The impact of the integration of renewable energy sources in the electricity price formation: is the Merit-Order Effect occurring in Portugal?

This study investigates the relationship between wholesale electricity price behaviour and the integration of new renewable energy sources in the electricity system in Portugal. The research analyses two different samples, namely: the significant deployment of wind power versus the abrupt increase in the installed capacity of solar photovoltaic. Daily data from 2011 until 2019 and, a SARMAX/EGARCH approach has been conducted to assess the merit-order effect. The main results suggest that electricity production from wind power is decreasing the price of electricity but increasing its volatility. In addition, there is evidence for the leverage effect in electricity price.     

Urban questions in the countryside? Urbanization and the collective consumption of electricity in early twentieth-century Belgium

This paper studies the early phases of the process of electrification in Belgium in order to shed light on the emergence of a distributed model of urbanization. The paper argues that the policies developed to extent the supply of electricity to each and every corner of the national territory is part and parcel of a distributed urbanism which reproduced itself in different forms throughout the twentieth century. Detailed analysis of the policies developed by three Belgian provinces to support the electrification in the interbellum period brings into view the ambiguity of the Belgian policy of dispersion. On the one hand, this analysis shows an eagerness to advance industrial production over the entire territory by making use of existing, rural collective resources. On the other hand, the policies of dispersion, despite their anti-urban motivations, in time produced (a need for) collective structures that facilitate processes of accumulation and differentiation that over time may be characterized as urban.     

Rethinking water reform policies as a ‘wicked problem’ the case of urban water supply in Ghana

Based on the theory of ‘wicked problem’ this paper investigates the causes of unsuccessful reform of urban water utilities in Accra, Ghana. The authors of this paper argue that reforms based only on managerial perspectives are not enough. Taking into account institutional and social issues is a key for the success of such reforms. Donors and international agencies lack such outlook and therefore fail to develop effective water policy reforms in developing countries generally. The paper discusses inter-twined and multi-dimensional institutional constraints that hinder the development of an appropriate approach to water utility reform in Accra.     

Complexity in urban agriculture: the role of landscape typologies in promoting urban agriculture’s growth

This research identifies the potential shortcomings of local initiatives to encourage urban agriculture projects by comparing citywide efforts with existing community projects. It investigates how more effectual policy might be developed to accommodate a fuller range of urban agriculture projects, and how urban agriculture stakeholders might use clearer promotion processes to meet stated goals. It hypothesizes the important role of clear urban agriculture definitions, typologies, and links to associated benefits towards meeting the stated goals of policy-makers. Utilizing San Francisco in California as a case study, this paper investigates recent efforts at citywide urban agriculture promotion.     

Malaysia’s electricity market structure in transition

The Malaysian electricity industry evolved from a vertically integrated utility into a single-buyer model, which considered a precursor to deregulation and a competitive market. This study considers electricity sector reform in Malaysia and proposes a market structure for the industry. We focus on the single-buyer model and the pool model for the analysis with the recommendation on reform stages required to ensure a smooth and successful market transition. A smooth transition from regulated market into deregulated market will ensure market stability and sustainability of the energy market. It will also provide enough time for the market participants to adapt and transit from regulated to deregulated energy market.     

Retailers’ resilience strategies and their impacts on urban spaces in Turkey

Recent developments in the retail sector in Turkey have created a dynamic environment, with different resilience strategies of actors forming the sector providing a new context in which to discuss urban transformation. The developments have contributed to the public’s awareness regarding multifaceted problems in the retail sector, many of which have a negative impact on urban space. Retailers, citizens and governing bodies variously contribute to this issue with different perceptions of and strategies on how to adapt to the changes. How these dynamics work and influence urban space in the Turkish context is the main focus of this research. A field survey in Ankara revealed that the resilience strategies of traditional retailers are reactive rather than proactive. This situation provides them with the flexibility to adapt themselves more quickly to the changes in the sector. However, as there is no holistic retail policy in Turkey, reactive strategies also result in unplanned use of urban space.     

Transnational urban policies: ‘relocating’ Spanish and Brazilian models of urban planning in Buenos Aires

This article examines the transnationalization of urban policies by analysing the adoption of two ‘foreign’ models of participatory urban planning in the city of Buenos Aires. Both schemes are modelled on internationally acclaimed experiments: Barcelona's Strategic Plan and Porto Alegre's Participatory Budget. In Buenos Aires, however, these policy transfers have failed to produce the remarkable results for which their Spanish and Brazilian exemplars have been internationally praised. Traditional accounts of policy transfers ponder on the institutional compatibility between imported schemes and host environments. The author argues that these works tend to overlook the significance of the stochastic conditions presiding over the adoption of particular policy models in different cities. She proposes to deviate from traditional approaches by seeking an explanation for the poor results of the schemes in Buenos Aires in (a) the contextual conditions framing their adoption in the Argentine capital, and (b) the circumstances surrounding their emergence in Barcelona and Porto Alegre.     

