Flexibility in Planning and the Consequences for Public-value Capturing in UK,Spain and the Netherlands

In the 1960s, flexibility was often seen in planning literature as a negative feature, whereas today it is perceived by planners and policy-makers as a positive asset to cope with the challenges of growing complexity, opportunism and diversity in cities. The discussion seems to rest between two approaches. While planning should be flexible to facilitate a non-linear and multi-layered decision-making system, implementation should not be too flexible as the public sector might lose the controlling power and the private sector might gain increasing influence in urban development. This paper uses empirical data from case-based research on British, Spanish and Dutch urban regeneration projects, and provides an analysis of the effects of an important feature of flexibility on public-value capturing. Public-value capturing is the level at which public bodies manage to make developers pay for public infrastructure—infrastructure provision, public roads and space, public facilities and buildings, affordable and social housing—and eventually capture part of the economic value increase. This important aspect of flexibility is the level of certainty about future development possibilities before negotiations between developers and local planning bodies take place.     

Multi-Firm City Versus Company Town: A Micro Foundation Model of Localization Economies

When do we have a company town and when do we have a multi‐firm city? In this paper I analyze the impact of public infrastructure investment decisions on types of cities in a decentralized urban system. This is done in a one‐sector spatial general equilibrium model of a closed economy. Investment in public infrastructures reduces the fixed set up cost of all firms within the city resulting in multi‐firm cities. Thus, in this approach localization economies are modelled explicitly instead of assuming that larger industrial size within the city enhances productivity. On the other hand, when the infrastructure is not provided, a company town will be formed by a developer because of the fixed cost required by each firm. The decision of whether to invest in the provision of public infrastructures depends on the type of city that will provide households with the highest utility. This paper characterizes the conditions that lead to each of the two equilibrium configurations.     

尺度重组与地域重构:城市与区域重构的政治经济学分析

尺度重组和地域重构理论是当前从政治经济学视角研究全球化时代城市与区域空间重构和治理重构的热点理论。本文运用马克思主义地理学的研究方法,结合对当代资本主义运行方式的分析,对尺度重组和地域重构理论进行了深入的解析,并阐明了它们之间内在的、本质的联系。研究认为,尺度重组和地域重构是一个一体两面的过程,当资本为了克服危机而在地域组织上进行去地域化与再地域化时,地域组织(城市和国家)也同时发生了尺度重组,它们描述的是同一个资本转型的过程。     

Hanoi 5000 Hoan Kiem Lakes: Using Art to Involve Young People in Urban Futures

In March-April 2007, a group of six Hanoi-based artists staged an exhibition of entitled “Hanoi 5000 Hoan Kiem Lakes”. Its purpose was to explore young people's visions of the future of their city and to stimulate discussion of the city's development from a non-planning perspective. To prepare for the exhibition, the artists undertook a survey among the youth of Hanoi, distributing a one-question questionnaire and interviewing on and off camera over 250 young people, randomly and selectively sampled in parks, on sidewalks, outside universities, and in university and school classes. Participants were invited to a workshop held by the artists at the exhibition to talk about how ideas get translated into art. This exhibition provided a timely intervention into debates over the landscape of Hanoi, what urban public space is and what it should be, and how non-technical, non-specialist views of the city can be incorporated into urban aspirations, thus acknowledging and encouraging the visions of the young people who will be the city's future leaders.     

COLLECTIVE CONSUMPTION AND URBAN SEGREGATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: THE CASE OF TWO COLORED SUBURBS IN THE JOHANNESBURG REGION

In South Africa, the provision of collective consumption and urban racial segregation have always been closely connected. This article examines changes in apartheid urban policy with specific reference to two predominantly working-class colored suburbs on the periphery of Johannesburg: Eldorado Park, begun in the mid-1960s during a period of relative growth and stability, is largely an expression of socialized housing produced by an interventionist state and construction of this suburb, despite its racially exclusive character, appears to fit all too well within the theory which sees collective consumption in terms of the reproduction of labor power. However the apartheid regime, confronted by a deepening economic and political crisis, later withdrew from the provision of collective consumption, and appears to be abandoning its racist urban policies and ideology. Thus construction of Ennerdale, beginning in the mid-1970s occurred within a context of privatization and austerity. Analysis of the apparent “deracialized” and market-oriented provision of urban goods and services in Ennerdale reveals, at a local level, contradictions of South African crisis policies.     

