Social housing in Latin America: Opportunities for affordability in a region of housing need

In advanced capitalistcountries, the term social housing normallyrefers to social rented housing, and itsprovision can be examined within the context ofthe type of housing welfare regime that hasevolved within the country under consideration.However, in large parts of Latin America –because of minimal affordability and limitedinvestment – social housing is very much amarginalised tenure and – apart from a smallsocial-rented sector – comprises illegalshelter in shantytowns, assisted self-buildhousing, and low-cost owner-occupation. Itwould therefore be unproductive to examinesocial housing in Latin America within thecontext of any of the welfare regimes thatprevail in the developed world.Within the region, large-scale migration intothe major urban areas created a substantial andgrowing housing deficit among the poor in thelatter half of the twentieth century. At first,there was an attempt to satisfy housing needsby the provision of social rented housing, butit was soon recognised that such accommodationwas unaffordable to the majority of the poor,while municipal governments were constrained bybudgetary considerations from increasing oreven maintaining its supply. At the same time,it was realised that informal housing could beupgraded more cost-effectively, and that forits future development the legalisation oftenure was essential; while self-build formalhousing could be constructed through theprocess of community funding. By the 1990s,even the middle-income segment wasdisadvantaged in the housing market asunemployment and interest rates rose and realwages fell, and therefore – through theintroduction of means-tested demand-sidesubsidies – the term social housing wasextended to the conventional owner-occupiedsector.Clearly, welfare regimes in Latin America areat a rudimentary stage in their development,although there is a tendency for governments toembrace neo-liberal housing policies. But at atime of fiscal constraint, it is a cause forconcern that macroeconomic priorities mightmake it more difficult for a large proportionof the population of the region to satisfy itshousing needs.     

Travel and activity choices based on an individual accessibility model

An individuals travel and activity behaviour is influenced by temporal and spatial constraints, travel and activity characteristics and individual attributes. This article formulates an individual accessibility model to measure the accessibility benefits of daily activities undertaken through a trip, a trip chain or at home. The model is extended further to analyse individuals activity location choices, choices between activities at home and activities through travel, and activity timing and scheduling decisions, with the assumption that an individual chooses an activity/travel alternative with the maximum accessibility benefits. An individuals choice among different locations for participating in an activity is shown to depend on the time budget and the locations of activities scheduled before and after this decided activity. The substitution of an activity at home for an activity through travel is shown to depend on the relative magnitude of activity location attraction and activity duration between these two types of activities and preference parameters. Finally, the article illustrates how an individual schedules one or several continuous or discontinuous activities with time-dependent accessibility benefits so as to maximise benefits.Received: 12 June 2001, Accepted: 1 November 2002, JEL Classification: D11, R22, R40The authors would like to thank the National Science Council, R.O.C., for financially supporting this research under grant NSC 89-2211-E-009-077.     

Running hot and cold in the urban home-ownership market: The experience of Japan’s major cities

Urban home-ownership in Japan was destabilised when the bubble economy collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s. This paper looks beyond the social and economic changes in Japanese housing in the post-bubble recession to focus on the ups and downs in current home-ownership markets in Japans major cities. Since the mid-1990s, social fragmentation has created a novel environment for urban home-ownership. The combination of a prolonged recession and a policy to promote housing construction and urban redevelopment has split urban space into hot spots, where the housing market is increasingly active, and cold spots, where the market is persistently inactive.     

Engineering geological and geophysical investigations of a slope failure at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

Edinburgh Castle is one of Scotlands most important heritage sites. It was built on a classic crag and tail structure where the crag consists of columnar jointed basalt and the tail of sediments protected from glacial erosion by the crag.In 1997 apparent instability was observed on the southern side of the tail. A shallow slope failure was proved to have taken place within saturated, layered, cohesive to non-cohesive, loose to dense heterogeneous fill on a slope of 44°. The date of the initial failure is not known, but is likely to have taken place over a period of many years, since at least the 1950s.Remediation works were subsequently undertaken to stabilise the slope, consisting mainly of the installation of soil nails, a bi-axial geo-grid and minor filling to mitigate the effects of the ground movements and to facilitate repair of the retaining wall.     

