Showing papers in "Urban Studies in 1996"

Urban Form, Energy and the Environment: A Review of Issues, Evidence and Policy:

Abstract: The spatial configuration of cities and its relationship to the urban environment has recently been the subject of empirical, theoretical and policy research. Because of the disciplines involved, r...

Ethnic Minority Business: Theoretical Discourse in Britain and North America

Abstract: One of the most novel features of recent labour market change in Europe and North America has been the increasing prominence of ethnic minority self-employment. Two decades of radical economic restructuring have brought about a marked shift away from employment in large ® rms to selfemployment in small ones; and, somewhat paradoxically, this trend has been most marked among members of certain migrant groups, often originating in the post-colonial Third World. At the most super® cial level this is evident in the increasingly high visibility, especially in the largest urban centres, of shops and services owned by immigrant-origin entrepreneurs. The South Asian and Chinese-owned small ® rms now so familiar a feature of the British urban scene have their counterparts in the North African and Asian businesses proliferating in parts of France (Dreyfus, 1992; Ma Mung and Simon, 1990), the Surinamese enterprises of Amsterdam (Boissevain, 1992), the Turkish enterprises of Germany (Blaschke and Ersoz, 1986) and above all the multitudinous polytechnic small business economy of North America, where well over 1m ® rms are classed as minority-owned (Light et al., 1994). In quantitative terms at least spectacle is borne out by statistics. In Britain the self-employment rate for people of Chinese ethnicity was recorded as 14.9 per cent of all economically active Chinese as opposed to 7 per cent for whites, while for Indians and Pakistanis the equivalent ® gures were 11.4 and 8.3 (OPCS, 1993). Comparisons with earlier benchmarks reveal these ® gures to be the product of two decades of rapid, sometimes breath-taking, growth (Table 1). Note here that the 1991 Census appears to underplay ethnic minority self-employment in comparison with other earlier or contemporaneous estimates. (See Blackburn, 1994; Curran and Burrows, 1988.) For the US, Light (1984) cites a dozen or so ethnic minorities as overrepresented in self-employment, with Jews (almost the stereotypical case), Chinese, Japanese and Koreans in the vanguard (see also Aldrich and Waldinger, 1990). In France too immigrant minorities are similarly prominent (Ma Mung, 1994; Boissevain, 1984). The overall impression is that ethnic minority capitalism is now virtually a standard feature of advanced urban economies and that, notwithstanding recession and economic crisis, it is waxing rather than waning (Ward, 1987a; Blaschke et al., 1990). Almost inevitably, the scholarly literature on ethnic minority business ownership has multiplied almost as rapidly as its subject

Manchester Plays Games: Exploring the Local Politics of Globalisation:

Abstract: Using the example of Manchester's Olympic bidding process, the paper examines some of the links between globalisation and what has become known as the 'new urban politics'. The politics of the city's Olympic bids powerfully symbolise many of the supposedly transformative features of the new urban politics, British-style, as the old images of municipal welfarist (bureaucratic) politics have apparently been superseded by those of a dynamic and charismatic (entrepreneurial) business leadership. But while there are superficial similarities between these developments and those highlighted by analysts of US 'growth coalitions', the Manchester case reveals how they are as much about struggles over the role, meaning and structure of the state, as they are about urban growth. Manchester's Olympic bid committee resembles not so much a growth coalition as a grant coalition. This said, it is important not to underestimate the significance of the new urban imperative to talk about growth in order to get grants.

Changes in the Structure of Public Housing Provision in Urban China

Abstract: Housing provision in a socialist country is generally characterised by the dominance of public housing. However, provision of public housing is a complicated process, which involves various social agencies. In the case of China, the simple notion of 'state provision' covers huge differences between municipally-managed and work-unit housing. The lack of understanding in the structure of public housing provision has led to unsuccessful efforts in promoting the 'commercialisation' of housing in recent years. This paper, adopting a perspective of structure of housing provision (SHP), attempts to examine the changes in public-sector housing in China and to reveal the critical role of state work-units in the SHP. Housing reform has led to some significant changes in the SHP. The transformation, however, is far from a process of commercialisation or privatisation of public housing stock. On the production side, work-units do withdraw themselves from direct involvement in housing construction. However, on the con...

