NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN THE METROPOLITAN ECONOMY: A Policy Review

ABSTRACT: This article introduces policymakers and scholars to several issues in the development of city neighborhoods and their residents. It constructs a literature review around a tree diagram of problems and solutions, arguing that this is a more useful way to organize information than the social science questions that typically interest academics. Following this structured overview, I make the following arguments about space and scale in neighborhood policy: (1) Even if we adopt an individualistic model of economic behavior, we do not necessarily need to choose “people” over “place.” (2) The rationale for the development of neighborhood export jobs remains weak. However, we may be able to identify a “preferred policy scale” for job development and placement connections. This is defined as the scale at which the problem of spatial mismatch is not solved at the expense of broader economic development considerations, and vice versa. The research agenda underlying this simple idea would require more sophisticated and policy-relevant work on commuting patterns and on the interaction behavior and other competitive advantages of firms situated in intra-metropolitan space.     

THE REAGAN URBAN POLICY: EFFICIENT NATIONAL ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PUBLIC SECTOR MINIMIZATON

The Reagan urban policy is premised on a definition of efficient national economic growth which mandates public sector minimization. Such a policy is hostile to local economic revitalizalion and to attaching “social strings” to ensure that program benefits reach disadvantaged residents. Hence, such local economic development programs as EDA and UDA G have been attacked by the Reagan Administration. The CDBG program has been revised to allow states and localities further discretion to divert program funds from community development to economic development activities. Even the administration's enterprise zone plan does not attempt to contradict market forces in determining investment decisions. Rather, relief is given to business on business' terms with little assurance that the benefits of development will go to zone residents; and, eligibility is so broad as to allow zone designation in pockets of distress in otherwise economically healthy jurisdictions of the nation.     

Social (self) Control†

Social control is not concerned with bow an elite controls the rest of us but how society controls itself and its elite as the social equivalent of self control in the individual as he harmonizes his intellectual, moral, sexual, economic and physical being. This is a study not to my knowledge being carried out anywhere else. When it might have arisen under the heading of “conflict” or “peace” studies it was taken over and diverted to become mere extensions of war studies of the sort so extensively pursued under U.S. government auspices and which became the sort of aberrations that lead to the various involvements of U.S. government that have been revealed since Watergate broke and in various attempts to develop schemes for manipulating society by both political and commercial interests.

The scientific, i.e., unchained, study of social control along the lines I describe might have stimulated wiser counsels in government, deeper inquiry by electorates and their representatives and, perhaps, helped towards truer and more natural detente in society than we are experiencing. Detente as between races and classes as well as between states and alliances but also as between man and his environment.     

In Search of Public Sector–Private Sector Partnerships for Local Economic Development in South Africa

Partnerships between the public sector and private sector are considered to be important foundations for successful local economic development (LED) planning. This article analyses the multiple challenges that need to be addressed in forging viable LED partnerships between the public sector and private sector in South Africa. The findings are examined from a national survey conducted in 2009 with 30 business chamber associations across South Africa. The results point to markedly differing perceptions of the private sector and local government towards LED, questions of trust and mistrust between private sector and the public sector, and highlight the imperative for greater dialogue in order to provide the foundations for local partnerships for promoting LED.     

Construction firms in public–private partnerships: a place to grow

Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) constitute a crucial vehicle in delivering infrastructure. In the transport sector the primary project sponsors are construction companies, which over the last few decades have transformed to strong international actors. In order to study growth strategies stemming from the PPP agreement, a conceptual game theoretic model built on four institutional rationalities (legal, political and scientific in addition to economic) driving economic behaviour is presented. The model indicates that the prevailing strategies are training, acquisitions and step-outs. The former strategy is less efficient than the other two with respect to the single project. The latter two suggest the likelihood of “unproductive investments” influencing infrastructure quality and social benefits. All three strategies lead to market concentration, which has been evidenced in the market. The model only considers construction firm strategies and does not weight the relative importance of the operation phase with respect to the construction one. This would be an extension to the model, which would then also consider operator strategies. In its present form, the model indicates the conditions leading to “unproductive investments” and market concentration and provides the grounds to formulate policy guidelines to limit adverse effects.     

