Metropolitan Colonisation and the Reinvention of Place: Class Polarisation along the Cessnock‐Pokolbin Fault‐Line

This paper examines the emergence of a sharply delineated socioeconomic and sociocultural fault‐line between Cessnock's former coal towns and the immediately adjacent Hunter Valley Wine Country, centred on Pokolbin. We provide evidence that divergent culturally‐related class identities act as mutually reinforcing constraints on reciprocity between job‐deficit former coal towns and the job‐surplus wine country. We relate this to a consideration of time‐space dimensions in the interdependencies between the class and place identities of Cessnock and Pokolbin. These identities have been influenced by metropolitan colonisation, with the markedly differentiated absorption of these two locales into the enlarged metropolitan population‐work‐welfare‐housing‐leisure agglomeration. Further, we propose that the former coal towns and the wine country can both be seen as place‐specific representations of wider class‐related changes within Australian society. Our interpretations are founded on three current research directions: first, the role of culture as a critical intervening variable in class identities and actions; second, the current flux in class formations, most notably the loss of self‐identity and solidarity in the working class and the emergence of a new middle‐class sector dedicated to self‐realisation and self‐fulfilment; and third, recognition of class formation as a geographical process.     

Welfare Reform and Economic and Housing Capacity for Low-Income Households, 1997–1999

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) marked the continued devolution of social policy to state and local government in addition to restructuring an ailing welfare system. Despite concerns that welfare recipients would find greater obstacles to economic stability as a result, declining welfare rolls have been accompanied by declining poverty rates over the past seven years. An important question is whether low‐income families have gained greater employment and housing capacity following welfare reform. Moreover, does capacity vary across states with different welfare policies? In addition, do families face greater economic vulnerability with respect to food scarcity and health care? This article uses the data from the 1997 and 1999 waves of the National Survey of America's Families to systematically assess differences in capacity and vulnerability among lower income families across different policy regimes. Using two measures of capacity for housing and employment, and quality of life, findings suggest that more stringent welfare rules are related to greater job and housing attainment but a reduced quality of life.     

Geoffrey Holmes and the Urban World of Augustan England

Urban history as a sub-discipline within history began to emerge in Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s. Attention initially focused heavily on the 19th century, but the Tudor and early Stuart town also soon attracted attention. Academic interest in the post-restoration and 18th-century urban world emerged a little more slowly, but the closing decades of the 20th century produced a mounting volume of research on the subject. Geoffrey Holmes was one of a group of post-war historians rewriting the history of Augustan Britain and re-establishing its significance in the longer-term development of the country. Though not a specialist urban historian, Holmes saw towns playing a vital part in shaping the character of the period. His research anticipated and inspired many of the facets of the rapidly-emerging historiography on the 18th-century town, intersecting with it in three particular areas. First, in demonstrating the important role played by towns, in particular as the home of four-fifths of the seats in the house of commons, in the broader political system; second, in highlighting the position of London at the hub of the Augustan world; and third in revealing the part played by towns, and especially those who inhabited them, in promoting social change at the same time as securing long-term political stability.     

Migrant household homeownership outcomes in large Chinese cities - the sustained impact of hukou

Homeownership by migrant households in large Chinese cities is increasingly evident and sometimes blamed for driving up local housing prices. Hukou reform grants local hukou to migrants in small cities while it allows large cities to set up hukou entry barriers to control migration. This paper explores whether migrant households’ micro-level characteristics and macro-level urban policies relating to hukou reform have any impact on their housing tenure choices. Using data from a 2009 survey of migrant households in six large cities, this study adopts logistic regression models to examine factors influencing labor migrant households’ tenure decisions. We find that household income and head of household hukou type, contribution to pension fund, and enrollment in health insurance all positively predict homeownership. Migrant households are more likely to be found in cities with larger population size. We argue that city entry barriers create new forms of institutional haves and have-nots and new forms of inequality. The sustained impact of previous hukou types suggests inherited inequalities through intergenerational wealth transfer, which calls for targeted welfare policies to mediate.     

Inter- and intraregional inequality in a spatial economy

In this paper, we develop a three-region economic geography model with workers of heterogeneous skills and mobility rates to consider how first-nature, regional differences impact both inter- and intraregional inequality. In our model, the skill premium within a region summarizes both the degree of intraregional inequality between mobile, skilled workers and immobile, unskilled workers and the interregional inequality through differences in the welfare of unskilled workers across regions. Regions with the highest skill premium have the greatest degree of intraregional inequality and provide the lowest level of welfare to unskilled workers, relative to other regions. We find that the skill premium will be higher in regions with a greater supply of unskilled labor, lower supply of housing, or are more remote. An increase in a region's housing supply or centrality will lower intraregional inequality and raise the welfare of the local, unskilled workforce. However, the magnitude of these changes are declining in the initial number of skilled workers in the region. The model is extended to consider imperfectly elastic housing supply. The larger the price elasticity of housing, the larger the range of values, such that more populated regions will host a disproportionate share of skilled workers, have lower levels of intraregional inequality, and provide higher levels of welfare for unskilled workers.     