The Process of Commercialisation of Urban Housing in China

Abstract: The role of the state in housing has been the subject of controversial debate recently in China. More and more decision-makers consider that the supply of housing should be left to market forces of demand and supply. Various new policies have been introduced from as early as 1979, designed to commercialise and reform the public-sector-dominated housing system. This paper provides a review of housing reforms and a systematic account of the key features of the commercialisation process. It focuses principally on the attempts to privatise public-sector housing in urban areas in the context of the major characteristics and problems of the urban housing system, the development of reform policies and legislation and current reform practice.

Social Polarisation, Economic Restructuring and Welfare State Regimes:

Abstract: The central argument of this paper is that it is misconceived to view social polarisation of occupational structure and incomes in global cities as either inevitable or as a direct product of econo...

Unravelling the Process of 'Partnership' in Urban Regeneration Policy

Abstract: In the UK, there is a political consensus that a multi-sectoral partnership approach is essential to achieve urban regeneration. As a term, however, 'partnership' is overused, ambiguous and politicised. The Conservative government has inscribed 'partnership' with a complex political agenda. It is not clear whether the politics of partnership are still dominated by a Thatcherite agenda of privatising and centralising urban policy or whether a new, more democratic era has been entered. The paper explores how the stakeholders in the central government-led Scottish Urban Partnerships conceive of the nature of their interrelationships within this political context. It also presents a conceptualisation of partnership processes which extends and refines the framework put forward by Mackintosh (1992). The paper concludes that the Urban Partnerships are essentially limited applications of the potential of the partnership approach.

Urban Design and City Regeneration: Social Representations of Entrepreneurial Landscapes

Abstract: Recent accounts of urban political change have been seemingly preoccupied with demonstrating the existence of a transition from managerial to entrepreneurial forms of governance, typified by the sp...

Suicide and Parasuicide in London: A Small-area Study

Abstract: This study discusses variability in the spatial prevalence of suicide and parasuicide across small areas in London in relation to the social and demographic composition of their populations. The focus is on the relative importance in explaining suicidal outcomes of variables representing respectively social deprivation, psychiatric morbidity and anomie (or community fragmentation), and of differentiation in the effects of these factors across sub-populations. There is strong evidence for such contextual effects—namely, varying effects of these socio-economic factors according to geographical setting—as well as for differential associations by age group, sex and type of outcome (suicide vs parasuicide).

New Urban Eras and Old Technological Fears: Reconfiguring the Goodwill of Electronic Things

Abstract: The literature on electronic telecommunications technologies has been infected by the virus of new era thinking, a virus which is simply another variant of technological determinism. This paper is ...

Reconstructing citizenship, the re-scaling of the state and the new authoritarianism: Closing the Belgian mines

Abstract: The paper explores the contested re-configuration of the position of the national state as a result of the reworking of the scales of governance. It is argued that the intricate relationship between recent changes in the 'scaling' of the national state and the formation of new and differently 'scaled' institutional forms takes place in and through processes of urban/regional restructuring as part of an effort to 'produce' globally competitive spaces. The rise of 'glocal' forms of governance is paralleled by the formation of new elite coalitions on the one hand and the systematic exclusion or further disempowerment of politically and/or economically already weaker social groups on the other. Such exclusive homogenisation of regional spaces erodes diversity and difference in highly oppressive ways. The glocal 'entrepreneurial' or 'Schumpeterian workfare' state becomes an 'authoritarian' state. This new 'post-Fordist (?)' form of governance is unstable and re-enforces fragmentation and tension in civil socie...

