Speculating on Slums: Infrastructural Fixes in Informal Housing in the Global South

In this paper, we seek to revisit earlier work on the theory of rent, situating it in the current period of economic crisis and in relation to informal housing in the global South. More than ever, land is treated as a pure financial asset. Finance capital now exerts a profound influence over the production of space and exposes the built environment to the kinds of speculative binges that we have witnessed over the last decade. This is now as much a feature of living conditions in the poorest settlements of the global South as it is in the financial heartlands of the global North. We question key assumptions behind development interventions by arguing that infrastructural upgrading may decrease the security of tenure of residents of informal housing and call for a more nuanced approach that recognises the (post)colonial histories of urbanisation structuring access to land and housing.     

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.     

城市长租公寓的空间布局与影响机制实证研究——以深圳为例

长租公寓作为住房市场的新兴业态，是贯彻国家“租购并举”住房政策的重要保障。本文以深圳为例，基于迈点研究院的数据，通过GIS空间分析工具，探讨长租公寓的空间布局及影响机制。研究表明：(1)深圳长租公寓空间布局呈现空间集聚性、距离衰减性、类型分异性特征，具体表现为紧邻中心城区的空间集聚性，从中心城区边缘向外围递减的距离衰减性，酒店、公寓、房地产系长租公寓热点区呈中心城区向外扩展态势的类型分异性；(2)地铁、超市商城、常住人口是影响长租公寓空间布局的主要因素，其影响作用存在空间异质性；(3)运用地租和新消费者理论，从供求视角构建长租公寓空间布局的影响机制。本研究可丰富新兴住房业态空间集聚模式和中国住房研究。     

租购同权”政策对学区房溢价的影响研究——基于空间特征价格模型的广州实证

在公共服务对住房市场的影响研究领域，学校质量的资本化效应一直是重要话题。本文借鉴边界固定效应思路，使用广州市2016和2019年136所重点小学周边学区房与相邻非学区房的配对面板数据，利用空间特征价格模型定量测度了不同质量等级教育资源的资本化效应，使用双重差分模型检验了“租购同权”政策对重点小学学区房房价和租金溢价的影响。研究结果表明：①广州市教育质量已部分资本化于住房价格和租金之中，且教育资源越优质，资本化程度越高。②“租购同权”政策的实施，并未带来学区房房价和租金溢价的显著变化。③“租购同权”政策对不同质量等级的重点小学学区房房价影响存在异质性，政策实施后省级重点小学的学区房溢价上升，区级重点小学的学区房溢价下降。④“租购同权”政策对于不同区域重点小学学区房房价和租金溢价的影响无显著差异。本文的研究结论可以为制定教育资源供给与配置的均衡化和公平性政策提供参考。     

External validity of hedonic price estimates: Heterogeneity in the price discount associated with having Black and Hispanic neighbors

We examined the hedonic price of neighborhood racial composition across a sample of 180 US housing markets and compared heterogeneity in results. Statistically significant estimated price elasticities calculated at the mean ranged from ?0.61 to 0.2 and ?0.26 to 0.21, for increases in Black and Hispanic neighborhood proportion, respectively. Hedonic price discounts for Black neighborhoods were greater when land supply was more inelastic, when the land value share of the housing cost was greater, and in the southern portion of the United States. Hedonic price discounts associated with Hispanic neighborhoods exhibited no patterns relative to geography or housing supply factors.     

The Conservatives' Search for a Middle Way in Housing, 1951-64

The Conservatives returned to power in 1951, determined to createa property-owning democracy by freeing the market in land andhousing. But freeing the market proved to be no panacea andaroused much criticism. Most important, public housing continuedto expand as the major alternative to private home ownership,in part because the supply of private rented housing declinedprecipitously. Dismayed at this situation, the Conservativesbecame increasingly concerned to find an affordable alternativeto the continued expansion of public housing. To achieve thisgoal, they attempted to foster novel types of private ownershipin the form of societies that could provide either some sortof co-operative housing or rental housing at cost. Ultimately,these attempts to create a middle way in housing failed becausethey ignored the realities of the property market.     

