居的具身体验

在新的流动范式认识下，“旅居”的出游方式因为更加自由和舒适的体验得到老年群体的青睐，当前研究主要关注偏“精英”色彩的老年人“旅居”现象，聚焦探讨这些现象背后的系列问题，但忽视了现象本身。目前一种更加大众化的老年人“旅居”现象得到蓬勃发展，但对其深层内涵与价值的探究鲜有见者。研究基于具身认知，聚焦现象本身，通过改良旅游者具身体验研究框架，采用既定程序的文本分析方法对样本深度访谈内容进行分析。研究发现，上述现象可参与群体广泛，舒适的异地休闲需求显著，活动具有高度的群体情感特性，承接空间接近过程相对轻松，舒适停留条件良好，老年人的日常休闲活动和社交群体能够更为便利和大众化的在异地实现有效延续与发展。研究将该现象命名为老年人休闲旅居，其能够成为老年人居家养老生活的有益补充，有重要现实意义。     

Playing,parenting and family leisure in parks: exploring emotional geographies of families in Guangzhou Children’s Park,China

ABSTRACT

Children’s leisure activities in parks have attracted increasing scholarly interest in recent decades. However, relatively little attention has been given to the emotional needs and responses of children to their activities within a park’s play spaces. Moreover, what parents perceive, and how they themselves engage within children’s playing spaces, is under-studied. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in the Guangzhou Children’s Park, China, this paper aims to explore the experiences of both children and parents within this particular playing space. Supplementing participant observations with interviews and analysis of reviews on the Internet, the paper finds that children obtain a sense of family and company from their parents’ presence, and parents recall memories of their own childhood and obtain emotional recovery by visiting parks with their children. The findings suggest that play spaces are not only places where children play, but also where family life and childhood are ‘built’. The paper contributes to the existing literature by highlighting and examining the ‘child–parent’ relationship within playing spaces. By conducting a case study of a non-Western society, the paper encourages researchers to examine ‘child–parent’ relationships in a family leisure context, and to explore the everyday and emotional geographies of family life in contemporary China.