Workplace Location, Modal Split and Energy Use for Commuting Trips

Abstract: A study of six companies in Greater Oslo indicates that both the modal split and the energy use for journeys to work are to a high extent influenced by the geographical location of the workplace. Employees of workplaces in peripheral, low-density parts of the urban area are far more frequent car drivers and use considerably more energy for journeys to work than employees of workplaces located in central, high-density areas. A study of long-term consequences of workplace relocations within the urban area shows that the immediate increase in average commuting distance of a workplace moving to the urban fringe, has not been reversed by subsequent turnover and residential changes among the employees.

Partnerships, Business Elites and Urban Politics: New Forms of Governance in an English City?

Abstract: This paper begins with a review of the conditions which have led to a proliferation of partnership arrangements in English cities and the related emergence of new business elites with interests in urban policy-making. The paper reviews a series of recent studies of these phenomena and comments on the importance of local economic and political factors in explaining inter-urban variations. The paper then presents an analysis of political and policy change in Bristol in the post-war period, tracing the factors that have accounted for the recent, if tardy, rapprochement between the political and business sectors and the launching of a widening array of partnership initiatives. An attempt is then made to explain these developments using a number of different theoretical frameworks, in particular growth coalition theory, urban regime theory, and policy network analysis. The paper concludes with some comments on the relation between these trends and the suggestion that we are witnessing a transition from a Fordi...

William Grigsby and the Analysis of Housing Sub-markets and Filtering:

Abstract: The paper reviews post-war developments in the theory of housing sub-markets and filtering, emphasising the seminal conceptual and empirical contributions provided by William Grigsby. The study dis...

Living Together Apart: Residential Segregation in Mixed Arab-Jewish Cities in Israel

Abstract: This paper examines features of residential segregation in five mixed Arab-Jewish cities in Israel; the role of ideology and state politics among the charter group—i.e. the Jewish population—is considered to be a dominant factor in this social process. Utilising available Israeli census data supplemented by the author's own field survey, the study indicates that all five cities have experienced a continuous trend of high indices of segregation and hypersegregation. The spatial manifestation of this trend is a classic display of sectoral (but not concentric) patterns of residency. Concomitantly, the scope of both social and economic interactions between the two communities sharing the same urban space remains underdeveloped. The city has effectively provided a sense of local identity: both groups live in and are part of the same place, yet this space is not a locus for genuine integration. A situation of neighbours without neighbourly relations marks the residential reality of Israeli mixed cities.

Empowerment : Community Economic Development from the Inside Out

Abstract: Community economic development has achieved some enviable successes in both the US and Latin America. Community development corporations (CDCs) in the US are well networked among themselves and nurtured by a web of ® nancial intermediaries and technical assistance providers that channel resources and professional expertise to low-income neighbourhoods and communities across the country (see Wilson, 1995). In Latin America, most countries and many cities can point to their showcase low-income neighbourhoods where internationally funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have concentrated resources in creative programmes for community economic development, where one can ® nd local grassroots business incubators for hatching and supporting sectorally integrated micro-enterprises that share information, equipment, child-care and health services, and are governed through popular participation. Yet for all the growing sophistication and success stories, a sense of dissatisfaction has developed, perhaps most intensely among the `successful’ (King and George, 1987). In the US the feeling of malaise that comes with success in community economic development is one of selling outÐ to consumer society, to hierarchy and professionalisation, and to the non-pro® t funders themselves (Halpern, 1995). In Latin America, the malaise that comes with success is based on the awareness of asistencialismo, the realisation that rather than having empowered the low-income residents, the NGOs have made them dependent on outside assistance, even when the assistance itself is focused on providing the rod and not the ® sh (FundacioÂn Carvajal, 1995). Out of this dissatisfaction, new efforts have evolved in both US and Latin American low-income communities that point in the same direction: community economic development, if it is truly to empower people, must build community from the inside outÐ i.e. from the individual’ s realisation of selfef® cacy and interconnectedness with the larger community. Practitioners are discovering the pivotal role of the individual as subjectÐ not objectÐ of community economic development and social change. The urban economic development literature often leaves the individual to the domain of conservative `rational choice’ theorists (Sharp and Bath, 1993). Since conservative interest in the individual has emphasised the need for poor individuals to adopt the hegemonic values of the market economy, liberals have dismissed the interest as naive in the face of the structural and institutional impediments to redistributing power, wealth and income (Zippay, 1995). While conservatives

The University in the Metropolitan Arena: Impacts and Public Policy Implications.