Path-dependent processes and the emergence of the rank size rule

Many things in the natural world consist of an ever-larger number of ever-smaller pieces. This is called a fractal, which implies both the power law and rank size rule. Various models have been applied to explain the power law or Zipfs law in the distribution of city size. Gibrats law proposes general and neat interpretations for this regularity in a city distribution, but the homogeneity assumption in Gibrats law shows a disregard of the agglomeration effect that is essential in economic interpretation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between the feature of increasing returns in the dynamic growth process and the property of power law in the static limiting distribution. We apply the path-dependent processes in Authur (2000) called nonlinear Polya processes to analyze the relation between the feature of agglomeration in the path-dependent processes and rank-size relations in the limiting distributions. The simulation result shows that the growth process with a diminishing returns agglomeration economy or a bounded increasing returns agglomeration economy converges to a stable limiting distribution with a constant expected proportion. On the contrary, the growth process with an unbounded increasing returns agglomeration economy could generate a fractal kind of limiting distribution with a time variant expected value. The unbounded increasing returns agglomeration economy is the necessary condition to generate the rank size rule in the limiting distribution. Given the assumption of agglomeration economies and robust evidence of Zipfs in city distribution, our result suggests that agglomeration benefits increase without a ceiling as residents are added to the city. The increase of the diseconomies of agglomeration (congestion, pollution, crime, etc.) is not too severe to confine the limiting level of the net agglomeration effect.The author acknowledges the National Science Council for the financial support on the study (Project NSC 91–2415-H-004–016).Received: July 2002 / Accepted: March 2003     

Technological spillovers and the location of production in an asymmetric duopoly

We evaluate the impact of technological externalities on the location choices of duopolistic firms in a Weber triangle. Assuming technological spillover effects to be decreasing in the distance between firms, we show that each firms optimum location is independent of a demand shock when the firms distance to market is constant. When distance to market is variable, a firms optimum location will not be independent of a demand shock if one of the duopolistic firms has non-linear technology. The optimum location of an IRS (DRS) firm moves away from (closer to) the market place if the other firm is CRS and if demand is not strongly concave or convex.Received: 14 March 2002, Accepted: 5 August 2003, JEL Classification: D23, L13, R30Ping-yen Lai: I would like to thank Jacques Poot, Mike Sperr and two anonymous referees for insightful comments, which contributed to improvement of this article. All errors are my responsibility.     

How alcohol-related crashes of different severity interrelate and respond to local spatial characteristics:An evaluation of a common site sales ban on alcohol and gasoline

Highway safety is an important issue in both urban and rural areas. Based upon a unique panel of incorporated cities over a 96-month period from January 1982 to December 1989, this paper evaluates the effects of the State of Californias ban on common site sales of gasoline and alcohol to curb drunk driving. Geographic information systems (GIS) contribute spatial variables to an analysis of the impact of the ban on several categories of alcohol related crashes: fatalities, serious injuries, and property damage. By considering the types of alcohol-related crashes for the five-county Los Angeles area as interrelated, a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model locates more precise impacts. Overall the ban appears to reduce fatalities, serious injuries, and property damage crashes; but in relatively less population dense cities, the ban increases property damage and may increase more serious crashes in some urban neighborhoods. This suggests that the ban discourages highly impaired drivers but may motivate less impaired drivers to travel to an alternate alcohol purchase site. Diverse experiences in adjacent municipalities warn large regional or nation-wide evaluations of highway safety to take care when adopting large region or state fixed effect adjusters in analyses that presume sub-region homogeneity.Received: October 2003/Accepted: February 2004All correspondence to: Clifford A. Lipscomb. The authors would like to express their appreciation to Subrahmanyam Muthukumar for his assistance in preparing the GIS spatial variables. The views expressed in this paper are solely the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of either the Bureau of Economic Analysis or the U.S. Department of Commerce.     

