Owners yet Tenants: The Position of Leaseholders in Flats in England and Wales

The position of flat owners inevitably raises complex issues in terms of the balance of individual and collective rights and responsibilities to be enshrined in housing law. These issues are resolved in various ways according to national policies and market frameworks. This paper examines the unique and unusual position of long leaseholders in privately owned blocks of flats in England and Wales. It outlines the major legal changes which have affected this sector in recent years, and assesses some of the experiences of leaseholders, based on a national study of 870 cases. The paper highlights the confusion surrounding the status of leaseholders as tenants and owners and assesses current proposals for further reform. The analysis is situated in debates about the complexity of 'tenure' as a category, and reveals the extent to which the concept embraces multiple meanings rooted in both legalistic discourse and popular assumption. The paper reflects on the methodological potential of approaching tenure as a construct in order to understand why the leasehold sector in England and Wales has endured and has so far proved relatively immune to attempted legal transformations of its character and function.     

Hong Kong's Gating Machine

Scholars have identified ‘gating machines’ or ‘gating coalitions’ that promote gated communities. Hong Kong's high-rise housing estates in the private sector are extremely gated. Evidence presented in this paper suggests the proposition that public ownership of land, Hong Kong's land leasehold system and the government's fiscal interest in generating maximum revenue from land sales play a pivotal role in explaining gatedness. The big developers prefer and pay premiums for large sites that permit mixed use developments and high site intensity, which by use regulations are required to be gated, while their property management subsidiaries also promote gating because such estates are cheaper and easier to manage. Thus, the extent of gatedness is largely the consequence of Hong Kong's use of land as a resource, its built form, the nature of its real estate and property management industries, and the articulation of these factors.     

Turkish electricity reform

Turkish electricity reform has progressed slowly due to internal resistance against privatisation, and gained momentum after Electricity Market Law of 2001, prepared in line with EU Energy Acquis and established required institutional and legal framework. Although the eligibility threshold has reached 39% market opening rate, the dominant position of public both as owner and decision-maker is still the major problem in the sector. Currently Turkey is self-sufficient in electricity, but likely to face shortages in 10 years if the growing demand is not met by either speeding the liberalisation process, or joining the South East Europe Electricity Market.     

The Limits and Potentials of the Housing Market Enabling Paradigm: An Evaluation of China's Housing Policies from 1998 to 2011

This paper examines the housing policies in China in the last 14 years in the context of the international debate on the World Bank's housing market enabling strategy to improve low-income housing provision in developing countries. A review of China's urban housing outcomes reveals housing price inflation and shortage of affordable housing in the fast expanding housing market. The paper analyzes policies to increase both demand for and supply of housing and argues that these policies have contributed to worsening affordability. This situation has been exacerbated by problems in the institutional framework managing the housing sector. The paper concludes that market enabling alone is not sufficient to achieve a satisfactory housing outcome for low- and middle-income groups in Chinese cities. It advocates more effective and direct public intervention for enhancing social housing provision and tightening market regulation to address both market and government failures to improve housing conditions for lower income groups.     

A Survey of Institutional Investors' Attitudes and Perceptions of Residential Property: The Swiss,Dutch and Swedish Cases

This paper provides evidence about institutional investors' attitudes and perceptions of residential property as an investment asset group in three European countries (Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden). These countries stand out, with an extraordinarily large institutional residential ownership, in fact, residential institutional allocation represents about 6 per cent, 2 per cent and 3 per cent of the total institutional investment in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden, respectively. Housing is the most important institutional property asset type in Switzerland and the Netherlands, comprising over 52 per cent and 50 per cent of their institutional property portfolios, respectively. In Sweden residential property plays an important, but not dominant role in the domestic institutional property portfolios, representing about 21 per cent of the institutional property holdings. Using a postal survey of representatives of pension funds, insurance companies, property investment and asset management companies the study analyses the attractiveness of residential property in terms of institutional investment goals. The survey examines the institutional investors' perceptions of housing investment, namely with respect to its returns, volatility, inflation hedging, liabilities matching and correlation with shares, bonds and non-residential property. Additionally, the survey looks at the institutional investors' experiences regarding the private rented sector. The survey suggests that investment in residential property equity is likely to be done through larger portfolios, which tend to invest in housing directly. Residential property is seen mainly as an earning asset group able to provide diversification benefits for investors even when portfolios already include non-residential property. The respondents are mainly concerned with rent regulation issues, the lack of well-structured investment vehicles is undoubtedly a less important problem.     