The changing role of the Dutch social rented sector

The article traces the evolution of the research interests of Dieleman, an academic who combined the development of analytical models with explorations of the policy implications of the changing structure of housing markets. During his long career as a professor of geography, he championed international cooperation in research and played a major role in disseminating the results of Dutch academic studies to an international audience. His own work was concentrated on the analysis of residential mobility. But much of that work also revealed his interest in applying scholarly insights to policy issues. Throughout his career he showed a deep commitment to improving the functioning of the social rented sector in the Dutch housing market. After reviewing some of Dieleman’s major contributions to the understanding of the housing market, the article follows in his footsteps by analyzing the current use of social rented housing. In this way, this article provides an update on his field of interest based on recent survey data that underlines the validity of his insights.     

Pricing Public Housing Services: Mirroring the Market?

This paper is concerned with the determination of rents in the local authority sector. It concentrates on the determination of relative rents in particular. Local authorities in England have traditionally had autonomy in determining the rents for individual dwellings in their housing stock, but the 1989 Local Government and Housing Act introduced the requirement that the relativities in the public sector should be determined with reference to those obtaining in the local private rented sector. This policy, which still remains in force under the new government, is intended to price public housing more efficiently and links to long standing concerns with issues such as under-occupation. The paper critically examines the rationale behind this policy. It advances the argument that not only are the price differentials in the private sector not necessarily a good guide for efficient pricing in the public sector, but also that the conditions in the public sector are unlikely to ensure that changing rent differentials will achieve the policy objectives. Even so, the policy raises important issues of principle in pricing in the public sector which require further investigation.     

Land Use Conflict Across the Airport Fence: Competing Urban Policy,Planning and Priority in Australia

Land use planning within and surrounding privatised Australian capital city airports is a fragmented process as a result of: current legislative and policy frameworks; competing stakeholder priorities and interests; and inadequate coordination and disjointed decision-making. Three Australian case studies are examined to detail the context of airport and regional land use planning. Stakeholder Land Use Forums within each case study have served to inform the procedural dynamics and relationships between airport and regional land use decision-making. This article identifies significant themes and stakeholder perspectives regarding on-airport development and broader urban land use policy and planning. First, it outlines the concept of the “airport city” and examines the model of airport and regional “interfaces.” Then, it details the policy context that differentiates on-airport land use planning from planning within the surrounding region. The article then analyses the results of the Land Use Forums identifying key themes within the shared and reciprocal interfaces of governance, environment, economic development and infrastructure. The article concludes by detailing the implications of this research to broader urban planning and highlights the core issues contributing to the fragmentation of airport and regional land use planning policy.     

“What the Wood wants to do”: Pragmatist Speculations on a Response-able Architectural Practice

Departing from observations collected in an architecture firm, this essay investigates the way in which an architect expressed his concerns for what the material he intended to use “wants to do”. Adopting a speculative and pragmatist perspective, I detect there a possibility of thinking about architects’ responsibility as a moral exchange with beings involved in the design process. The text addresses two interpretations of that situation that could hinder the possibility of a more relational architectural practice. The first reduces the designer’s formulation to a rhetorical means to expose his ability to take constraints into account. The second interprets it as the expression of the architects’ moral obligation to respect the material’s intrinsic nature. Two diverging notions of responsibility are at stake, which are here contrasted with a third one. Built on a materialist view on ethics, the ethological perspective allows the acknowledgement of what the material and the designer become capable of together.     

Localization,regionalization and globalization of university-business research co-operation in the United Kingdom

This empirical study analyzes university-business co-operation (UBC) from a distance-based perspective. Focusing on the UK's 48 largest research universities, we collected data from author affiliate addresses in 2008–2017 university-business research publications (UBRPs). The spatial proximity between university and its business partners listed in these co-authored research publications concerns three main distance zones: “local” (0–99 km); “regional” (100–499 km); “global” (500 km or more). The annual UBRP trends reveal a tendency towards UBC globalization. Several universities show signs of UBC glocalization, where the numbers of their global UBRPs have increased more rapidly than local UBRPs. Four common factors largely determine the UBRP quantities, irrespective of the zone: business sector R&D-intensity in the university's local geographical area; university's research size; university's high-end international citation impact; presence of university researchers with work experience in the business sector.     

Mumford's Metaphors: Sticks and Stones versus Ships and the Sea

In Sticks and Stones (1924), a critical account of the sources and prospects of American architecture, Lewis Mumford argues that when “the economic basis of provincial life shifted from the farm to the sea … [it] broke up the internal unity of the village.” His argument is augmented by metaphors: the instabilities of wind, sea, and ship are opposed to the virtues of “good building” and “rooted dignity.” The stable earth and the village architecture it supports are portrayed as organically superior to the chaotic fluidity of the sea. Mumford's metaphors and rhetorical skill bolster a historical narrative that continues to influence prevalent notions of “tradition” in American architecture. Nevertheless, the sea metaphors he deprecates are vital to exemplify American architecture, art, and literature.     