Convergence and transition auspice of Chinese regional growth

This paper reconsiders the question of regional convergence in China. Barros convergence model and Theils regional inequality index are applied in the study. Analytical results reject the absolute convergence hypothesis in the Chinese case, but suggest a conditional convergence pattern. As for China as one system, it is further discovered that there exists a complex phenomenon that the three regions, the east, the mid and the west, converge to different equilibria respectively. Therefore, the mid and the west break through the existing system structure to reach the high level like that of the east is a crucial task of Chinese economic development. A detailed inversed U-shape analysis leads to two important findings. First, it discovers that the regional disparities between the east region and the rest of China are widening, while the regional disparity between the mid and the west is shrinking. Second, the Chinese regional economy has reached the critical point of divergence-convergence transition in terms of stages of national economic development according to Williamsons theoretical model. This gives the state government some room for doing something to make the convergence happen at an early possible time.Received: July 2002/Accepted: January 2003     

The relationship between output and unemployment: Evidence from Greek regions

This research note investigates the relationship between output and unemployment in Greece at a regional level through the implementation of Okunss law. Current practice is primarily restricted to the national level, and thus ignores the regional dimension of this relationship. To this end, we apply modern unit root test and cointegration techniques based on panel data settings. Using panel data is necessary because typical spans of economic time series are short, so the entire panel must be exploited in order to draw sharper inferences. The empirical results reveal that Okuns law can be confirmed for six out of the 13 regions we examine.Received: 20 November 2002, Accepted: 5 November 2003, JEL Classification: C23, E32, O18Dimitris K. Christopoulos: I would like to thank two anonymous referees and the European editor, whose comments greatly strengthened the notes content. Thanks are also extended to Dr. V. Arapoglou for helpful suggestions on an earlier version. The usual disclaimer applies     

Impact of spatially separated work places on urban residential location,consumption and time allocation

This paper analyses the impact of informatics development on the urban residential-location, consumption and working-hour-allocation behaviour of the coming information-oriented society. The analysis focuses on the repercussions through the interaction of the land and labour markets. The labour market is spatially separated into the home work market in the city suburbs and the office work market in the CBD. But, these work places are tightly connected with each other by highly developed communication technology. The time-allocation as well as money-expenditure constraint is systematically built up on a traditional residential location model of the von Thunen-Alonso type. The wage rates and the bid rent function for the land are both solutions of the equilibrium model of land and labour markets. The impacts are examined using the comparative statics analyses which have been developed for the economic-agent equilibrium conditions of the firm and household.     

Changing modes of reasoning in spatial choice analysis

In the development of regional science methodology we observe an increasing series of trends from aggregate towards disaggregate, deterministic towards probabilistic and static towards dynamic modes of reasoning. This paper attempts to discuss some major aspects of these types of transition in the field of spatial choice analysis where particular emphasis is laid on issues which have been addressed in papers presented in the sessions on Recent Methodological Developments in Spatial Analysis.     

Commodification, normalisation and intervention: Cultural, social and symbolic capital in housing consumption and governance

This paper relates the governance of anti-social behaviour in theUK to a wider policy conceptualisation of social housing as a flawed andproblematic form of housing consumption. Drawing on the theoretical workof Bourdieu and Foucault, the paper identifies how the habitus ofhousing consumption is shaped by acts of governance including classification,legitimisation, normalisation and targeted intervention. The paper argues thatdominant governance discourses relate problems arising within socialhousing to assumed distinctions in the cultural, social and symbolic capitalascribed to commodified and branded housing tenures, thereby marginalisingthe importance of differential access to economic capital in the conceptualisationof UK housing policy.     

Dynamics of wide sense migrational systems: A choice theoretic setting

The study of migration of various kinds of populations, a common subject in regional science, is given a broader scope of applicability by the provision of a very general choice theoretic setting of migrational dynamics. A dynamized Alonso type location and land use model, comprising dispersed land prices, is chosen to illustrate wide sense migration of landowners, on the one hand, between different price levels at which they may offer land, and of households and firms, on the other hand, that may choose between different prices and zones.     

Use of terrain evaluation techniques in the study of drainage network changes in microbasins of the Capivari River Basin, state of São Paulo, Brazil

