Past,present and future revitalization trends in Canadian mid-size city downtowns

The article is a critical review of the literature investigating the impact suburbanization has had since the mid-20th century on the downtowns of Canadian mid-size cities and the strategies deployed to revitalize these districts. It demonstrates that large city downtowns are more likely than their mid-size city counterparts to enjoy conditions favourable to their success, hence the need to devise revitalization efforts tailored to the reality of mid-size city downtowns. The article identifies revitalization strategies adopted over the last decades, which mostly failed to reverse the decline affecting these downtowns. It then concentrates on the present, and likely enduring, revitalization model, which emphasizes hospitality, recreation, culture, services, and walkability. The article refines the understanding of the differences between mid-size and large city downtowns by concentrating on their specific dynamics and explores future revitalization options for mid-size city downtowns. It discusses the present and likely enduring absence of alternatives to the present revitalization model and highlights its equity downsides as it challenges the downtown low-income resident living environment.     

我国海洋旅游资源资产的产权界定与产权关系探讨

本文对明晰我国海洋旅游资源资产产权的必要性进行了分析,界定了我国海洋旅游资源资产的产权,明确了国家、经营者之间的海洋旅游资源资产的产权关系,为我国海洋旅游资源资产的产权管理提供了理论依据。     

Czechoslovak–Liechtenstein relations in the shadow of the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia,February 1948

When in 1945 the Czechoslovak authorities confiscated the estate of the Princes von und zu Liechtenstein, the two countries became involved in a dispute which had not been resolved until recently, at least on a diplomatic level. For several decades, the 1948 Communist coup d'état in Czechoslovakia dashed the hopes of the Liechtenstein family for a restitution of their confiscated assets. However, officials responsible internally admitted that the property confiscation had been questionable in the case of the Liechtenstein family. The court had not confirmed the confiscation until after the Communist coup. However, the Liechtenstein family did not renounce their claims, and after the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989 they brought them up again.     

The British commercial development industry

Academic and professional accounts of the commercial development industry often portray an implicit but false picture of homogeneity, when in reality the sector is highly diverse. This diversity has important implications for the production of the built environment, since the extent to which particular developers see themselves also as dealers or investors will colour their approach to a development project. Building on earlier work, this paper therefore presents a four-fold typology of the British commercial development industry, by distinguishing between property dealers, developer/dealers, developer/investors and investor/developers. Recent case studies are included in each case to demonstrate how the motives, operations and financial stability of each type of developer reflect this distinction.     

Preventive Intervention for a Group of Buildings in the Historic Centre of Manresa (Barcelona)

The preservation of old downtowns has become a necessity of growing interest. New urban policies have been approved in different countries in order to revive the old city centers and make them economically sustainable. In this global trend, the municipality of Manresa (Barcelona) developed an important urban planning operation in the old district that included the demolition of a group of existing buildings and the construction of a new modern one in close proximity to a group of old residential buildings which are cultural heritage of the city. As a consequence, specific areas of risk were generated which lead to the adoption of precautionary measures to ensure safety. This article presents the preliminary analysis, diagnostics and monitoring carried out on this group of heterogeneous old buildings, as well as the results and precautionary measures taken to ensure their safety. The article also provides a translatable methodology that combines qualitative and quantitative aspects.     

Frankish military duty and the fate of Roman taxation

Frankish kings exacted unpaid military service from their subjects in both Merovingian and Carolingian times. The basis for this right has long been uncertain. A study of the term ‘manse’ as a Carolingian measure of assets brings to light the ostensibly hidden property on whose basis Franks went to war. This military duty reached back to the origins of the Frankish kingdom, when a large share of Roman taxes was awarded in individual allotments to soldiers obligated to serve, otherwise unpaid, when summoned, and heavily fined if they did not. Both demesne and tributary manses – contributory units – were the main part of state resources applied to military costs. They cannot be simply envisaged as components of an agricultural scheme (grand domaine). A tax‐like military obligation was one among several institutions actively surviving from the fifth century to the ninth, and it suggests that Frankish government was more law‐based and administrative than is often allowed.     

Australian Capital City Property Development,Foreign Investment and Investor Attitudes

Recently there has been a substantial change in the role of foreign investment in urban property development in Australia. Now, about 50% of foreign investment each year is directed to urban property sectors, with Asian investors accounting for approaching 50% of this investment. This trend has coincided with the re-emergence of the property development sector from the trough of a recession in the early 1970s to something approaching a boom in the last two to three years. While there are considerable variations in the performance and prospects of the various capital city property markets, Australia is seen in general terms as being a favourable place for foreign investment in urban property development, particularly as a destination for long term equity investment. This paper examines recent trends in capital city property markets in Australia, and in particular the increasing importance of foreign investors. It also discusses the results of a national survey of property developers, investors and intermediaries, and investors, both local and foreign, and reports on their attitudes towards the various capital city property markets, and their investment behaviours. Attitudes towards the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) guidelines and controls are examined, and it is suggested that there is room for further substantial deregulation to encourage direct foreign investment in Australian urban property development.     