Immigrants and homelessness—at risk in Canada's outer suburbs

Homelessness is a risk for growing numbers of immigrants. Largely as a result of low incomes, newcomers are more likely than the Canadian-born to spend over 50 percent of total household income on housing costs. Many newcomers suffer 'hidden homelessness'. They do not use shelters and other services, but share accommodation, couch-surf and rely on their social contacts for temporary and precarious housing. The adverse impact of low incomes on the housing experiences of Canadian newcomers is exacerbated in the outer suburbs of metropolitan areas where the supply of affordable housing is limited. This study explores the social backgrounds and housing experiences of immigrant households that are vulnerable to homelessness in outer suburbs through analysis of special tabulations from the 2001 census for York Region and interviews with representatives from local community organisations serving immigrant and low-income populations. The initial findings confirm that a high proportion of newcomers in York Region are at-risk of homelessness during the first 10 years of residence in Canada. Although renters are more vulnerable than homeowners, a substantial percentage of newcomers who are homeowners pay more than 30 percent of their total income on housing costs. The shortage of affordable rental housing in the outer suburbs exacerbates the impacts of low incomes, immigration status, household size and ethnoracial identities on immigrants' housing.     

Towards individualising couple finance: women’s housing assets and household decisions in Japan

Individualisation, which is increasingly promoted in European welfare states, tends to be absent from policy discourse as well as housing studies in Japan. It is largely because the ‘family as a unit’ is still a dominant approach in their household finance, social security and taxation systems, which also reflects women’s lack of home ownership. However, recent demographic trends such as falling marriage rates, low fertility and increased female labour participation indicate significant diversification in women’s life-course. Thus, today women making their own financial investment and house purchase have increasingly become popular practice. In this context, a new approach beyond the conventional ‘family as a unit’ may be required in the development of a new social contract. Drawing on data from qualitative research conducted among women in their 30s, this article explores the relationship between financial independence, household decisions and asset holding of partnered women in Japan, which reveals contested dimensions of women’s independence and autonomy in household and family life. Through the lens of home ownership, it considers the importance of promoting individual assets in order to foster gender equality in marriage.     

The Space of Local Control in the Devolution of us Public Housing Policy

Sweeping changes in national policy aim to radically transform public housing in the United States. The goal is to reduce social isolation and increase opportunities for low income tenants by demolishing ‘worst case’ housing, most of which is modern, high‐rise buildings with high vacancy and crime rates, and replacing it with ‘mixed‐income’ developments and tenant based assistance to disperse current public housing families. Transformation relies on the national government devolving more decision‐making power to local government and public housing authorities. The assumption here is that decentralizing the responsibility for public housing will yield more effective results and be more efficient. This paper explores the problematic nature of decentralization as it has been conceptualized in policy discourse, focusing on the underlying assumptions about the benefits of increasing local control in the implementation of national policy. As this paper describes, this conceived space of local control does not take into account the spatial features that have historically shaped where and how low income families live in the US, including racism and classism and a general aversion by the market to produce affordable rental units and mixed‐income developments. As a result, this conceived space of local control places the burden on low income residents to make transformation a success. To make this case, Wittgenstein's (1958) post‐structural view of language is combined with Lefebvre's view of space to provide a framework in which to examine US housing policy discourse as a ‘space producing’ activity. The Chicago Housing Authority's Plan for Transformation is used to illustrate how local efforts to transform public housing reproduce a functional space for local control that is incapable of generating many of the proposed benefits of decentralization for public housing tenants.     

The Historical Impact of Welfare Programs on Poverty: Evidence from the American States

Over the years, there has been a spirited debate over the impact of the welfare expansion associated with the War on Poverty. Many analysts have maintained that public assistance expansion during this period decreased poverty by raising the incomes of the poor (an income enhancement effect), while others have contended that welfare expansion increased poverty by discouraging the poor from working (a work disincentive effect). There has been considerable empirical research about the historical effect of welfare on poverty, nearly all of which relies on the poverty rate (i.e., the percentage of persons with income less than the “poverty threshold”) as an indicator of the extent of poverty. However, this work has not employed designs that allow researchers to sort out distinct income enhancement and work disincentive effects. We develop a model of poverty rates in the American states that permits estimation of these distinct effects—based on state‐level time‐series data observed annually for the years 1960–90—and we find that welfare had both effects during our period of analysis. We also calculate the net impact of increases in welfare benefits on the poverty rate—taking into account both work disincentive and income enhancement effects. Our results indicate that this net impact is dependent on three variables: the initial level of cash benefits, wage levels for unskilled workers, and the share of the benefit increase provided through cash rather than in‐kind assistance. Because of historical trends in these variables, since the 1970s welfare spending has become increasingly less effective in reducing the poverty rate. However, the significance of this result for policymakers must be tempered by evidence that flaws in the poverty rate as an indicator of poverty make it so that any finding about the net effect of an increase in welfare benefits on the poverty rate underestimates welfare's ability to lessen the true extent of poverty.     

