Hot Topics

Social cohesion depends on building bridging social capital. This Hot Topic paper asks what role schools can play in building it. Could co-location and other forms of collaboration between schools in different sectors and other public and private providers help to build bridging social capital and to increase the cohesiveness of communities?

This paper covers four aspects of cities in which space is of vital importance, either directly or indirectly: wealth creation, involving the links between macroeconomics and cities, and their role in generating innovation and lifting productivity; human and social capital, and in particular the benefits as well as the costs of density and diversity; democratic governance, referring especially to the capacity of municipal government to cope with the challenges of urban development and to promote freedom and the built environment itself, because urban space is an independent variable which c

This Hot Topic argues that studies of learning and work in advanced capitalist societies have generally been conceived too narrowly in terms of formal education and paid employment. In order to more fully comprehend current processes of learning and work and their interrelations, informal learning and unpaid work should be considered. (October 2005).

The Western Cape Province in South Africa aspires to being a learning province, called the Learning Cape. The Hot Topic locates developments historically, describes competing understandings of the Learning Cape, and analyses two strategies, which are illustrative of attempts to engage seriously with the concept. It challenges the PASCAL user community, who are mostly located in the advanced 'North', to think through how the ideas of the learning community/city/region flow out beyond the OECD club of nations, and what this means for all of us.