Welfare Safety Net or Tenure of Choice? The Dilemma Facing Social Housing Policy in England

This paper considers the future role of social rented housing in England. It is based on an analysis of policy trends over the past 30 years, and a critical examination of current policy dilemmas. The central contention is that there are fundamental tensions underlying the present government's policy objectives to maintain the ‘safety net’ role of social housing but at the same time widen access to the sector so that it becomes a more mixed ‘tenure of choice’. The paper charts the marked change of direction seen since 2000, with a switch from a highly rule-bound approach emphasising equity in housing allocations, to a more consumerist system stressing choice. Survey data and statistical returns are analysed to illustrate the changing mix of households entering social rented housing and to reveal the sector's varying role in regions characterised by contrasting housing market conditions. The paper charts the spread of the ‘choice-based lettings’ approach and discusses the possible implications of this development for the pattern of rehousing outcomes, and for the sector's broader role. It is concluded that, in higher demand regions such as London and the South, it remains very difficult to see how a social sector continuing to contract can widen its role from that of safety net for the most disadvantaged.     

中国风景园林法制建设的学理与研究方向

风景园林法制是从学科属性出发，探讨与风景园林 实践行为和现象相关的法律制度目标、原理、机制、体系等 议题的一种学理界定，是中国法制建设实践与理论的“横切 片”。法律制度在引导风景园林行业发展，规制规划、设计、 建设行为方面具有基础性地位。提出风景园林法制的立法综合 性、环境部门法两大学理特征，解析中国风景园林法制进程及 存在的典型问题，从目标和制度层面提出面向生态文明建设的 风景园林法制方向，提出制度意识与制度分析在风景园林教学 中的重要性，从法理学、法哲学、法律体系、具体法律制度层 面提出风景园林法制研究的重点领域     

What developing countries' past energy policies can tell us about energy issues today? Lessons from the expropriation of American Foreign and Power in Brazil (1959–1965)

This paper supports those who believe that history can provide invaluable insights for understanding recent shortcomings in the energy sector. Focussing on the political economy of Brazil's past energy policy, the paper analyzes how foreign companies, federal government, and international interests have shaped outcomes in the sector. For this, the expropriation of Amforp's in the Brazilian electric sector shows that what could be settled by a juridical agreement between the company and the government became an US–Brazilian diplomatic issue. The paper analyses these diplomatic agreements, showing how it changed the role played by the Brazilian state in the electric power sector.     

Private Rental Housing in Hong Kong

This paper examines selected aspects of housing policy and its influence on private rental housing in Hong Kong. Its ambitions are modest, in part because so little research has been conducted on the sector, as a consequence of the small size of the sector as well as the concentration of socio-political, economic and policy analyses on the other major housing sectors, namely public renting and home ownership. It is argued that a fundamental function of private renting, to provide a functional substitute and counter-balance to distortions in the market for private home ownership, has been systematically undermined in Hong Kong. In spite of its historical importance in meeting Hong Kong people's housing needs, the sector's decline has been steep and it can now be fairly described as a marginalised tenure, despite incomplete structural adjustment post- Asian Financial Crisis. It is suggested that a fundamental reason for the decline of the private rental sector has been the impact of government policy, which undermined the private rental sector and thus an important element of the market mechanism in housing provision. The government's ideology of home ownership has also functioned to transfer lower middle-income families into the owner occupied sector. Although the Hong Kong government has not been as overtly hostile to this sector as governments have been elsewhere, it nevertheless also seems to envisage no real role for the private rental sector in a housing delivery system molded by policy preference for home ownership, rather than fostering viable economic competition by also facilitating an efficient private rental sector.     

Explaining urban economic governance: The City of Macao

This paper traces the root causes of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) government's inability to regulate the city's major economic issues. This regulatory deficiency can be partly attributed to the city's 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule, although some of the problems have been caused by the casino boom, which began with the liberalization of Macao's gaming industry, and the government's failure to cope with ensuing dramatic changes. From a historical and institutional perspective, the author illustrates and analyzes the dynamic relationship between economic regulation and urban politics on a rapidly growing urban island facing various governance challenges.     