TWO-EARNER FAMILIES IN THE HOUSING MARKET

The 1970's has been a period in which three trends have coincided: housing prices have been escalating, wives have continued to enter the labor force, and legislation prohibiting discrimination in mortgage markets on the basis of sex and marital status has been enacted. In this paper, we examine the role of the two-earner family–one in which both husband and wife work–in the housing market of the 1970's, and the interrelation of this household type with other factors shaping the current high demand for housing. We also speculate on the role of the two-earner family in the housing market of the 1980's. We conclude that two-earner families are in a position to increase their housing outlays in the future, that the continued growth in the number of two-earner families will add to future housing demand, but that many two-earner families may be divorced couples of the future. This suggests that, while there will be a strong impact on single-family home demand, there will also be some restructuring of demand toward rental housing and cooperative/condominium ownership.     

私有出租房屋的社会主义改造——以苏州市为个案的考察

私有出租房屋的社会主义改造是整个社会主义改造工作的重要组成部分。苏州市的私租房改造于1956年初开始试点,1958年"大跃进"高潮中基本完成。20世纪60年代前中期城乡社会主义教育运动发动后,房改逐步推向农村集镇,且政治色彩日趋浓厚。"文革"爆发后,在发动"二次房改"的同时,还冲占和低价收购了大量下放户的私有房屋。苏州市私租房改造的基本方面应予充分肯定,但也遗留了诸如自住与改造划留不清、私自降低起改点等问题。到20世纪90年代初,房改遗留问题基本得到解决。     

The specifics and spatial structure of circular migration in Russia

Abstract

This article aims at distinguishing recurrent population movements within the territory of the Russian Federation between urban localities of different sizes and rural areas in connection to the processes of urbanization, suburbanization, and de-urbanization. Incomplete urbanization and the strong polarization of socio-economic space in Russia have resulted in two powerful contradictory population flows: centrifugal seasonal sub- and de-urbanization and centripetal labor migration from rural and small towns to large urban centers. The article discusses three forms of recurrent population mobility in Russia: (1) daily commuting of urban and rural inhabitants within metropolitan areas; (2) commuting to large cities and their suburbs for long-term employment intervals (weekly, monthly, etc.), (3) second-home commuting to countryside dachas. Unfinished urbanization in Russia not only attracts rural and small towns’ population to major cities but also keeps it within the latter. It slows down the real de-urbanization and induces specific dachas (second-home) suburbanization/de-urbanization, with these processes being closely interrelated. An opportunity to earn money in cities together with the impossibility of moving to major centers due to expensive housing encourages households to remain in small towns and rural areas. Meanwhile, inhabited rural localities (even ones distant from cities) attract seasonal population (dachniks).     

House Types in Tanzania: A Century of Change

The spatial analysis of cultural change is the focus of this study. The house types in Tanzania and changes in their spatial distribution for the century between I860 and 1965 provide an important indicator of changing cultural variations on a country—wide scale. The housing oj Tanzanians is more likely to reflect their cultural traditions than houses in the industrialized areas of the world because the overwhelming proportion of the people build their own houses. Approximately 100 references from European explorers, anthropologists and governmental records, as well as extensive personal observations in the early 1960s are used to reconstruct the spatial pattern of house types in three general time periods. The house types of some groups have changed in response to cultural contacts resulting from movements of people and ideas. House type analysis based on the systematic use of a wide variety of sources enables the spatial patterns of historical cultural landscapes to be reconstructed and trends identified. Although this methodology can be applied in a variety of geographical areas, it is especially valuable for areas such as tropical Africa where most of the material culture does not remain extant for more than about one generation.     

