Key Messages Current per capita funding models have an urbanistic policy bias. The concept of rurality is undertheorized for social planning purposes. Four key characteristics define rural service barriers: travel time, travel modalities, jurisdictional divides, and per capita funding models.

In this article we present the critical analysis of a recent methods overview, authored by McCrae and Purssell, as a means to highlight and address several important ambiguities and misunderstandings associated with terminology commonly used to describe sampling in qualitative research. We share several definitive understandings of sampling-related issues, which have been informed by a rigorous analysis of the methods literature from another earlier methods overview focused more broadly on sampling in qualitative research. Specifically, we address ambiguities and inconsistencies related to what can be sampled in qualitative research (the sampling unit), the concept of theoretical sampling, the term purposeful sampling, the appropriateness of initial sampling in grounded theory, and the need to distinguish between the functions of reporting one's sampling methods and describing the final participant sample. Finally, we argue that a continued lack of clarity in the language we use to describe what we do erodes the real and perceived quality of qualitative research. We point to the important role of methods overviews both for focusing attention on underdeveloped research methods topics and as a source of solutions to methodological problems.

Local governments play an integral role in providing public services to their residents, yet the population health benefits are frequently overlooked, especially when services are outside the traditional health domain. With data from the U.S. Census of Governments and national birth records (spanning from 1992 to 2014), we examined whether local government expenditures on parks and recreation services (PRS) and housing and community development (HCD) predicted county low birth weight outcomes (population incidence and black-white disparities). Hypotheses were tested using bias-corrected county-by-period fixed effects models in a sample of 956 U.S. counties with a total of 3619 observations (observations were defined as three-year pooled estimates), representing 24 million births. Adjusting for prior county low birth weight incidence, levels of total operational, health, and hospital expenditures, and time-varying county sociodemographics, an increase in per capita county PRS expenditures of $50 was associated with 1.25 fewer low birth weight cases per 1000. Change in county HCD expenditures was not associated with low birth weight incidence, and, contrary to hypotheses, neither expenditure type was linked to county black-white disparities. Further examination of the benefits to birth outcomes from increasing parks and recreation services is warranted.

In this article we argue that the 'just city' is one that enables individuals to exercise their citizenship, including making choices to participate (or not) in communal existence. However, inequities in resource distribution encountered by lone mothers on income assistance threaten not only individual sustenance and survival, but also the foundational fabric of our society. The implication that an active citizen is one who exercises their rights and responsibilities in a balanced way is problematic, and has the potential to add blame to poverty, justifying exclusion rather than inclusion. Using qualitative data from a longitudinal study of lone mothers in extreme poverty in Vancouver, British Columbia we illustrate how macro-processes within cities (i.e., delivery of affordable housing, food security, childcare, transportation) impinge upon the micro-processes of these women's lives (i.e., impacts on health, economic security, social mobility). Focusing on citizenship as a set of constrained choices challenges the policies and practices of social planning to consider how the scope of citizenship can be expanded by shaping key urban opportunities. Grounding the vision of a just city in the potential for personal agency suggests that policymakers and planners have a key role in shaping citizenship for the most marginalized and oppressed through a combination of providing supports and enabling opportunities in the urban environment.ABSTRACT TRANSLATION ¿La ciudad justa para quién? Reconcibiendo la ciudadanía activa para las madres en Canadá En este artículo proponemos que la 'ciudad justa' es aquella que permite a los individuos ejercer su ciudadanía, incluyendo la decisión de participar (o no) en la existencia comunal. Sin embargo, las inequidades en la distribución de los recursos que encuentran las madres