American home: Predatory mortgage capital and neighbourhood spaces of race and class exploitation in the United States

Predatory home mortgage lending has become a central concern for housing research, public policy and community activism in US cities. Regulatory attempts to stop abuses, however, are undermined by claims that ‘predatory’ cannot be defined or distinguished from legitimate subprime lending, and claims that the industry performs a public service by meeting the needs of low‐income, high‐risk consumers (many of them racially marginalized) who would have been denied credit in previous years. We evaluate these claims in historical‐geographical context, drawing on David Harvey's theory of class‐monopoly rent to analyse what is new (and what is not) in contemporary financial exploitation. We use a mixed‐methods approach to (1) provide econometric measures of subprime racial targeting and disparate impact that cannot be blamed on the supposed deficiencies of borrowers, (2) qualitatively assess the rationale for judging particular subprime practices and lenders as predatory, and (3) trace the connections between local practices and transnational investment networks. The fight against predatory lending cannot succeed, we argue, without a renewed analytical and strategic emphasis on the class dimensions of financial exploitation and racial‐geographical discrimination.     

转型背景下原单位职工迁居行为特征与机制——以广州市海珠区江南中街为例

本文研究原居住在江南中街单位职工的迁居行为,浅析其形成迁居意向的过程和择居特征。结果表明:单位职工的迁居比例超过60％,且迁居空间模式以近距离的近域迁移为主,近岗迁移和郊区迁移为辅,迁居方向联系较弱。分析其原因:经济改革和城市经济发展是促成单位职工迁居的基本前提,迁居户的经济能力是根本的决定依据,决定了迁出地和迁居形式。本文调查对象-单位职工具有一定的职业及收入共性,因此他们在迁居时所考虑的因素还包括了居住惯性,家庭生命周期、生活方式改变的需求及作为单位职工特定的社会因素等。     

Workers’/Affordable Housing and the Development of Construction Systems

Whether motivated by commercial or social forces, the provision of housing for the working/labouring classes has required a balance between providing housing of a satisfactory standard and the cost which, while generating a rent affordable to the people for whom the houses were intended, gave a reasonable return on the investment made by the developer. This paper gives an introduction to the history of this branch of the building industry and describes by way of surviving building examples the ways in which the industry sought to reduce costs of both labour and materials. Focusing on the first half of the 20th century, the article discusses surviving examples of affordable construction designs, from the Cheap Cottages Exhibition at Letchworth Garden City in 1905 and the experimental system build housing in the 1920s and 1930s which often used concrete to immediate post-Second World War mass house-building designs.     

国内外城市居住空间研究的回顾与展望

住宅作为城市的重要职能和城市空间结构的重要组成部分,长期以来地理学、经济学、社会学、政治学等不同学科的学者一直关注城市居住和相关理论的研究。本文在全面阐述西方居住空间研究的理论、方法、研究领域和研究成果的基础上,对我国有关城市居住空间的研究领域和研究进展进行回顾,并展望有待进一步深化研究的领域。     

Racial rent differences in U.S. housing markets: Evidence from the housing voucher program

This paper exploits an unusually rich data set to estimate racial differences in the rents paid for identical housing in the same neighborhood in U.S. housing markets and to show how they vary with neighborhood racial composition. Results suggest that black households pay more for identical housing in identical neighborhoods than their white counterparts and that this rent gap increases with the fraction of the neighborhood white. In neighborhoods with the smallest fraction white, the premium is about 0.6%. In neighborhoods with the largest fraction white, it is about 2.4%. This pattern holds across different types of areas.     

从《吏民田家莂》看汉代田税的征收方式

简牍表明,孙吴把国有土地按质量分为“熟田”、“旱田”两类租给农民,征收不同标准的田租,其“熟田”、“旱田”的数额是人为地“定”出来的而非依据土地质量的自然状况而统计出来的数量;东汉自章帝以后把土地“差为三品”而税之,吴简的问世,间接地证明了东汉土地分为三等之后是分别征以不同数额的田税;孙吴的“熟田”、“旱田”之分是东汉田分三等的发展,尽管租、税性质不同,但方式一致。     

