New East Manchester: Urban Renaissance or Urban Opportunism?

In this paper we ask how a shrinking city responds when faced with a perforated urban fabric. Drawing on Manchester's response to its perforated eastern flank —and informed by a parallel study of Leipzig—we use the city's current approach to critique urban regeneration policy in England. Urban renaissance holds out the promise of delivering more sustainable—that is more compact, more inclusive and more equitable—cities. However, the Manchester study demonstrated that the attempt to stem population loss from the city is at best fragile, despite a raft of policies now in place to support urban renaissance in England. It is argued here that Manchester like Leipzig is likely to face an ongoing battle to attract residents back from their suburban hinterlands. This is especially true of the family market that we identify as being an important element for long-term sustainable population growth in both cities. We use the case of New East Manchester to consider how discourses linked to urban renaissance—particularly those that link urbanism with greater densities—rule out some of the options available to Leipzig, namely, managing the long-term perforation of the city. We demonstrate that while Manchester is inevitably committed to the urban renaissance agenda, in practice New East Manchester demonstrates a far more pragmatic—but equally unavoidable—approach. This we attribute to the gap between renaissance and regeneration described by Amin et al. (Cities for the Many Not for the Few. Bristol: Policy Press, 2000) who define the former as urbanism for the middle class and the latter as urbanism for the working class. While this opportunistic approach may ultimately succeed in producing development on the ground, it will not address the fundamental, and chronic, problem; the combination of push and pull that sees families relocating to suburban areas. Thus, if existing communities in East Manchester are to have their area buoyed up—or sustained—by incomers, and especially families, with greater levels of social capital and higher incomes urban policy in England will have to be challenged.     

Exploit or Protect Airport Regions from Urbanization? Assessment of Land-use Restrictions in Amsterdam-Schiphol

Airports are no longer only places for take-off and landing, but increasingly became economic nodes in the urban development of metropolitan areas. Though it is debatable to what extent aviation growth is a cause or effect of economic growth, the reciprocal relationship cannot be denied. Most past developments near airports have been spontaneous and haphazard, but recently regional planners have increasingly included an airport focus. Airport planning aims to find a balance between exploitation of the economic potential and protecting the airport area from congestion and urbanization. This article examines the effects of land-use restriction policies near Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Within the Schiphol area, only airport-related companies are allowed to establish their business near the airport. These policies have been implemented since 1987, but their success or failure was never evaluated in depth. For the first time empirical results show that land-use restriction policies could ban most of the undesired businesses near the airport. However, despite varieties of implementation and interpretation of the testing, few differences in effects are found. This study shows that airport-relatedness testing is a typically Dutch planning instrument, but can also be useful for other international airports.     

Supply-Side Urbanization? A Pooled Time Series Analysis

Tests of Tolley's supply-driven urban growth model for expanding sets of countries for time periods varying from 1831–1980 to 1951–1980 lead to its rejection in most contexts. The exception is for higher-income market economies, where supply-driven and demand-driven determinants of urban growth are shown to alternate with long-wave periodicity: During epochs of structural transformation following stagflation crises, supply-driven determinants dominate; during periods of technological diffusion following deflationary depressions, demand factors come to the fore. But for middle- and low-income nations, whatever the cross-section and timespan, Tolley's hypothesis is not supported: Coefficients have the wrong sign, suggesting that urban growth is greatest when there are the greatest relative gains in rural productivity, but are statistically insignificant. The need is demonstrated for an urban growth theory that is substantially broader than normally has been modeled, with dynamics that are firmly grounded in an understanding of the periodic structure of economic macrohistory.     