Whose Wealth Is It Anyway? Mozambique's Outstanding Economic Growth with Worsening Rural Poverty

Despite rapid economic growth and massive inflows of aid, rural poverty in Mozambique is worsening. Agricultural production and productivity have not increased in the last decade. Use of chemical fertilizers and other modern technology is at a low level and decreasing. The present development model emphasizes that the role of government and donors is to provide human capital and infrastructure, while the private sector is responsible for economic development and ending poverty. The most recent national surveys confirm what is being seen elsewhere in Africa — that this non‐interventionist strategy does not raise agricultural productivity or reduce poverty. While 80 per cent of Mozambique's population is engaged in agriculture, this sector contributes only 20 per cent of GDP. This suggests that investments in agriculture are likely to generate pro‐poor growth, both to rural and urban dwellers. This policy failure is increasingly recognized, but donors and government have invested too much political capital in the current policy to change easily.     

Infrastructure shortfall in the United Kingdom: the private finance initiative and government policy

Investment infrastructure is essential for long term economic growth, sustainable regional economic development, and the quality of urban life. Yet the available evidence suggests a significant shortfall in current UK government investment on infrastructure, and a long term pattern of low investment compared to other European countries. Given the pre-occupation of the Labour government with managing expenditures within the parameters set by the previous government, and the vulnerability of any government to financial markets' valuation of current spending plans in relation to interest rates and currency exchange rates, there is little likelihood of major new public spending on infrastructure in the near future. In this context, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is very important for the government's plans to make up the shortfall. Although inherited from the previous Conservative government, the PFI has powerful advocates within the Labour government. The PFI is the formal mechanism by which government departments, agencies and instrumentalities, like the National Heath Service, utilise private sector investment capital and, in particular, pension fund assets, to revitalise public services. This paper sets out the institutional history of the PFI, beginning with the Thatcher government's Ryrie Rules, the efforts of the Major Conservative government to make it a viable operational practice, and the reasons why the new government supports PFI and has made significant moves to improve its effectiveness. Still we are sceptical about the future of the PFI. We show that the PFI has foundered upon fundamentally flawed design and the politicians' obsession with control of public sector spending. Notwithstanding recent `reforms', PFI may only succeed if the PFI process is decentralised and linked explicitly with regional development programmes. In any event, given the difficulties posed by the PFI process for private investors, perhaps different institutional responses to infrastructure shortfall should be contemplated, including the introduction of traded infrastructure bonds.     

Changing public accountability mechanisms in the governance of Dutch urban regeneration*

Contemporary urban planning dynamics are based on negotiation and contractual relations, creating fragmented planning processes. On the one hand, they trigger technocratic forms of governance, which require the ‘legal instrumentalisation’ of planning in a piecemeal approach ensuring legal certainty. On the other hand, these processes require flexibility to enable easy, fast and efficient forms of implementation due to the increasing involvement of private sector actors in urban development. This article unravels the influence of these conflicting dynamics on the fundamentals of urban planning practices by focusing on changing public accountability mechanisms created through contractual relationships between public and private sector agencies. Dutch urban regeneration has demonstrated changing governance principles and dynamics in the last three decades. Representing instrumental and institutional measures, we connect accountability mechanisms to these changes and argue that they ‘co-exist’ in multiple forms across different contexts. This article embeds this evolution in wider theoretical discussions on the changing relationships between public and private sector actors in urban governance relative to the changing role of the state, and it addresses questions on who can be held accountable, and to what extent, when public sector actors are increasingly retreating from regulatory practices while private sector actors play increasingly prominent roles.     

Putting the crisis to work: The real estate sector and London's housing crisis

The idea of ‘crisis’ plays an important role in academic and policy imaginations (Heslop and Ormerod, 2020), particularly since the global financial crisis. Across major western cities, at the same time as policy-makers have had to respond to ‘the (economic) crisis’, many have also experienced intense ‘housing crises’ and the acute divergence of average incomes and house prices. In response, cities such as London have become central sites in debates around housing acquisition by the ultra-wealthy, land value extraction and growing levels of unaffordability. However, much critical geography research on housing crises is state-centred or focused on civil society impacts, with relatively little reflection on the real estate sector and the work that crisis does as a narrative in shaping institutionalised and actor-centred practices. In this paper, we draw on in-depth research with developers, investors, and advisors in London to argue that crisis-driven policy responses have created political risk which is differentially experienced by actors across the sector, with large housebuilders and advisors benefitting whilst smaller niche developers move out. Moreover, we show how consultants, investors and developers have used the crisis situation to create new geographies, products and investor types in the housing market. These, in turn, require regulatory support and demonstrate the inherently political nature of crisis narratives' use. We use the London case to broaden understandings of the impact that conceptualisations of ‘crisis’ have on urban and regional planning practices, and how these influence and shape processes of contemporary urban development.     