对我国不动产善意取得制度研究的再思考

善意取得制度,是近代以来大陆法系与英美法系民法的一项重要法律制度,其内容涉及民法财产所有权静的安全与动的财产交易安全保护问题。传统民法理论认为该制度的适用范围仅以动产为限,本文对此持不同观点,认为不动产也可适用善意取得制度。     

中国小产权房开发的社会网络研究——以杭州市城乡结合部村庄为例

本文选择了杭州市城郊结合部某村的小产权房开发作为研究案例,通过探索此处小产权房从网络构建到销售为止一系列的开发过程,来反映"小产权房"产生的背景与制度环境因素。研究发现,此案例小产权房的开发依托于社会网络形成并且运作。并且在开发的最后阶段,开发商通过两种途径,实现小产权房的进一步集中与出售,保证了小产权房的开发出路。作为时代的"产物",小产权房有其不合法性,也有其合理性。本文对小产权房的研究,对未来小产权房的进一步研究具有积极的意义,也为合理治理小产权房提供了有力的依据。     

THE EFFECT OF LAND USE AND ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS ON HOUSING COSTS

This paper examines the effects of various land use and environmental regulations on land and housing markets. Seven widely used techniques for controlling residential development appear to generate four “direct” and two “indirect” inflationary impacts. Land use and environmental controls directly affect the supply and cost of residential land, shift the cost of public services forward to developers, and increase delay and compliance costs associated with project evaluation. Development controls may also inadvertently facilitate monopolistic behavior in the development industry and predispose developers to orient their projects to high income groups onto which they can more easily pass along higher costs. The paper concludes by offering several policies for reducing the inflationary effects of environmental regulations.     

Science in Dispute: Debating the Authority of Knowledge in an Environmental Contestation

This paper is an examination of science, as it is understood and contested between conservationists and developers in an application to construct a salt mine in Western Australia. If the salt mine were to go ahead, it would have become the largest salt mine in the world, adjacent to a World Heritage Area. Thus, the application triggered significant local interest in the potential environmental impacts on surrounding ecological systems. As the only means for the public to have an impact on decision‐making is through the environmental approvals process, much of the debate revolved around the validity and legitimacy of knowledge gained through ecological science. This paper focuses on the ways in which the conservationists and developers moulded and shaped scientific knowledge to fit their opposing beliefs, values, and aims. However, rather than focus on the overtly political manipulation of science, I examine why particular interpretations of science are considered legitimate by some participants in the dispute, while others are not. In particular, I ask, what does it take for particular scientific ‘facts' to be considered legitimate? To do so, I examine how the conservationists and developers came to conceptualise and frame science within the dispute. I argue that for members of either group to consider any scientific knowledge legitimate, it is first judged on its ability to resonate with their own worldviews, experiences, and aim.     

Pension Fund Capitalism: A Causal Analysis

Since 1980, UK individual pension and retirement assets have increased about twelvefold to around 1.5 trillion. Over the same period, US household retirement assets have increased about tenfold to more than US$7 trillion. High rates of asset growth have also been observed for Australia and Canada. Notwithstanding their current high standards of living, countries in much of continental Europe have not shared in these extraordinary rates of growth of pension assets. In fact, many analysts believe that their long-term prosperity is threatened (relatively speaking) by inefficient, institutionally cumbersome finance sectors. While saving now for retirement has significant advantages for beneficiaries, less recognized is the fact that the growth of pension assets in the Anglo-American economies has profoundly changed the financial structure of these countries. In this paper I explain how and why pension assets have grown so large in the Anglo-American countries, beginning with a historical account which helps to identify the reasons why German and continental European countries (excluding The Netherlands and Switzerland) have not shared the same rates of growth in pension assets. In doing so, the paper develops a causal model which discriminates between various causes of Anglo-American pension fund capitalism: structural determinants (institutional framework), second-order determinants (postwar conditions), and third-order determinants (the flow of contributions). The identified causal logic integrates structure with historical and geographical contingency. Implications are also drawn regarding the significance of Anglo-American pension funds for global capitalism.     

Seeing like an investor: urban development planning,financialisation, and investors’ perceptions of London as an investment space

There is a growing orthodoxy that since the global financial crisis European policy-makers and planning systems have become more dependent on inward investment and the availability of global finance to fund welfare services and projects. This process of financialisation, it is claimed, is driven by the needs of developers and investors, who are focused on maximizing returns and limiting their social and economic liabilities. Planning agencies and traditional territory-based arrangements are viewed with increasing suspicion, as standing in the way of investment and acting as a brake on much needed house-building and regeneration. However, in this paper, drawing on detailed research with investors and developers in London, we argue that there needs to be a stronger focus in academic and policy writing on the multiple, variegated, and diverse calculations and framings that private sector actors take when making investment decisions. Too often their perspectives are caricatured and/or over-simplified. We show that and imaginations of planning and regulation are complex and that many firms have realized that market success results from becoming more deeply embedded in the local political, social, and regulatory environments in which they are investing. A greater understanding of these multiple forms of calculation, in turn, opens up opportunities for the maintenance and/or implementation of more effective forms of territorially-based soft and hard regulation. The paper concludes by outlining a broader research agenda for planning and urban studies.     