The birth of ‘land use planning’ in American urban planning

Although the concept of ‘land use planning’ is now firmly enmeshed in American urban planning, its meaning still remains vague. This paper aims to clarify the meaning by examining the historical development of land use planning in the USA. At the beginning of the twentieth century, city planners viewed a city as an organic unit of public facilities. While city planning thereafter provided potential elements of land use planning, such as zoning, zoning surveys and land use classification systems, the idea of land use planning itself was actually derived from rural county planning and was initially utilized in urban county planning as a guide for zoning in the 1930s. After bringing about a change in the way cities were viewed, that is, as a pattern of land use and population density, land use planning was further employed as a guide for urban redevelopment policies in the 1940s, and finally reaching full integration into city planning in the 1950s and 1960s.     

Farmers’ livelihood assets and adoption of sustainable land management practices in north-western highlands of Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, farmers’ adoption and continued use of introduced land management technologies have not been widespread to reduce soil erosion and soil fertility depletion to an acceptable level. An important set of factors in farmers’ use of improved agricultural technologies is generally known to be their possession of livelihood assets. This study examines the influence of ownership of livelihood assets in farmers’ decisions to use cattle manure as land improvement technology, which is currently being promoted by Ethiopia’s agricultural extension system. The study was conducted in Dangila woreda (district) in the north-western highlands of Ethiopia. Data were collected from a survey of 201 rural households from April to June 2011 and in October 2012. Logistic regression modelling and Chi-square and t-tests were used to analyse data. The findings show that plot distance from residence, number of livestock owned, use of dung for fuel, maize–vegetable–fruit intercropping, land to man ratio and perception of land tenure security were important determinants of manure use among the farmers. Existing and future local development interventions should focus on these factors to improve the farmers’ capability to invest in cattle manure application and sustainable land management.     

Effect of Metakaolin’s finesses and content in self-consolidating concrete

Self-consolidating concrete is characterized by its high deformability or its capability of filling all the spaces without external forces, maintaining the stability, without segregation or blocking. SCC needs high content of fines, which could be mineral admixtures, superplasticizer and low content of aggregates with limited maximum dimensions. Present work intends to verify the effect of the finesses and content of Metakaolin in SCC properties with different paste volumes, at fresh and hardened states. Metakaolin was used at three different finesses and at 5% and 35% of substitution to cement mass. It was found that the superplasticizer consumption increased with higher finesses and content of Metakaolin. Increasing the paste volume, less superplasticizer was necessary. Better mixtures were obtained with the paste contents of 0.45 and 0.50, by total volume, which presented good cohesion and a reduced admixture consumption. However, for the compressive strength, a reduction occurred at high paste volumes.     

What may culture contribute to urban sustainability? Critical reflections on the uses of culture in urban development in Oslo and beyond

Culture and capital play vital roles in urban change. This paper provides a discussion of the relation between culture and capital, followed by a discussion of their relation in the urban context, including an empirical example from Oslo, Norway. Emphasis will be put on the role of culture in the creative city thesis and how culture relates to the concept of urban sustainability. A critique of neoliberal and instrumental uses of culture in the creative city thesis is also undertaken. Policies on culture-led urban regeneration often pay more attention to economic motives than to culture itself. The paper calls for establishing a reflective cultural policy that is not subsumed to economic sustainability, and for the need to escape the anthropological conception of culture as a whole way of life.     

Transnational urban spaces and urban environmental reforms: analyzing Beijing’s environmental restructuring in the light of globalization

In this era of globalization, ‘transnational spaces’ are being created within urban settings, providing a direct connection between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’. Corporate headquarters, hotels, shopping malls, and airports are typical examples of such spaces, which while located within an urban territory, are often conceived by foreign designers, developers, and manufacturers, as well as maintained by multinational companies and banks. Such local–global interconnection is giving urban management a new shape, as urban management practices are now frequently intertwining with global construction and property management approaches. This paper argues that, at the same time, a set of new mechanisms that may help to tackle problems related to the urban environment and infrastructure is unfolding. Starting with a conceptual discussion of the role of globalization in urban environmental restructuring, this paper subsequently explores the context of Beijing and the environmental management possibilities introduced in this city by global actors (through the examples of World Tower, IBM Tower, and ABN AMRO and ING head offices). Beijing, due to China’s recent economic opening process, provides an intriguing backcloth to demonstrate how transnational urban spaces—standing in-between the local and the global—may canalize environmental innovations from the ‘global’, putting globalization at work for a better urban environment.     

