Living in anachronistic space: Temporalities of displacement in Moscow's Soviet-era standardised housing

In 2017, the Moscow municipality announced the demolition of several thousand remaining Soviet-era, standardised apartments (khrushchevki). Known as the Renovation, the renewal project promises to replace the khrushchevki with new residential districts. Based on fieldwork in Northern Izmailovo, a district targeted for demolition, this article analyses encroaching displacement by foregrounding the temporal experiences of affected residents. Building on literature that explores the political underpinnings of discourse and aesthetics in urban renewal projects, with particular attention to Rancière's temporal politics, the article contends that the Renovation depends on the discursive construction of its targets as spatial anachronisms. This renders the Soviet-era housing blocks, and those who live within them, vulnerable to a spectrum of modernising aestheticising interventions—from minor ornamentation to wholesale demolition. Based on ethnographic data, the article shows how the initial stages of redevelopment have altered a local network of benches. For a group of long-standing, elderly residents, these disruptions have instigated more profound reckonings with their own sense of time in/and space, leading to an understanding that they, too, are seen as anachronistic features of the city. Paying attention to urban materiality on a granular scale, particularly in standardised housing estates, reveals the multifaceted temporalities that inform residents' engagements with the spaces of their home districts. The article argues that doing so counters the exclusionary temporal logic of the discourse of anachronism by denying its ubiquity. In turn, it speaks to growing geographic interest in amplifying alternative temporalities in the face of destructive, terminal change.     

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.     

南宁市房地产价格分布规律的机助制图研究与开发方向的探讨

南宁市房地产业经历了由沉寂、复苏、火爆到稳步发展的过程．各公司开发的房屋类型相近,但价格差异却很大,价格分布呈现明显的规律性：一是城市中心价格高,边缘与郊区价格低;二是东部城区价格高,西部城区价格低．主导价格分布规律的三大影响因子是地理位置、交通便捷程度和生态环境质量．南宁今后的房地产开发和城市规划建设一要顺应价格分布规律,优地优用、保障房地产开发的高效益;二要加强交通设施建设和环境保护．促进全市房地产的升值;三要因势利导,发展城市副中心,逐步形成多中心的城市建设格局。     

国内旅游：重新认识与发展构想

多年来,国内旅游业服务质量低,设施条件差,潜在市场不能及时转化为现实市场。本文分析了制约国内旅游业发展的因素和国内旅游市场的潜力,提出国内旅游业的发展构想。     

Linking polycentricity concepts to periphery: implications for an integrative Austrian strategic spatial planning practice

This contribution searches for a regional planning conception that allows for a mutual recognition and practical translation between strategies for urban regions and peripheries beyond separate urban and rural categories; taking the Austrian strategic spatial planning context as the example. For this, various notions of polycentricity are discussed and assessed with regard to periphery. The Austrian strategic spatial development concept ÖREK sets out a focused work programme with changing responsibilities and participation of actors. The objectives are targeted and the processes are implementation oriented. Amongst other topics, urban regional issues and peripheral, declining regions are worked on separately. A conceptually integrative, plan-like strategic instrument across the topics and for the whole of Austria is lacking. The ESPON notion of ‘inner peripheries’ is proposed as a complementary concept to the ESDP notion of polycentricity, helping to create a bridge between urban regional and periphery strategies. This has the potential to guide strategic planning practice efforts in Austria towards a yet missing strategic spatial plan for the whole of the country beyond urban and rural categories. Practice relevant conclusions related to the case of Austrian strategic spatial planning are drawn and a need for further, comparative research in a European context is identified.     

Informal institutional change in De Achterhoek region: from citizen initiatives to participatory governance

As in other European countries, the formal planning task of Dutch governments is subjected to devolution and austerity measures. Not only did these developments lead to outsourcing planning tasks to lower-level governments, also citizens are increasingly ‘invited’ to take responsibility for providing public facilities and services. In De Achterhoek, a Dutch region, these shifts are amplified due to population change and traditional active citizenship, and led to institutional change. Since a decade local governments stimulate citizen initiatives, under the umbrella of participatory governance. This process of institutional change did not alter formal institutions, but was the result of an informal and dialectic process between local governments and citizen organizations. In this paper, we will demonstrate the process of change and how it affected planning practices in De Achterhoek, building on theories of informal institutional change and its driving forces. The empirical part of this paper draws on the results of three focus group meetings, in which a diverse set of local stakeholders discussed the effects of change they observed and how it shaped planning practices. In the final section, we reflect on the degree of institutionalization, by examining the robustness and resilience of the observed change.     

Social sustainability tool for assessing land use planning processes

The aim of this paper was to develop a social sustainability tool to clarify what social sustainability means in land use planning processes. The tool was developed through a robust research process covering a large amount of scientific literature and built environment sustainability assessment tools. To assess how the developed tool works in practice, we used it as a coding system for the assessment of social sustainability in a case study from Finland. The case study includes the master planning process of a medium-sized city and the legal framework guiding it. The theoretical contribution of the paper lies in creating a holistic tool for the assessment of social sustainability in planning processes. This study also provides a strong practical contribution, as it goes beyond theoretical definitions to the pragmatic level by providing exemplary measures to be used in designing and implementing processes. Therefore, this paper is a valuable source for those stakeholders (for example planners, developers and policymakers), who struggle with the issue of the successful implementation of social sustainability practices, and it will help them to benchmark their processes against the themes found in the tool.     

The resurgence of regional design

Regional design, long a backbone for spatial planning, even if under other names, has become topical again for two reasons – as a key strategy and as a key tool in spatial management. This is due to several reasons. New conditions of urbanization that result from the convergence of several factors highlight the need for spatial strategy formation and application at supra-metropolitan scales. These new conditions include globalization, climate change, booming urban population, increased mobility and interconnectivity, and new infrastructure technologies. These forces driving urbanization today and into the future play out at the urban scale, which is increasingly encompassed in the city-region. The solutions to the impacts and problems that these forces cause must be dealt with by a strategic urbanism at a scale that matches. This scale of urbanism can be denoted as regional design. To justify these claims and to understand the origins of regional design and its relevance today and into the future, the master strokes in its history are presented next. After that, we discuss current concepts and practices in regional design. In conclusion, we offer answers to the question: why a resurgence of regional design?     

Improving land readjustment practice. Application of management models to Portugal

Whilst the advantages of the application of Land Readjustment (LR) are well known, there are nevertheless numerous countries in which application of LR is difficult or has not been successful. In its analysis of land readjustment constraints, conditions and the international practice, this paper contributes to improving the implementation of an LR system, particularly with respect to the management process. At the international level, management models in seven countries were studied: Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Sweden. In Portugal, three case studies in the municipalities of Almada, Coimbra and Lisbon were selected, with semi-structured interviews being conducted with the respective managing entities. The management models are distinguished by the type of initiative and leadership processes, relations among stakeholders, managing entities and operating rules. It can be concluded that the role of the public authority as the process facilitator from the very initial stages, the existence of a managing entity and a board of specialists, and the legal conditions governing expropriation are key factors for the improvement of land readjustment management.