Abstract: This paper estimates some of the impacts associated with a metropolitan university. The impact of the university in the metropolitan arena is conceptualised as a series of backward (expenditure) an...

Urban Economic Growth in Europe: Testing Theory and Policy Prescriptions

Abstract: A quite robust model of differential growth rates of per capita income in the major functional urban regions of the European Union is presented and tested for the 1980s. The results underline the important role of purely spatial economic processes in differential regional growth and suggest that the pattern of European urbanisation tends itself to generate systematic divergence of mean per capita incomes between neighbouring city-regions, even though the mechanism generating this divergence of mean incomes is not inconsistent with converging incomes for comparable individuals. In addition, the evidence is supportive of a spatial adaptation of Romer's endogenous technical progress model. The model is formulated in a way which tests policy concerns. In general, the results are supportive of European regional policy although the systematic spatial effects of European integration seem to be fading and extending outwards to near-peripheral urban regions.

Lending Jobs to Global Cities: Skilled International Labour Migration, Investment Banking and the City of London:

Abstract: The agglomeration of skilled international migrants in global cities' financial communities has parallelled the globalisation of financial capital, international markets and deregulation. International workers have clustered in global cities as a response to their geo-economic functions, and in particular those labour market demands created within transnational corporate headquarters. Within this context, this paper will provide a discussion of the significance of skilled international labour migration within a global city: the City of London's transnational investment banking community.

Going for Growth: Prestige Projects in Three British Cities:

Abstract: In response to the global restructuring of industry in the 1970s and 1980s, the elected governments of economically depressed cities have increasingly adopted growth-orientated local economic development policies. A key component of pro-growth local economic development strategies, adopted by UK city governments and central government agencies has been investment in, and promotion of, high-profile prestige property developments and civic boosterism activities. This paper provides a review of the local economic development responses of three UK local authorities (Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester) to economic restructuring and the intensification of inter-city competition. Through an examination of the three case studies, the paper highlights: the debate concerning the validity of pro-growth, local economic development policies; the rationales behind the adoption of such policies; the financing and implementation of pro-growth strategies; economic impacts; and the distributional consequences of pro-grow...

A Two-stage Housing Choice Forecasting Model:

Abstract: A new housing choice forecasting model is developed here to answer a practical question: how to forecast housing demand at a disaggregate level. Being different from the previous housing choice mod...

Ten Propositions in UK Housing Macroeconomics: An Overview of the 1980s and Early 1990s

Abstract: During the last ten years, macroeconomists have increasingly come to realise that there are important interactions between housing and the wider economy. In some cases, this realisation has come too late to avoid the severe oscillations in the economy that have characterised the period since the mid-1980s. This paper uses a macroeconometric model, specifically designed to capture the interactions, in order to reflect on the experience of the 1980s and early 1990s and to draw theoretical, empirical and policy conclusions in terms of ten propositions.

Measuring the Affordability of Home-ownership

Abstract: Typical measures of the affordability of home-ownership are based on aggregate data that ignore the distribution of incomes and wealth and the range of house prices. An analysis of household survey...

