Financialisation, the valuation of investment property and the urban built environment in the UK

The financialisation literature has been criticised for its limited empirical base and its failure adequately to link the everyday world with that of high finance. The paper addresses these shortcomings by examining the calculative practice of property valuation. The way that valuations are performed affects their results and, therefore, the operation of the property market. The paper traces the evolving influence of finance capital on the valuation of commercial property in the UK by constructing a historiography of investment valuation since 1960. Traditional approaches to valuation have been increasingly challenged by those derived from financial economics. However, the former remains the dominant method for undertaking market valuation. Its grounding in comparison – a centring and standardising process – offers an explanation for some of the changes in the urban built environment that are ascribed to financialisation. This suggests that a more detailed and historically sensitive interpretation of financialisation is required.

Adaptive climate change governance for urban resilience

Climate change poses new challenges to cities and new flexible forms of governance are required that are able to take into account the uncertainty and abruptness of changes. The purpose of this paper is to discuss adaptive climate change governance for urban resilience. This paper identifies and reviews three traditions of literature on the idea of transitions and transformations, and assesses to what extent the transitions encompass elements of adaptive governance. This paper uses the open source Urban Transitions Project database to assess how urban experiments take into account principles of adaptive governance. The results show that: the experiments give no explicit information of ecological knowledge; the leadership of cities is primarily from local authorities; and evidence of partnerships and anticipatory or planned adaptation is limited or absent. The analysis shows that neither technological, political nor ecological solutions alone are sufficient to further our understanding of the analytical aspects of transition thinking in urban climate governance. In conclusion, the paper argues that the future research agenda for urban climate governance needs to explore further the links between the three traditions in order to better identify contradictions, complementarities or compatibilities, and what this means in practice for creating and assessing urban experiments.

Politicised pagodas and veiled resistance : contested urban space in Burma.

The urban landscapes of Yangon and Mandalay in Burma (Myanmar) exhibit a rich cultural layering and complex blending of urban forms and architectural styles. But while both cities today are shaped by contemporary economic and political realities, they also clearly reflect
their historical origins—Yangon as the British colonial capital and Mandalay as the last seat of the monarchy. Burma’s ancient religious monuments, monarchical and colonial heritage on the one hand, and new religious edifices, international standard hotels, commercial enterprises, new public buildings and satellite towns on the other hand, represent the two poles of the dialectic of tradition and modernity. The landscapes, as symbolic representations, have been appropriated by
the authoritarian military regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) for nation building purposes. But the urban landscapes are also contested and appropriated in symbolic ways and invested with meanings as sites of resistance and struggle by those in opposition, and
are thus contested sites where the power relations of domination and resistance intersect. The paper illustrates these themes with examples drawn from Yangon and Mandalay.

New residents—new city. The role of urban activists in the transformation of inner city Melbourne

This study of inner suburban residents' associations in Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s examines the role of social activism in shaping Australia's urban dynamics. It argues that the focus on gentrification as an all-embracing explanatory concept in urban studies in Australia and elsewhere has detracted attention from the importance of structural change especially the de-industrialisation of the inner suburbs and the influence of urban activists and residents' associations in this period. The article concludes that insufficient analysis of social and economic change and the limited recognition of the importance of diverse communities continue to limit inclusive policy responses to urban reconstruction in Australia.

Second city syndrome : media reportage of urban rankings

This paper investigates the popularly reported phenomenon of city rankings and, in particular, the category of the ‘second city’ that regularly features as part of this prolific evaluative discourse. Our paper proposes that the category ‘second city’ has a specific analytical value that has to date been underestimated in academic accounts (particularly in the confusing, interchangeable use of ‘second-tier’, ‘secondary’ and ‘second cities’ in the dominant urban studies literature). Instead, we are interested in how second city identifications permeate popular forms of urban comparison in some places.

The example of Melbourne (Australia) is used to investigate how second city identities are historically sustained through evaluative media representations. In particular we examine how, through their reportage of various world city rankings, metropolitan newspapers reveal and articulate a ‘second city consciousness’. How do media institutions, and more specifically, media reports, frame these urban rankings in such a way to confirm Melbourne’s similarity to other globalised places (i.e. proposing its status as a ‘world city’), yet also as a city also marked by a particular historical specificity? And how do they draw on already existing popular and political traditions of urban comparison? This article will identify and analyse the role of newspapers in perpetuating both formal and informal urban comparisons.

Access to social insurance in urban China: a comparative study of rural-urban and urban-urban migrants in Beijing

 Since 1958 the hukou (household registration) system has assigned Chinese citizens either a rural or urban status. Some studies argue that the rural-to-urban migrants in China who do not have urban hukou are not entitled to urban social insurance schemes, due to institutional discrimination, which applies differing treatment to urban and rural hukou (chengxiang fenge). Although rural-urban migrants participate less in the social insurance system than their counterparts with urban hukou, a closer examination of recent policy developments shows that migrants actually do have the legal right to access the system. This implies that discrimination between rural and urban workers has been declining, and distinctions based on household registration status are less able to explain China's current urban transition. This paper provides a new way of examining Chinese migrants' social insurance participation, by adopting a framework that includes both rural-to-urban migrants and urban-to-urban migrants, which are an important, but less studied, migrant group. Among our key findings are that urban migrants are more likely to sign a labour contract than rural migrants; urban migrants have higher participation rates in social insurance than rural migrants; having a labour contract has a greater impact than hukou status in determining whether Beijing's floating population accesses social insurance; and urban migrants who have signed a labour contract have higher participation rates in social insurance than either rural migrants or urban migrants without a labour contract. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Effects of intergroup contact on attitudes of Chinese urban residents to migrant workers