The redevelopment of peri-urban villages in the context of path-dependent land institution change and its impact on Chinese inclusive urbanization: The case of Nanhai,China

Following nearly three decades of urban sprawl, China's urbanization has entered a new era of land redevelopment that encompasses built-up land in villages in a manner that is unprecedented. Village redevelopment involves both dramatic institutional change and governance restructuring. The extant literature on this redevelopment focuses primarily on top-down initiatives launched by urban governments, paying little attention to villages' responses as actual landholders. Through a case study of village redevelopment in Nanhai, this paper examines villages' behaviour during periods of institutional change and their interactions with urban governments to shape final outcomes. Institutional uncertainty emerges during path-dependent institutional change, as revealed through the absence of effectively executed planning control and unclearly defined profit sharing. As a result, villages and urban governments sign incomplete contracts for entire redevelopment plans. Such agreements result in disordered competition for land rents that take the form of villages ‘holding up’ the government that has previously made a commitment to the village pursuant to the contracts. Villages maximize their profits and attenuate the government's role in ensuring public revenue, whereas government compromises related to development control challenge the capacity of limited public governance. The government's concessions related to profit distribution result in increased inequality between more prosperous villages and other groups, such as migrant populations and remote rural villages. Research findings contribute to a comprehensive understanding of newly created governance in redevelopment and call for a critical evaluation of existing urban renewal policies to ensure that urbanization is an inclusive process.     

How do institutional pressures moderate the impacts of relational governance on the performance of international projects? An empirical assessment

Relational governance has been considered a major governance strategy to mitigate the increasing contractual hazards in today's complex and volatile markets. In international projects, the effectiveness of relational governance can be much complicated by the host country's institutional environments, especially when trust and relational norms are treated as different types of relational governance. This research aims to study empirically how institutional pressures may affect the effectiveness of trust and relational norms and to form a contingency theory of relational governance. In this paper, an empirical analysis was conducted to test and measure the moderating effects of institutional pressures on the performance impacts of trust and relational norms. The results show that institutional pressures positively moderate the impacts of trust but negatively moderate the impacts of relational norms, indicating that trust and relational norms function and benefit projects differently and should be employed differently contingent on the institutional environments.     

China's textbook approach to regulatory reform of the natural gas market

Natural gas, as a transition fuel, is considered essential for China's decarbonization and local air protection policy, yet the regulatory structure China relies on to promote gas use remains under-researched. China's central government recognizes the need for market-based reforms of the gas sector, but what regulatory and policy adjustments are necessary to reorganize gas supply on a market basis? The textbook approach to energy market reform, and its implementation in the European Union, provides important guidance on how to create a regulatory basis to support competition in gas supply, provided national institutional characteristics are taken into account. This article engages in a comparative analysis of China's gas market reform policies and their implementation at the provincial level, focusing on Guangdong, a laboratory of economic reforms in China. The analysis demonstrates that reforms in 2019–2021 integrated key aspects of the textbook model in China's gas regulations, including third-party access, price deregulation and ownership unbundling. However, the textbook is of limited use to address remaining institutional barriers to reform, including resistance of distribution monopolies to competition from state-owned enterprises. Guangdong's experience shows that reform is possible, but only if accompanied by institutional and pricing adjustments reconciling vested interests with competition.     

The changing role of builders merchants in the construction supply chain

Builders merchants are an integral part of the construction industry, yet rarely are they consulted when discussions take place on the future of the construction industry. Throughout history, builders merchants have played a dominant role in the construction industry, initially as an intermediary between the artisan and the buyer, and more recently as a source of working capital for contracting firms. The merchanting industry currently is undergoing considerable change. The depressed construction market and the failure of the housing repair and maintenance sector to recover in the first half of the 1990's as activity in the private non-housing repair and maintenance sector has increased, has raised competition between merchants. The major building merchants are becoming larger by acquisition and merger, the smaller merchants are seeking niche areas, and the medium-size firms are under serious threat from acquisition by the larger merchanting firms. The trend towards consolidation in the sector, driven by the need to reduce costs, has meant that the large merchanting firms now control around 60% of the building materials market sales. Factoring is a growing trend, particularly with smaller companies sourcing goods from the cheapest source. The larger merchants have to respond by sourcing goods from the lowest cost base, irrespective of whether they buy from overseas markets. This paper analyses the UK builders merchants sector and evaluates the important role played in the supply chain.     