No Polarisation in Dutch Cities? Inequality in a Corporatist Country:

Abstract: In his paper `Social Polarisation in Global Cities: Theory and Evidence’ recently published in Urban Studies (1994) , Chris Hamnett criticises the `global city thesis’ . This thesis, most systematically, but by no means exclusively, phrased by Saskia Sassen, holds that the restructuring of the economies of dominant cities in the global urban hierarchy such as New York and Los Angeles, causes social polarisation. The decline of the number of jobs in manufacturing and the rise of employment in the service industries, especially in the so-called producer services, allegedly generates a bifurcation in the employment structure. The steady jobs in the Fordist factories have either been automated or relocated (Dicken, 1986), putting the traditional working class out of work. The emergent service economy, on the other hand, seems in need of both highly educated professionals and unskilled, compliant workers. The last category is, as the thesis suggests, recruited from the large and growing reservoir of migrants coming from Third World countries. The globa l city thesis contends that the fortunes of the middle class are at stake; for this stratum, Marx’ s maxim that `all that is solid melts into air’ holds true. The middle class faces the gloom y prospect of falling from grace, as the anthropo logist Katherine Newman so aptly called her book on downward mobility in the middle class (1989). Apart from the emergence of a polarised society, the global cities thesis claims that the developments in global cities are paradigmatic for those in other cities. The processes that cause the restructuring of the economies of world cities are not con® ned to these cities but permeate society at large. As Mollenkopf and Castells (1991) have argued, the interrelated developments of the globalisation of the economy, the revolution in informational technology, the growing importance of ® nance capital and the growth of international migration, eventually tend to make all cities `dual cities’ . What is already manifest and obvious in the global cities, is in the of® ng for cities at the lower levels of the globa l urban hierarchy. Hence, the best way to learn what is happening in cities all over the Western world, is to study global cities. Hamnett criticises the global city thesis both on theoretical and empirical grounds. As for the latter, he presents data on changes in employm ent structure, educational level and income for the Randstad of Holland. He concludes that: a The Randstad appears to have been characterised by professionalisation rather than polarisation, at least during the 1980s.o (Hamnett, 1994, p. 421). The absence of polarisation in the Randstad, even though it ranks high in the global urban hierarchy (cf. Hall, 1966; Shachar, 1994), would not only be a blessing of Dutch city life, but also an invalidation of the global city

The Housing Challenge in South Africa

Abstract: This paper considers the housing conditions inherited by the new government in South Africa and the challenge they present. It draws on primary and secondary sources, and on interviews with some of the key actors involved in housing policy. It examines contemporary housing conditions, and the colonial and apartheid legacy which largely created them. It goes on to consider the implications of the struggle under apartheid for improvements in living conditions, and to review developments in housing policy in the 1980s and early 1990s. The policies emerging from the first year of the new government are described, and the implementation of policy in the first two years is reviewed. Issues that arise are discussed, and the conditions required for the state, market and civil society to play their part in achieving the objectives of housing policy are considered.

Urban Power, International Networks and Competition: The Example of Cross-border Cooperation:

Abstract: The involvement of urban and regional governments in transnational cooperative arrangements and policy networks has led to considerable debate regarding the political and theoretical implications. This paper examines networking and cooperation between urban areas and regions in the UK and France with a shared sea border. Such cross-border cooperation involving local authorities in Europe is a growing phenomenon and has certain implications for the analysis of local and urban politics. Three study areas are examined in detail: the Transmanche region involving Kent County Council and the French region Nord-Pas-de-Calais; the Transmanche Metropole which includes Southampton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth and Poole in Britain and Caen, Rouen and Le Havre in France; the cooperative initiative between the English county of East Sussex and the French departements of Somme and Seine-Maritime. In all three case studies, the development of cooperation has been influenced by the availability of funds from the European Uni...

China's Urban Housing Reform: Price-Rent Ratio and Market Equilibrium:

Abstract: China's urban housing marketisation hinges on a sensible ratio of housing price to rent. This research derives a rational level for such a ratio and examines its distortions under the Chinese system. It shows that the prevailing housing price to rent ratios are significantly higher than the rational level for both subsidised and free-market housing. Unique Chinese housing market equilibria are analysed and policy recommendations on commercialising Chinese urban housing are suggested.