BEFORE AND AFTER THE CREATIVE CITY: THE POLITICS OF URBAN CULTURAL POLICY IN AUSTIN,TEXAS

ABSTRACT: This article examines the politics and practice of urban cultural policy in Austin, Texas. I demonstrate how aspects of the local context frame how local government and cultural sector interests strive to initiate the direction of policy. While larger trends—such as Richard Florida's creative city thesis—influence cultural policy and planning, specific contextual factors including prior economic development and growth management policy, departmental organization, the forum for interaction between municipal actors and non‐governmental coalitions, and the character of the city's cultural economy mediate such trends to produce policy outcomes. As this case shows, contemporary urban cultural policy is not simply due to the rise of the creative city discourse, but is an evolving product of past policy structures and shaped by local institutions and actors.     

The Worker’s House

Abstract

The proto-sociologist Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl is best known in architectural history for the popularity that his organicist-functionalist dictum of “building from the inside out” received in early twentieth-century German architectural culture. However, less is known about Riehl’s own writing on architecture in the context of his sociological theories. This paper discusses the importance of Riehl’s thoughts on domestic architecture in giving theoretical elaboration to what, in the mid-nineteenth century, was a growing intellectual concern over the social position of workers. As the “worker” emerged as a distinct social type, and workers’ welfare registered as an increasingly pressing issue, Riehl’s call for a sociologically oriented understanding of architecture (capable of reforming the worker “from within”) significantly altered the terms of the debate over housing policy in Germany. In examining his theoretical elaboration of the task of social policy and the role of architecture within it, this paper reads Riehl’s work as a prelude to a new kind of logic about architecture’s social agency that would come to underpin modern housing reform.     

THE ROLE OF HISTORY IN REDISTRIBUTIONAL POLICY DISCOURSE: EVIDENCE FROM LIVING WAGE CAMPAIGNS IN CHICAGO AND SAN FRANCISCO

The existing urban politics literature is insufficient in explaining why redistributional policymaking flourishes in some contexts and not in others. This article attempts to move beyond the structure versus agency dichotomy and uses a close comparison of the living wage movements in Chicago and San Francisco, not only to argue that “history matters,” but to illustrate how historical narratives are actively (re)constructed by social actors to further their agenda(s). Although each city started with similar campaigns to enact basic “contractor‐only” forms of living wage laws, by the end of a 10‐year period the resulting level of change in San Francisco stood in stark contrast to Chicago, where advocates failed to extend the living wage to “big box” retailers. Using a brief history of economic restructuring and an empirical assessment of the business climate valence of each city's political regime, this article finds that economic and political factors jointly structure the depth and pace of policy change by setting the terms of debate within redistributional policy discourses. This joint determination occurs because “problem frames” are path‐dependent and because inherited political structures, such as the availability of binding referendum, allocate agenda‐setting power and opportunities to challenge entrenched interests.     

The location of governmental facilities and equilibrium urban configuration

Most existing models of spatial agglomeration economics do not include the effects of the governmental sector in an urban configuration, although the governmental sector plays an important role in economic activity. We discuss how an exogenous distribution of locations of governmental facilities and the level of service provided affect the equilibrium urban configuration under the assumption that governmental service is necessary component for production of goods by a firm. The model yields multiple equilibrium urban configurations endogenously, depending on the set of parameters, and that the governmental sector is responsible for the movement of equilibrium market land rents stemming from its determination of location.Comments and suggestions by anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged. A preliminary draft of this paper was presented at The Second Summer Institute of the Pacific Regional Science Organization, held on July 20–23, 1992, in Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. I thank to M. Fujita and H. Koide for helpful comments and suggestions.     

The Proof of the Planning Is in the Platting: An Evaluation of Florida's Hurricane Exposure Mitigation Planning Mandate

Problem: In his “Competitive Advantages of the Inner City” papers, Michael Porter maintained that comparative advantages of inner-city economies, once recognized, would lure profit-motivated investors to start new ventures and expand existing businesses in these areas. Porter stressed limited access to financing as a major barrier to inner-city economic development and its expanded provision as a remedy.

Purpose: I consider whether Porter's claims match the evidence.