Class Monopoly Rent and the Redevelopment of Portland's Pearl District

This study examines the role of class monopoly rent in shaping the spatial form and pattern of urban redevelopment processes in the contemporary neoliberal city. Since an initial flourishing literature during the 1970s and 1980s, urban land rent theory has fallen from the analytic radar of critical urban studies since the early 1990s, with the influence of class monopoly rent often considered an aberration of how capitalist real estate markets normally operate, if not rejected. Consequently, class monopoly rent has never been systematically elaborated. Based on an empirical analysis of Portland's Pearl District, this study suggests that the influence of class monopoly rent in contemporary processes of urban redevelopment is far more pervasive than often recognised, representing a “standard institutional practice” that is endemic (rather than aberrational) to the working of neoliberal urban governing regimes, and embeds in the social and physical landscape in a multiplicity of ways.     

Determinants of Rent from Agricultural Land Around Metropolitan Areas

Three urban determinants of rent from agricultural land around metropolitan areas are incorporated into one rent model. The urban market factor and the transport cost as expressed in the Thünian crop rent equation are discussed in terms of their relevance to metropolitan areas. Then the effects on rent of the urban land market and urban economic change and their relationships with the market factor are examined. Graphic and mathematical expressions of a multideterminant model based on the combined crop system are developed, followed by a discussion on several variations of the model.     

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.     

AMERICAN POLICY FOR HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: A COMPARATIVE EXAMINATION

The United States and the major northern European countries all have developed a variety of strategies for governmental intervention in housing and urban development. These include rent supplements, subsidized mortgages, incentives to homeownership, land clearance, and construction and management of housing by public authorities. Despite similarities in the types of programs offered, the countries vary markedly in levels of public expenditure, consistency of policy, and institutional structure of the housing market. Differences in housing policies and institutions produce different outcomes. Settlement patterns, housing costs, level of home-ownership, and availability of housing for different income groups can be traced to these varying contexts for housing investment. Explanation of national differences lies in the differing organization of economic interests through the respective political systems.     

广州城市产业用地供应规模和结构时空特征及机制

根据2007—2020年广州土地供应结果,利用数理统计和空间分析等方法探讨了城市产业供地规模和结构时空特征及机制。研究发现：(1)供地规模和存量用地占比上升,供地向重点开发区集聚。(2)第二产业供地比重下降,制造业下降明显。(3)第三产业供地比重上升,流通和社会公共需求服务部门上升明显。(4)46种行业供地比重变化可分持续下降、持续上升、先降后升、先升后降、波动类型。(5)各圈层供地结构存在差异,但均以房地产为主。(6)供地组合可分5大类,10个亚类,以生产和生活服务部门为主。(7)供地受政策工具、土地市场、集聚扩散、产业互动、产业生命周期和特殊城市本底等方面影响。     

The Value of Rents: Global Commodity Chains and Small Cocoa Producers in Ecuador

Drawing on the Marxian theory of ground rent, this paper develops an analysis of “global commodity chains” (GCCs) with agrarian roots. There is an acknowledgement that the concentrated downstream governance of primary commodity‐based GCCs has created a set of “asymmetrical” power relations which blocks the transmission of value upstream towards small producers. This paper argues that this research under‐specifies what is meant by value and rent, and in doing so marginalises the analysis of value production before its journey through inter‐firm relations. We demonstrate the importance of theorising the value constitution of commodities produced on the land and the forces that contest the payment of ground rent and thereby shape the geography of GCCs. Based on empirical research conducted around Ecuador's “post‐neoliberal” cocoa re‐activation plan, we identify the class politics and production mechanisms through which value and rent escapes the hands of a stratified network of small owner producers.     

THE ROLE OF INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE SUPPLY OF HOUSING*

ABSTRACT As the housing stock in a city is duplicated, developers must devote greater amounts of resources to the provision of infrastructure. If the production of infrastructure is characterized by decreasing returns to scale, this will cause the price of developable land to increase. The conditions under which an upward-sloping supply curve for housing will result are discussed. Using cross-sectional data for U.S. cities from 1973 to 1982, it is shown that land prices fail to increase with the quantity of construction and that the price elasticity of the supply of housing is infinite.