快速工业化城市职住空间平衡与过剩通勤研究——以中山为例

过剩通勤是衡量城市居民职住空间组织和通勤效率的重要指标。本文以快速工业化城市中山市为例,采用2012年中山市交通调查数据,分析中山市职住空间平衡与过剩通勤状况。通过线性规划模型计算发现,中山市居民的通勤距离、过剩通勤率(E)、通勤容量(C_u)使用率均普遍小于国内大城市和西方城市。城市空间结构与土地利用、产业结构与就业结构对中山市的通勤特征的形成有重要的影响。过剩通勤各项指标与户籍、职业类型和家庭收入有显著的相关性。表现为家庭收入越高,过剩通勤率相对较高。机关事业单位和企业行政办公人员通勤效率较低,而产业工人通勤效率较高。非本市户籍人口通勤效率高于本市户籍人口。     

'We are faced everywhere with a growing population': demographic change and the British state, 1955-64

The early 1960s was a period of relative expansion for the welfare state, and the return to the use of planning techniques in macroeconomic policy. This has hitherto been explained by reference to a number of general causes. These have included party political electoral necessity, the need to gain popular support for the cold war by spreading the benefits of liberal capitalism, the power of welfare professionals, the growing realization that the post-war welfare state was not working as well as previously thought, and generational changes in politics and the civil service. Whilst not denying the importance of all these factors, this essay seeks to make clear the importance of another vital element in this story: the implications for the welfare state and the managed economy of the rise in the birth rate, and the perceived' population explosion', of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Statistical estimates are presented here that show just how large the implied expansion of the welfare state, and just how serious the pressure of a growing dependent population, would have been had the population predictions of the early 1930s proved to be accurate.     

The Social and Economic Performance of Australia's Large Regional Cities and Towns: Implications for Rural and Regional Policy

Australia's large regional cities and towns display wide variation in how they are adjusting to the socio‐economic transitions occurring in Australia. That variation is exposed using a multi‐variate model analysing performance on a range of socio‐economic variables over the decade 1986 to 1996 for 122 cities and towns with populations of 10 000 and above at the 1996 census. Those places are classified into seven clusters of community performance reflecting opportunity/vulnerability, and their spatial patterns are mapped. The resulting framework is then used to show how the recent geography of the socio‐economic performance of the large regional cities and towns has a distinctive selectivity and contributes to opportunity in some places and the vulnerable performance of others. The influence of that selectivity can be seen in the mismatched geographic patterns evident from an analysis of shares of national population and employment change, investment in non‐residential construction, levels of welfare dependency, and the ratio between household income tax generation and transfer benefits received. The paper uses the insights drawn from that analysis to pose questions suggesting the need to rethink national policy perspectives for addressing change in non‐metropolitan Australia.     

Time,hedonic migration,and household production

"A hedonic migration model is developed where regional amenities are viewed as influencing household production within the framework of the new demand theory. The inputs to household production are goods, time and housing. It is shown that economic growth in the economy as a whole will increase the relative attractiveness of regions that are relatively time-saving, in the sense that they have a lower time elasticity of household production. Hence, migration will flow into time saving regions and housing costs in those regions will rise as real GDP grows." The implied geographical focus is on the United States.     

Welfare accounting and the environment: reassessing Brazilian economic growth, 1965-1993

Few countries in recent decades have experienced economic growth as rapid as that in Brazil. The period spanning the late 1960s and mid 1970s, during which GDP growth was especially strong, is often referred to as the ‘economic miracle’. Yet, the use of per capita GDP growth as a proxy for economic development (or social welfare improvement) can be questioned on both distributional and environmental grounds. Scholars such as Ahluwalia and Chenery have noted that per capita GDP growth places greater weight on the income of richer income groups, and have proposed distribution‐neutral and pro‐poor alternatives. More recently, studies by the World Resources Institute and others have questioned the environmental sustainability of GDP growth and have introduced an alternative national income accounting methodology that factors in estimated losses associated with natural resource depletion. To date, no studies have undertaken both types of revisions concurrently, creating a revised national welfare measure based on per capita GDP, but corrected for both distributional bias and resource depletion. Such a measure is derived in this article and applied to the Brazilian case. The results cast doubt on the proposition that rapid economic growth in Brazil has resulted in comparable welfare gains.     

Long-term trends in planetary wave activity (2–15 days) at 80–100 km inferred from radio wave absorption

The daytime radio wave absorption in the lower ionosphere measured by the A3 method (oblique incidence on the ionosphere) in central and southeastern Europe is used to study long-term trends in the planetary wave activity in the period range of 2–15 days in the upper middle atmosphere. In central Europe we have found no trends in the 1960s and 1980s, but a positive trend in the 1970s (early 1970s- early 1980s); in southeastern Europe we have not established any trend in the 1970s, but a positive one in the 1980s (beginning in late 1970s). These trends are of non-solar origin. They are possibly an indication of changes of anthropogenic origin in the Earth's atmosphere.     

Engagement,estrangement or divorce? The new universities and their communities in the 1960s

The new universities of the 1960s were innovatory, in their curricula, architecture, independence and academic ambitions. They also marked a different relationship between universities and their localities. For a century, new universities had been predicated on local demand, whereas the 1960s universities were conceived of as national institutions meeting a national demand. This new approach to university–civic connections was sudden, novel and contributed to a sense of remoteness attached to the new universities. This paper examines how the different policy was formulated, predominantly by the UGC, and considers some examples of how the policy played out in practice.