Residential mobility in China: home ownership among rural–urban migrants after reform of the hukou registration system

This paper analyzes the housing tenure of China’s rural–urban migrants in eight destination municipalities in Jiangsu province after the reform of the urban registration system (called hukou in Chinese). The objective is to distill links between home ownership and formal residency status. Using binary logistic models, the paper explores the effects of demographics and institutional factors on home ownership. The analysis is based on the data from a survey conducted in 2009 in eight municipalities, representing the responses to the institutional reforms carried out from the 2000s on. The prevalence of home ownership proves to be affected by age, gender, educational level, household size, personal income, participation in an urban insurance scheme, and a Jiangsu hukou status. However, an inter-municipality comparison reveals divergent effects of a Jiangsu hukou. Registration plays a significant role in relatively more-developed municipalities, where the entitlements are higher but so is the threshold to obtain them. In contrast, its role is not significant in less-developed municipalities, where access to civil amenities is more readily granted.     

The impact of weather fluctuations and climate shocks on farmers’ welfare: insights from rural Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the welfare effect of inter- and intra-seasonal weather shocks using a nationally representative dataset. Results show that both rainfall and maximum temperature variability appear to exert a negative impact on the considered outcomes. Higher between-years average of rainfall implies an increase in income. This impact is nonlinear when the shock is computed over shorter reference periods and is higher in the upper tail of the income distribution. Moreover, small levels of rainfall variability have a positive effect on income, but only up to a certain threshold, after which the effect becomes negative. There is a nonlinear relationship between welfare outcomes and the first two moments of the maximum temperature distribution. Agricultural extension services, access to rural credit and use of sustainable land management practices (SLM) are crucial to mitigating the negative welfare effects.     

Analysis of electricity industry liberalization in Great Britain: How did the bidding behavior of electricity producers change?

Promoting competition among electricity producers is crucial for ensuring allocative efficiency and lower electricity prices. This paper empirically examines the wholesale electricity market of England and Wales in order to analyze to what extent regulatory reforms were successful at promoting competition among electricity producers.As a theoretical benchmark we consider a duopoly case, based on which a regression model is specified. The estimation of the regression model allows for documenting new results about the impact of regulatory reforms on the incentive and disincentive to exercise market power by electricity producers during the liberalization process.     

First steps in power sector reform: the case of China’s Guangdong Province

Governments planning reform of their country’s electrical power sector frequently receive recommendations to move in a single step to a market with a compulsory pool and a single buyer. In many developing and emerging economies such a first step is likely to carry an unduly high risk of failure for a range of technical, economic, legal and political factors. This paper arises from a consultancy project in Guangdong Province, China, and proposes a sequence of reform which includes two intermediate steps to be completed before the introduction of a compulsory pool: (1) efficiency improvements and cost reductions with no market and (2) a transition wholesale market.     

How does housing price affect consumption in China: Wealth effect or substitution effect?

This study investigates the asymmetric effects of housing price on consumption in 35 major Chinese cities, having regard to heterogeneity of the housing and financial markets. Unlike previous studies, this study employs the threshold regression model in analyzing the two important effects: namely wealth effect and substitution effect. The findings suggest that both markets (and their status) are vital to explain the linkage between housing price and consumption. In particular, for the regime where the housing price-to-income ratio is below 5.0882 and the indicator of financial development is above 1.8827, the wealth effect is significant. By contrast, for the regime where the housing price-to-income ratio lies between 5.0882 and 5.9625, the substitution effect will become dominant. This study provides a better understanding of the thresholds and transmission channels through which housing price affects consumption. That is largely ignored in the existing literature. On the other hand, the study offers meaningful implications for policy makers in formulating relevant measures that transfers housing wealth into consumption, with a view to developing a healthier and more stable housing market and bolstering better economic development in China.     

Around Madrid: the continuing influence of historical urban development plans on today’s periphery

This paper describes the peripheral development that has occurred in Madrid over the last 16 years (2000–2016), a period split by the economic crash that occurred in 2008. The paper argues that the relationship between economic development and infrastructure corridors witnessed in this peripheral development is intrinsically connected to the nineteenth and twentieth-century plans for urban growth. While these corridors have some similarities to the Strip model for an automobile city discussed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown in their seminal book Learning from Las Vegas, the Madrid peripheries enjoy a long genealogy that complicates any easy link to the Strip, particularly around issues of economic speculation, typology and image-making or imagining, which will be introduced using the work of Michael Neuman and others. The research design adopted examines the treatment of the periphery in a number of historical plans, particularly their attitudes towards infrastructure and economic development, in order to establish connections between those historical plans and the city’s planned and (partially) realized peripheral development today.