The Impact of Contamination on the Canton/ Southeast Baltimore Land Market

Data from one industrial district in Baltimore can show the impact of contamination on demand for and supply of industrial land. A survey that covered 69% of the land in Canton/ Southeast Baltimore found that land purchases and redevelopment are occurring on the area's largest parcels when sellers are willing to lower their prices to compensate for the risks and costs associated with owning a site with a history of contamination. Brownfield sites sold for an average of 55% of the average price per acre of clean sites, and those that sold had an average sale price of 25% of the average price per acre of contaminated sites that did not sell. We found little evidence of land hoarding by the private sector. Surprisingly, the City of Baltimore appears to be more reluctant to redevelop contaminated parcels than does the private sector. We conclude that documented land contamination is not deterring buyers from purchasing land in the area. This analysis was conducted prior to the passage of Maryland's 1997 Voluntary Cleanup Act, which limits an owner's legal liability for future remediation costs once an agreed upon standard of cleanup has been met.     

Efficiency in Brazil's water and sanitation sector and its relationship with regional provision,property and the independence of operators

The purpose of this paper is to assess the comparative efficiency of Brazil's water and sanitation sector. We run a Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) model for a panel of 127 providers covering more than 70 percent of the country's urban population in the period 2003–2010. We use a database built on the National System of Sanitation Statistics (SNIS). The model is fitting and shows a modest efficiency average. The study has policy implications in the discussion of state-level run v. municipal-level run, government-owned v. private-provision, and corporatized providers v. dependent ones. The optimal industrial organization of the sector is discussed from the efficiency perspective. We find that regional and micro-regional firms' have lower costs than municipal providers. Administrative independence seems not relevant when explaining the cost structure, but ownership is. The joint provision of water and sanitation results in higher fixed costs compared to water-only operators. We find that there are not regional differences in cost structures. However, there are slight variations in the efficiency levels and in their dispersion in each region. Finally, inefficiency decreased at a rate of 4.9 percent per year during the time frame under study.     

Myths and Reality: Anti-social Behaviour in Scotland

There has been widespread debate in Britain about the problems caused by 'anti-social' neighbours. This paper considers the definitions of anti-social behaviour and possible causal factors before going on to investigate the basis for some of the most commonly held views about the issue. It concludes that it is more useful to consider the problem as comprising three distinct but related phenomena of neighbour disputes, neighbourhood problems and crime. Although the causal factors link to the wider debate about residualisation, solutions have focused on tightening legal sanctions rather than on wider societal problems. The limited research evidence does not support views that problems only occur in public sector estates, or that drugs, community care policies, lifestyle differences and lack of tolerance are major factors. In addition, landlords were not developing preventive measures or using existing legal sanctions effectively.     

Diffusion agents and institutional change: The variable influence of independent regulatory agencies across sectors in India

The aim of this study is to explore variations in the influence of Independent Regulatory Agencies (IRAs) in regulatory arrangements beyond functional explanations, focusing on six sectors in India. This article maps regulatory arrangements in India using measures of concentration, and coordination to assess actor influence. We observe a correlation between the nature of diffusion agents and the variable influence of IRAs within the regulatory arrangement. To investigate this correlation, research on channels of transfer is juxtaposed with a theory of institutional change. Channels of transfer can induce a type of institutional change that can contribute to explaining variations in the influence of IRAs within regulatory arrangements. Our findings corroborate these expectations. For electricity, a sector strongly exposed to diffusion agents, the formal regulatory arrangement shows IRA as the most influential actor, whereas in the telecommunications sector, the pre-existing governmental actor has managed to retain the influence despite setting up an IRA.     

Ownership and sustainability of Italian water utilities: The stakeholder role

After several decades, the political and academic debate on water governance is still dominated by arguments about whether private sector involvement increases both efficiency and the level of investment within the industry. These arguments could appear reductive, especially in a context like Italy, which is dominated by public and mixed-ownership water utilities. The aim of this paper is to analyze how the socio-economic context and stakeholders' interests can influence the relationship between ownership structure and water utilities' sustainability performances. Analyzing six case studies, this research shows that the institutional context may influence both the water governance and utilities’ performance. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

The construction industry in the economy of Trinidad & Tobago

The construction sector is generally one of the larger and more important sectors of a nation's economy. If economic policy is to achieve its desired objectives, it is necessary to have some understanding of how the economy will react to various changes that can be effected. Because the construction sector is large and responsive, it is a key sector for manipulating the economy and, hence, it is important to know what the role of the construction sector is in the economy. Some of the key issues here are the effect of changes in GDP on construction output and employment, as well as the effects of changes in money supply, inflation, expenditure on the public sector investment programme and the rate of approval of building plans. This paper sets out to see if there are relationships between these factors that justify further investigation and, as such, helps establish a research agenda for the industry, particularly in comparing developed and less‐developed countries.