Migration,Frictional Unemployment,and Welfare‐Improving Labor Policies*

Abstract. Studies have suggested that there exists job search and recruiting friction in urban areas. This paper constructs a two‐sector (rural and urban) model involving this factor and investigates how it affects migration and what the optimal policies should be. An analysis shows that frictional urban unemployment brings about intersector wage differentials and that an economy almost always has distortion in the absence of government intervention. Tax and subsidy policies that remove the distortion are explored. Setting urban wages appropriately is also shown to attain the optimum. Finally, we explore the criterion to judge whether changing urban wages as a policy, such as the minimum wage law, enhances social welfare.     

城镇基础设施供给的政治经济学分析及其管治构建

基础设施供给包括规划决策、生产建设、运营管理一系列过程。计划经济时期的基础设施供给程式具有历时分离决策的特点,并且政府包揽了供给的全部过程。由于我国行政管理体制滞后于经济体制改革,致使基础设施供给程式无法适应由于分权化和市场化改革所引起的基础设施供给约束条件与作用机制的变化,导致基础设施供给中暴露出诸多严重问题。论文从政治经济学的角度分析了产生这些问题的机理,并设计了一个可以解释这个机理的政府竞争基础设施供给的结构模型。最后论文勾画了一个由规划决策层管治和建设、运营、管理层管治构成的适应市场经济的基础设施供给管治结构,并就两个层次的八种管治模式进行了分析。     

Between Christianity and secularity: counselling and psychotherapy provision in Scotland

Counselling and psychotherapy services have become increasingly prominent within modern urban welfare. Although often perceived to be intrinsically secular, since psychoanalytic thinking and practice arrived in Scotland it has been shaped by the Christian culture it encountered. Early Scottish-born contributors to psychoanalytic theory, including Ian Suttie and W.R.D. Fairbairn, reframed Freud's ideas in ways that incorporated Scottish Presbyterian understandings of what it is to be human. A form of Christian psychotherapy supported by the Presbyterian, Catholic and Episcopal churches was being offered to members of the general public by the 1940s. Counselling provision expanded rapidly from the mid-1960s, with active church involvement. Tracing these developments via documentary sources and oral history testimony, I argue that counselling and psychotherapy in Scotland have never been secular. I illustrate evidence for ‘postsecular rapprochment’ operating since the 1960s, characterised by faith-by-praxis and collaboration between those with and without religious faith. I explore the interplay between religious and secular spaces in the development of this element of modern urban welfare.     

Third-world development: urbanizing for the future

This article reviews some issues reflected in the 1996 UN Habitat II agenda and recent research on urbanization. The themes of the 1996 Habitat conference were urban development, urban poverty, and governance, civil society, and social capital. It is expected that over 50% of total world population will live in cities in the year 2000. Cities are viewed both as engines of economic growth and centers of severe economic, environmental, and social problems. There is some disagreement about whether cities are rational economic structures or what the World Bank's urban agenda is and its relationship with macroeconomic policy. Discussions of global urban issues are criticized for their neglect of issues of equity and poverty, cultural diversity, and identity and representation. Habitat II also stressed urban sustainability. There is growing recognition that urban management involves more than the "Brown Agenda" of environmental and physical aspects of urban growth. Recent studies identify how politics and power affect people's access to basic urban services. Urban economic activity can also contribute to environmental problems. Urban growth affects the provision of health services. Although there is not a consensus on the role of cities in expanding economic and social development and the best management practices, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that urban processes are varied throughout the developing world. The links between urban and rural areas differentiate cities and expose the need to understand the role of intermediate urban areas surrounding and between larger cities. Poverty has become increasingly urbanized, but the extent of poverty is unknown. Habitat II was an unprecedented effort to engage nongovernment groups, local government staff, trade unions, and the private sector and to emphasize community participation. Networks of trust and reciprocity are key to solving poverty, inequality, and disempowerment problems.     

Reset redux: possible evolutionary pathways towards the transformation of tourism in a COVID-19 world

Abstract

With international arrivals surpassing 1.5 billion for the first time in 2019 the long-term evolution of tourism demonstrates prolific path dependence with a decade of growth since the global financial crisis. This latest period of unfettered international tourism development has come to an abrupt end as the impact of COVID-19 has brought the sector to a near standstill. As the world grapples with the realities of the global pandemic there is an opportunity to rethink exactly what tourism will look like for the decades ahead. Key concepts in evolutionary economic geography, especially path dependence/creation and institutional inertia/innovation, show variations in pathways for travel and tourism in a COVID-19 world. A path that leads to transformation in tourism can be realized if sufficient institutional innovation occurs on both the demand and supply side of tourism that can foster the emergence of new paths. COVID-19 presents a once in a generation opportunity where the institutional pump is primed for transformation. Whether that leads to a radical transformation of the tourism sector remains to be seen, but the imprint it will leave on both the demand and supply of tourism will have long-term, incremental impacts for years to come and ultimately move us closer towards the transformation of tourism.     