Property Sector Financialization: The Case of Swiss Pension Funds (1992–2005)

Financialization is a major trend in Western economies. This paper shows, on the one hand, how it changes the management criteria and, on the other hand, the limits to financialization in the property sector. Between 1992 and 2004, about 15% of Swiss pension funds' wealth was invested in property. As far as their investment policy is concerned, pension funds have two choices. First, they can directly own, and have management responsibility for, the properties in their portfolios. Alternatively, they can buy shares in mainly Zurich-based investment vehicles. In the first case, pension funds require staff with the relevant expertise along with the knowledge of property markets. Investments have a regional focus and are assessed internally by the funds. In the second case, pension funds are merely investors and investment appraisals and comparisons are made on the basis of market criteria such as yield, diversification in relation to risk and liquidity. In this case, property investments focus solely on the country's main urban areas.     

深圳商品住宅二级市场不规范行为及治理对策

深圳是房地产法律法规相对健全,市场发育相对成熟的地区。深圳房地产市场面临的问题,在国内有一定先行性和代表性。总结深圳房地产市场存在的问题,剖析其原因,提出治理对策,对国内其他城市和地区有一定指导和借鉴意义。本文利用2002年深圳市在售楼盘调查资料,归纳出了深圳商品住宅二级市场不规范行为的28种具体表现,揭示了相关制度不尽合理、开发商(中介商)存在投机心理、购房业主自我保护意识不强、管理部门监管难度大等原因,最后提出通过完善制度和加强管理予以规范和治理。     

Tuna Dreams: Resource Nationalism and the Pacific Islands' Tuna Industry

The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea was expected by many to lead to a drastic redistribution of income from the world's fisheries. This article explores the extent to which this happened by examining the case of the Pacific Islands' tuna industry. The analysis shows that even though these developing countries gained legal jurisdiction over some of the largest tuna stocks in the world, they encountered tremendous obstacles when they attempted to convert those tenure rights into concrete economic gains. Notwithstanding their success in organizing and co-operating amongst themselves, the Pacific Island countries (PICs) were unable to compel the distant water fishing nations to pay them more than a nominal access fee. When the PICs tried instead to develop their own tuna industries, they were disadvantaged by being located at the raw material end of the commodity chain. This case study suggests that a change in property rights is only a starting point for achieving increased equity in a global natural resource industry; not only do the new resource owners have to develop expertise in managing their ‘property’; they also need to develop a good understanding of the organization and operation of these natural resource industries.     

Women's Property,Women's Agency in China's ‘New Enclosure Movement’: Evidence from Zhejiang

Who gets what, why and how, when Chinese villagers' land is enclosed? Focusing specifically on changes in women's property rights and drawing on data from Zhejiang province, this article shows that state, village and household institutions interact to produce significant gender disparities in both the compensation paid to expropriated villagers and the registration of ownership of household assets. Yet it would be incorrect to conclude that, dispossessed, women thereby lack agency. Analysis of women's responses to expropriation suggests that by selectively deploying laws, rules and norms in different settings, women are influencing not only compensation distribution, but also the terms under which the state compensates villagers for their expropriation and the gender relations in which property is embedded.     

旅游开发、经营的外部不经济及其内化探析

旅游开发中的外部不经济将使旅游资源处于低效率或过度利用状态,资源配置难以实现帕累托最优（Pareto optimality）。旅游开发的外部不经济性具体表现为旅游开发经营中的外部不经济和旅游者旅游活动中的外部不经济,其根源主要是旅游资源产权模糊和虚置、旅游资源具有准公共物品的特性及经营者对资源成本与损耗的忽略。弱化或内化旅游开发中的外部性,可尝试在国家干预、制度创新、产权改革、资源核算和价值评估等方面采取措施。     

On voodoo economics: theorising relations of property, value and contemporary capitalism

This paper reflects on how we can productively theorise the contemporary treatment of property, by a range of different economic agents, as a locus for the attempted creation of economic value. Its argument is that the theorisation offered by David Harvey (1982) in The limits to capital has a continued and arguably even heightened relevance in the present-day context, but that this theorisation can be embellished with insights from the sociology of finance, particularly in regard to the power of representation. This argument is developed with reference to two parallel empirical 'stories' from early twenty-first century capitalism: the economist Hernando de Soto's influential thesis about the 'mystery of capital' and his related policy ideas; and the attempts of western-based financiers to extract profit from companies with significant real estate assets by separating those property assets from the operational side of the businesses in question.