Methods: I investigate both private and government-assisted providers of debt and equity capital to inner-city businesses that appear to exhibit Porter's competitive advantages. I distinguish successful inner-city business financing operations from those that are unsuccessful and use these results to draw lessons about effective and ineffective strategies for increasing inner-city businesses’ access to financing.

Results and conclusions: Lack of financing appears to be an important barrier to inner-city economic development, as Porter concluded, but the comparative advantages he thought made the inner city attractive to profit-seeking investors have not been demonstrated. Porter asserted that inner-city households seeking to buy consumer products were underserved by local firms. However, other researchers did not find this to be the case and new business ventures serving this market have had poor profits and poor rates of survival over time. Porter's revitalization blueprint aimed to create jobs and sustainable businesses to benefit inner-city residents, yet evidence indicates that inner-city firms largely meet their staffing needs by employing workers living outside the inner city. Private venture capital investment in the inner city has not generated attractive returns. However, inner-city lending can be profitable under the right conditions.

Takeaway for practice: There is a lack of business financing available to fund the creation and expansion of inner-city ventures, creating a barrier to inner-city economic development. However, my case studies illustrate that private lenders can be profitable in this market if they have: (a) a sufficiently large and diverse portfolio of investments; (b) lending policies requiring sufficient collateral or loan guarantees to offset defaults; and (c) skilled, experienced, professional managers.

Research support: None.     

Adolf Loos's Raumplan Theory

This article presents an argument demonstrating the complexity and generative capacity of Adolf Loos's raumplan theory. In pursuing this goal, I have used the first raumplan scheme to be realized—the Rufer House, built in Vienna in 1922—as a medium through which to review the definition of raumplan developed by Loos's modernist disciples. As an alternative to traditional interpretations, I propose an analysis of the theory based on four characteristics of raum—site, presence, gathering, and staying among things—posited by Martin Heidegger in his 1954 essay, “Building Dwelling Thinking.”     

The Fort: Opportunities for an effective urban conservation strategy in Bombay

A common scenario in Third World countries is that with the overriding social, economic and political implications being so complex and vast, the actual resolution to urban problems and issues is often lost and the planning process stalls at the problem identification stage. The key to the resolution of the urban decline affecting the central business district of Bombay, Fort, is in accepting and understanding its cultural and architectural significance to the city, its potential to continue as the financial centre with the influx of multinational offices being set up in the city, and to stop the degeneration of a district which already has large-scale formal and informal sector investment. The main argument of the paper is that time is ripe for an innovative conservation strategy. The proposed strategy begins with an action plan that would be essential should a program for conservation be accepted by the city's decision makers. It is a move away from the current piecemeal approach of identifying singular buildings for preservation, and pursues a more holistic approach to protect, regulate and retain the built, economic and social fabric of Fort. Encouraged by the Kanga Commission's initiatives, the proposed approach shows the steps towards a bold but manageable long-term solution.     

Investigating the barriers faced by stakeholders in open data development: A study on Hong Kong as a “smart city”

The drive towards open data aims at improving government transparency, motivating citizen participation and unlocking commercial innovation. However, various intertwining barriers hinder the adoption of open data. They are stemming from legislation and licensing, technology and operation, use level, institution and governance, as well as economic considerations. Through the use of social network analysis (SNA), this study identified 43 barriers faced by stakeholders in an open data project in Hong Kong and investigated their interdependencies. Hong Kong was selected as a representative case due to its relatively low ranking in the Global Open Data Index (24th) and poor data quality. It was found that the lack of an open data policy should be tackled as a matter of priority to provide technical guidance for the public sector, ensure data quality and achieve expected outcomes. It is also necessary to improve the IT literacy/mindset of the public sector, refine the governance structure relating to the delivery of open data initiatives, encourage engagement from private entities and provide a feedback loop for users. This study explored the interrelationships between various barriers to open data adoption and proposes practical recommendations to enhance open data development in the context of emerging “smart cities”.     

Economic Governance and the Local Business Environment: Evidence from Two Economically Lagging Provinces of South Africa

Partnerships between the public sector and private sector are considered to be important foundations for successful local economic development (LED) planning. This article analyses the multiple challenges that need to be addressed in forging viable LED partnerships between the public sector and private sector in South Africa. The findings are examined from a national survey conducted in 2009 with 30 business chamber associations across South Africa. The results point to markedly differing perceptions of the private sector and local government towards LED, questions of trust and mistrust between private sector and the public sector, and highlight the imperative for greater dialogue in order to provide the foundations for local partnerships for promoting LED.