Emancipation or Enclosement? The Spatialization of Difference and Urban Ethnic Contestation in Colombia

Abstract: The focus of this article is a paradox inherent in the political effects of spatial claims undertaken by multicultural policies in many nation states: though territory is considered as one of the primary means of achieving autonomy and self‐determination, it is at the same time a mechanism that encloses difference. Through a combination of archival and ethnographic research I study the political effects of binding indigenous people's minority rights with indigenous reservations in Colombia. I focus on analyzing the legal ways in which an “ethnic indigenous type” has been attached to an “ethnic indigenous rural topos” in the jurisprudence of the Colombian Constitutional Court. I also examine how ethnic groups in the capital city of Bogotá have questioned the multicultural ideals of indigeneity and the romantic desires of what an indigenous place should look like. Ultimately, my intention is to draw attention both analytically and politically, to the necessity of more thorough analyses of the consequences of strict forms of spatializing ethnicity.     

Green cities? Urbanization,trade, and the environment

Is urbanization good for the environment? This paper establishes a simple core–periphery model with monocentric cities, which comprises key forces that shape the structure and interrelation of cities to study the impact of the urban evolution on the environment. We focus on global warming and the potential of unfettered market forces to economize on emissions. The model parameters are chosen to match the dichotomy between average “large” and “small” cities in the urban geography of the United States, and the sectoral greenhouse gas emissions recorded for the United States. Based on numerical analyzes we find that a forced switch to a system with equally sized cities reduces total emissions. Second, any city driver which pronounces the asymmetry between the core and the periphery drives up emissions in the total city system, too, and the endogenous adjustment of the urban system accounts for the bulk of the change in emissions. Third, none of the city drivers gives rise to an urban environmental Kuznets curve according to our numerical simulations. Finally, the welfare‐maximizing allocation tends to involve dispersion of cities and the more so the higher is the marginal damage from pollution.     

Decline or Transformation? Archaeology and the Late Medieval ‘Urban Decline’ in Southern England

Archaeological evidence is used to examine how urban life changed in the later medieval towns of Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire in southern England, in light of ongoing debates about the existence of a fifteenth-century urban ‘decline’. The article proposes that rather than seeking evidence of decline, we should consider how and why experiences of urban life vary. The role of towns in commercial and political networks is highlighted as a key cause of variability in late medieval urban experience.     

Tourist or vagabond?

Abstract

Poverty isn't an option for the poor so why should it be one for the Church? How do we relate to the experience of being poor in the UK, to the phenomenon of globalization which increasingly shapes all our experiences, and to the task of theological interpretation of the signs of the times? This article explores dimensions of poverty in the UK and in particular the phenomenon of the invisibility of the poor, offers some explanation as to why poverty has grown substantially in the UK over the past two decades and seeks to set this within the wider context of the debate about globalization and its victors and victims—the tourists and vagabonds. Finally, it suggests that much of what passes for modern theology is in fact a form of ‘tourist theology’ and explores ways of creating a new ‘vagabond theology’ for the twenty-first century.     

Sociology or social science?

Modern sociology has set itself up as a specialised discipline dissociating itself from the broad-ranging theories of development of the early sociologists and breaking the links with economics, social anthropology and politics which had formed such an exciting unity in their works or at least in their lives.     

Sociology or social science?

Modern sociology has set itself up as a specialised discipline dissociating itself from the broad-ranging theories of development of the early sociologists and breaking the links with economics, social anthropology and politics which had formed such an exciting unity in their works or at least in their lives.     

Does the Structure of an Urban System Affect Income Disparities?

In this paper I analyze the impact of basic training and specialized training on the distribution of skill, income disparity, social welfare, and on the structure of a decentralized specialized city system. This is done in a spatial general-equilibrium model of a closed economy producing a single consumption good. The economy is populated with a continuum of unskilled labor with potential heterogeneous ability. The only consumption good can be produced by specialized technology or by general technology. Specialized technology requires specialized training that enables each worker to transform his potential ability into productivity. General technology requires basic training that enables all workers, independent of their potential ability, to produce the good at a constant marginal product. In this framework I show that such an equilibrium exists uniquely and is efficient. Then I characterize the conditions that lead to a different distribution of skills, a different system of cities, and generate income disparity endogenously. Thus, the paper presents a link among income disparities, social welfare, and the structure of an urban system that is new to this literature.