Urban Studies

The Tea Party exploded on the US political scene with President Barack Obama’s election and scholarly research focuses on its role in national issues. However, Tea Party and property rights advocates, among others, also fiercely oppose sustainability city planning issues, recently having legislation introduced in 26 US states to stop such practices. They perceive planning as directly connected to the United Nation’s 1992 document, Agenda 21: the Rio Declaration on Development and Environment. The counter-narrative suggests the UN seeks to restrict individual property rights and American sovereignty. Meanwhile, Agenda 21-related planning is favourably considered and practiced worldwide. Through a mixed-methods approach using quantitative and case-based research, we track the opposition’s emergence through the introduction and sometimes adoption of state legislation. We draw conclusions and implications for research and practice using a theoretical framework routed in scholarship from planning, geography, political science, and communications/new media.

This paper argues that the relentless logic of commodification has served to undermine a key element of the social cement of contemporary capitalism: home ownership. In addressing this issue, the paper explores the development of the post war ‘social project’ of home ownership with particular reference to mature home ownership societies such as the USA, Japan, Britain and Australia. The paper then outlines the new fault lines and fractures which have emerged in post-crisis home ownership systems and the way in which a more vigorous, financialised private landlordism has emerged from the debris of the subprime meltdown. A key argument is that in a new and more intensified process of housing commodification, the social project promise of home ownership for a previous generation has shifted to a promise of private landlordism for current generations. In summary, the social project of Keynesian-embedded liberalism has been undermined by the economic project of neoliberalism.

In self-governing residential communities processes of governance through community appear to be triggering a contractualisation of neighbouring and demise in socially inflected relations. Research to date has examined the socio-political dimensions of neighbouring, highlighting governance frameworks and the social context as key forces shaping transformations in community practice. Meanwhile, the material space of residential estates has largely disappeared from view, assuming a static role as either a container for social relations or a symbol informing estate standards. This paper advances a different perspective, arguing that residential materialities must be taken seriously as agents within community governance and neighbouring. Through a case study examining the management of pets and nuisance noise in strata-titled apartments in Sydney, Australia, the paper shows that community governance takes place through the material environment. Understandings of community self-governance and the ‘building event’ are productively combined to re-place understandings of community self-governance processes.

Centre-left governments from the 1940s into the 1970s developed several large areas in the urban fringe of Dunedin, New Zealand, for low-density, mostly single-family public rental housing. The public housing in these areas is now accessible, well-endowed with natural amenities, and allocated to very low-income households. Analysis of the spatial variation in natural amenities with that of household incomes and house characteristics suggests large-scale effects of the public housing developments: diversion of higher-income housing to other suburban areas and possibly maintenance of older high-quality housing in central areas. Interestingly, centre-right governments may have opened the door to market forces by encouraging tenants to purchase their public rental house. We find evidence that recent general increases in house prices have encouraged relatively high-income households to purchase ex-state rentals in these high natural amenity areas.

This paper examines the impact of the auction process of residential properties that whilst unsuccessful at auction sold subsequently. The empirical analysis considers both the probability of sale and the premium of the subsequent sale price over the guide price, reserve and opening bid. The findings highlight that the final achieved sale price is influenced by key price variables revealed both prior to and during the auction itself. Factors such as auction participation, the number of individual bidders and the number of bids are significant in a number of the alternative specifications.

Gender differentials in commuting have been reported in the literature, often couched within the household responsibility hypothesis. This hypothesis attributes shorter commutes to females due to a disproportionate load of household responsibilities. The objective of the present study is to report research regarding commuting time in São Paulo Metropolitan Region, in Brazil. Based on microdata from the Demographic Census of 2010 the focus of the present study is on the role of marital status and presence of dependents on gender differentials in commuting time. Specifically, the research seeks to determine whether there is empirical support in this region for the household responsibility hypothesis. The results suggest that marital status exerts a stronger influence on the commuting time of working women, with the number of dependents (children and elderly) exerting a smaller influence on commuting time. Gender differentials are observed also for single and formerly married working females, which suggests other cultural or environmental factors not fully captured by the household responsibility hypothesis. Most studies, however, are set in North America. This research contributes towards the development of a broader, international knowledge foundation regarding gender and commuting patterns.

The success of compact development depends in part on accurately gauging its public demand and understanding residents’ preferences towards it. Drawing upon a stated-preference survey in the Wasatch Front region in Utah, this paper estimates preferences for compact, walkable and transit-friendly neighbourhoods through the application of a discrete choice experiment. Results derived from a latent class analysis reveal significant heterogeneity in residential location preferences. Overall, strong preferences for compact development are more likely to occur among families with fewer school-age children, low-income and renter-occupied households, and those who appreciate social heterogeneity and have less desire for privacy. These tastes are also associated with personal preferences for walking and biking and supportive opinions toward environmental protection and urban growth boundary policies. By comparing respondents’ preferences to their actual residential and travel choices in two contrasting subregions, we further address the complex relationships between environment, preferences, residential locations and travel.

In literature on neighbourhood effects and resources accessibility, the number of neighbourhood resources to which residents may have access are often estimated from spatial units whose constant size fails to account for unique ways residents experience their neighbourhoods. To investigate this ‘constant size neighbourhood trap’, we compared numbers of healthcare resources included in Constant Size Buffers (CSBs) and in Perceived Neighbourhood Polygons (PNPs) from cognitive neighbourhood data collected among 653 residents of the Paris metropolitan area. We observed that residents of deprived and peripheral areas had smaller PNPs than their counterparts. Studying residents assessments of the quantity of neighbourhood practitioners, we then assessed the validity of using PNPs rather than CSBs to estimate number of neighbourhood resources. Lastly, resource inequalities across the Paris metropolitan area were found to be far wider when considering PNPs rather than CSBs.

Using constant neighbourhood delineation can lead to inaccurately measured individual accessibility to neighbourhood resources and to downplay the extent of inequalities in urban resources.

In this paper, we examine the link between regional financial development and foreign direct investment using a large micro-level dataset of Chinese manufacturing enterprises. We first investigate the effect of regional financial development on foreign direct investment location choices, and find such development to significantly promote foreign direct investment. We then show that regional financial development also plays an important role in foreign direct investment productivity spillovers. Domestic firms located in financially developed regions gain positive knowledge spillovers from foreign direct investment, but the competitive pressure from multinationals exerts a negative influence on the productivity of domestic firms.

This paper analyses whether hosting the most prestigious European cultural event, the European Capital of Culture, has an impact on regional economic development and the life satisfaction of the local population. We show that European Capitals are hosted in regions with above-average GDP per capita, but do not causally affect the economic development in a significant way. Surprisingly, using difference-in-difference estimations, a negative effect on the wellbeing of the regional population is found during the event. Since no effect is found before the event, reverse causality and positive anticipation can be ruled out. The negative effect during the event might result from dissatisfaction with the high levels of public expenditure, transport disruptions, general overcrowding or an increase in housing prices.