Equity in Regional Service Provision

Most transportation agencies stipulate that an important planning goal is to provide equitable and just public transport services. However, who is to be served and the type of service that should be provided has been ambiguous. This paper develops a methodology for examining equity in the provision of public transportation services. An approach for identifying areas in need of public transport is developed based upon the use of socio-demographic and economic information. Public transport need is then related to levels of access to service. This approach makes it possible to establish the degree to which public transport services may be considered equitable in relation to need and suitable access. A detailed analysis of the southeast Queensland region of Australia illustrates how this approach may be used to inform public transport decision making.     

‘Our land is only founded on trade and industry.’ Economic discourses in fifteenth-century Bruges

Economic historians study production, consumption, market phenomena, and economic policies, while what is referred to as ‘the history of medieval economic thought’ largely remains the province of historians of ideas. However, participants in medieval industry and commerce, informed by daily production, market and financial practices, also uttered discourses on the state of the economy and on the measures governments should take to resolve crises or economic decline. When the burghers of Bruges formulated their economic demands in times of crisis, such as during the revolt of 1488, their utterances reveal commonly accepted presuppositions of which institutional levels, the prince, the town, or the guilds, should stimulate the economy by reducing transaction costs.     

Out from the (Green) shadow? Neoliberal hegemony through the market logic of shared urban environmental governance

Recent work in critical geography describes the neoliberalization of urban social service provision through a transition from state provision to civil sector delivery. The concept of a ‘shadow state’ is deployed by some social theorists to describe this process by which nonprofits with government contracts increasingly adopt a state-oriented agenda for the execution of social entitlement programs. Possible linkages between the neoliberalization of urban environmental service provision and a shadow state are lacking by comparison. I, therefore, use qualitative data concerning three organizations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to demonstrate that civil sector groups are stepping up as local government diminishes its markets for municipal environmental labor. However, the diverse compositions of these shared governances potentially complicate the efficacy of a shadow state thesis for describing environmental provision in inner-city Milwaukee. Instead, I argue that a Gramscian interpretation of shared governance better accounts for the neoliberalization of environmental service provision as government agencies and civil sector groups relate to one another through hegemonic market logic. I argue that this provides a more nuanced picture of how governance concerning the urban environment is constructed by the government, market, and civil sectors to further shape human social reproduction.     

乌鲁木齐都市圈整合及其发展趋势研究

都市圈整合是在新形势下加强区域合作与协调,发挥都市圈整体竞争力的有效途径。随着西部大开发的深入,有效整合乌鲁木齐都市圈对新疆和西部地区经济的发展也是至关重要的。文章通过对乌鲁木齐都市圈整合的必要性的分析,提出了通过观念、产业、行政区划等具体整合措施,消除都市圈目前发展中的主要障碍,更好的促进乌鲁木齐都市圈的发展。文章的最后,结合现实状况指出了乌鲁木齐和昌吉将率先实现一体化发展,经济区将逐步形成以及圈内基础设施将日益完善等主要发展趋势。     

The use of regulation and governance theories in research on post-socialism: the adaptation of enterprises in Vyborg1

This article deals with developments since the collapse of socialism in Vyborg, the former Finnish city transferred to the Soviet Union's north–west frontier in 1944. It assesses how enterprises founded during the socialist era, their heirs, and new Russian and foreign firms, have coped with economic change and adjusted to the new economic system. It also explains the evolution of hybrid forms of activity on the enterprise level and their impact on the development of Vyborg as a local economy. This paper shows that the traditions of socialism embodied in many enterprises' adaptation strategies have helped the public sector in financial crisis because enterprises have continued the socialist traditions to take care of fractions of public infrastructure.     

DEVELOPMENT POLICIES,URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT AND DEFORESTATION: THE ROLE OF INFRASTRUCTURE AND TAX POLICY IN A TWO-SECTOR MODEL*

ABSTRACT. We model an economy of a developing country that produces an exportable manufactured good in an urban sector and a nontradable rural good. Manufacturing faces a fixed wage, which encourages urban unemployment. Changes in cultivated area in the rural sector involve deforestation or reforestation at frontiers. Government taxes to pay for urban infrastructure that assists the manufacturing sector. Increases in urban infrastructure may relieve or exacerbate frontier deforestation but expands manufacturing employment and reduces urban unemployment. Rural transportation improvements exacerbate frontier deforestation but expand employment in the urban manufacturing sector. A larger population, ceteris paribus, widens the rural-urban wage gap and exacerbates deforestation, but may cause manufacturing employment to expand or contract.