 One consequence of China's marketisation has been the emergence of a 'floating population' - rural Chinese who migrate to China's cities to work. Many urbanites have negative attitudes towards such migrants. To understand how these negative attitudes might be ameliorated, the paper employs Allport's influential contact hypothesis to investigate whether urbanite-migrant friendships affect attitudes. More negative attitudes were observed among males and older urbanites. There was no effect of simply knowing a migrant, supporting Allport's thesis that non-intimate contact is not sufficient to affect attitudes. Friendship alone did not influence attitudes, but interaction effects were detected between having migrant friends and each of age, income and education. Negative attitudes were reduced among urbanites in older, higher-income and higher-education groups if they had a migrant friend. © 2006 The Editors of Urban Studies.

Sex-biased space-use response to urbanization in an endemic urban adapter

Urbanization impacts on the composition and distribution of wildlife. The tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) is an endemic, nocturnal bird species widespread throughout Australia with recent research highlighting high densities within urban environments. The aim of this study was to investigate homerange size and land-use in response to a gradient of urbanization by determining (a) the key land-use types influencing home-range size and location in the urban landscape (b) whether urbanization impacts on home-range size; and (c) whether the response to urbanization is gender specific. Twelve birds, seven male and five female were radio-tracked within a study zone located in Melbourne, Australia. We used minimum convex polygons (MCP) 95% and 50% fixed-kernel isopleths to calculate home-range size and areas of core use within each home-range. In both the landscape and core areas of their home-range, birds positioned their home-range in areas with more trees, avoiding impervious surfaces and utilizing grassed areas. Male mean kernel home-range was 17.65 ± 4.35 ha and female 6.55 ± 1.40 ha. Male home-ranges contained higher levels of impervious surfaces than females. Modelling demonstrated that as urbanization intensified the home-range size of males increased whereas female home-ranges remained static in size. This research identifies land-use selection and highlights the possibility that spatial behaviour in the species is sex-biased in response to a gradient of urbanization. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

The contact hypothesis in urban china: the perspective of minority-status migrant workers

This study is the first to test Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis from the perspective of a minority group in China. Employing a sample of off-farm migrant workers in urban China, results indicate a positive effect on self-reported attitudes of intergroup friendship contact between migrant and local workers; and positive effects on self-reported behavioral interaction between migrants and urban locals of both intergroup friendship and intergroup nonfriendship contact. © 2011 Urban Affairs Association.

Urban Competitiveness and US Metropolitan Centres

This is the third paper Kresl and Singh have published on this subject. The first was for an OECD conference that was published in 1995. The second was published in Urban Studies in 1999. Hence in this most recent study they can examine urban competitiveness in the US over a period of three decades. Their methodology is distinctive in that it is statistical rather than subjective, as is the case with studies that use a benchmarking or a structural methodology. Their results can be used by city planners in design of a strategic-economic plan. They also capture the major changes in broad regional competitiveness.

The Centrality of Urban Economies to the Study of Competitiveness

In recent decades the role of cities and of urban areas in the enhancement of competitiveness has become steadily more important and central to policy formation. The study of urban competitiveness is of interest, first, because it allows us to more fully understand to bases for policy and, second, because it allows us to evaluate the performance of a number of cities so as to determine what policies lead to success and what factors lead to failure or to steady decline. This research should be of interest to scholars as well as to urban practitioners.

Urban Planning 1: Topics and Debates

The texts collected are a sample of the topics for study and debate that have been part of the Urban Planning 1 subject in the second year of the Bachelor Degree in Architecture during the academic year 2014-2015. These notes have been prepared by students as part of exercises of debate and presentation. The main aim of these exercises is to raise different questions about topics that have formed part of the discipline of Urban Studies for years. Items and articles which have been used for the discussion and preparation of presentations are some of those collected in the book "The city reader". Stout, F (2003) The city reader. Urban Reader Series. Routledge. London and New York.

Shopping malls and neoliberal trends in Southern European cities: Post-metropolitan challenges for urban planning policy

Whilst shopping malls have been explored at length by critical urban studies, there has been little exploration of their role in restructuring the practice of urban and spatial planning. This article uses the shopping mall as an object of study in the light of the neoliberal trends and post-metropolisation in Southern Europe, with the aim of exploring challenges for urban governance and planning practice and with a focus on the role of the ongoing economic crisis. A threefold exploratory framework – the ‘lost-in-time scenario’, the ‘messianic mall model’ and the ‘(im)mature planning explanation’ – is used to make sense of the local versions of shopping mall development in Lisbon (Portugal) and Palermo (Southern Italy). According to findings, we highlight the clash between the multi-scalar nature of shopping malls and the dominance of the municipal scale in regulatory planning frameworks, and the risk that shopping mall development (at least in Southern Europe) may replicate uneven development patterns, reproducing the pre-conditions of the crisis without helping to overcome it.

Problems and obstacles facing paratransit operators in a small urban area : final report : executive summary /

"July 1982."