In this paper the drainage network is considered as a geo-indicator of the environmental changes that haven taken place over a period of 23 years in three hydrographic microbasins in the São Paulo State (Brazil). The verification of the natural conditions of the physical environment was based on terrain evaluation for homogeneity of landforms and the materials associated with them. In order to identify the alterations, a temporal analysis of the drainage network morphometric variables and land use was made. The morphometric analysis indicates a decrease in the number of first-order channels and in the total length of all channels, with a consequential modification of the drainage and hydrographic densities. The losses and gains of the first-order channels were influenced by the slope, type of bedrock and presence of unconsolidated material. The catalyst for these changes was mainly the inadequate control of urban expansion and the intensive agricultural activities.Résumé Dans cet article le réseau de drainage est considéré comme un géo-indicateur de changements environnementaux qui se sont réalisés durant 23 années dans trois micro-bassins hydrographiques de létat de Sao Paulo (Brésil). Les caractéristiques du milieu physique ont été obtenues à partir dune étude des différentes unités géomorphologiques et des formations géologiques corrélatives. Afin de mettre en évidence les modifications du milieu, une analyse temporelle de loccupation des sols et des paramètres morphométriques du réseau de drainage a été réalisée. Lanalyse morphométrique indique une diminution du nombre de sections de premier ordre et de la longueur totale du réseau de drainage. Il en résulte une modification de la densité de drainage des bassins. Les diminutions ou augmentations de sections de premier ordre ont été influencées par la pente, le type de substratum et la présence de matériaux meubles. Une expansion urbaine mal contrôlée et le développement dune agriculture intensive sont les causes de ces modifications.     

Dispersed spatial input demand functions

Most recent attempts to improve the empirical performance of classical trade models by formulation of probabilistic models of the DSPE (Dispersed Spatial Price Equilibrium) type have concentrated on determination of flows of a single commodity. However, a further challenge is to develop consistent probabilistic multi-sector spatial input demand functions and the corresponding spatial supply functions as part of an eventual probabilistic spatial CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) framework. In this paper, we derive short-run aggregate spatial input demand functions as the generators of the spatial supply functions, introducing via entropy some distributional assumptions about the average behaviour of the representative firm. In order to remain compatible with entropy principles, all demand functions are derived in a form guaranteeing compliance with a probabilistic accounting framework, calibrated on observed quantities, costs and prices. Firstly, the paper develops dispersed spatial input demand functions using various classical production functions, such as Linear and CES, accounting for the transport costs and tariffs incurred by the supply of intermediate inputs. It then formulates dispersed interregional input demand functions based on multiregional input-output production functions, transcending the normal relations connecting input and output via constant coefficients, with solution via a price-sensitive iterative adjustment technique. Finally, guidelines for an extension to a long-run analysis are sketched.     

Quantitative impact assessment of a regionally-oriented labour market programme in Germany

In 1979 the German federal government introduced for the first time on a major scale a special employment programme that was limited to specific problem regions. Nearly 50,000 persons took part in the programme. The impact of the programme as a whole and the various programme parts on different regions and groups of unemployed were investigated. The programme's impact on unemployment was investigated by means of a time-series analysis and the impact on the employment level with different forecasting methods. In addition, cross-sectional analysis has been performed. The results of all models lead to the conclusion that the programme lowered the level of unemployment by about 0.3 percent.     

Understanding China’s recent growth experience: A spatial econometric perspective

This study reconsiders the question of Chinas recent growth experience from a spatial econometric perspective. An empirical model of Chinese output growth using cross provincial data over the 1978–1998 period is specified, but a spatial econometric analysis of the specification reveals strong evidence of misspecification due to ignored spatial lag dependence. The subsequent estimating using Anselins spatial lag model determines the important sources of growth to be the growth of non-farm labor force, manufactured products, capital stock, and realized direct foreign investment. On the other hand, the estimated coefficient for the spatial lag variable suggests a polarizing process undergoing within the Chinese spatial economy, and the resulting change in the estimates of causal factors implies that as marketization progresses, a variety of spillover effects due to factor mobility, transfer payments and technological diffusion become operational, which actually improve the marginal productivity of factor inputs for labor (G_L) and capital (G_K, G_DFI) and bring national output closer to its frontier of the Chinese economy. I would like to thank Arthur Getis for his invaluable help throughout my research period. I would also like to thank Tschangho John Kim and three anonymous referees for their very constructive critiques and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Project No. 40271033.     

Static probing of soils using the “equilibrated probe”

Experience gained with the probing of soils using an equilibrated-probe mechanism, which makes it possible to measure the soils resistance to penetration of the probe at low rates of displacements comparable to the rate of displacement of a pile and plate during static tests is outlined. Results are presented for field investigations and design characteristics obtained from probing data and derived from plate and pile tests. Basic trends in continued research are noted for expansion of practical application of the method proposed.Translated from Osnovaniya, Fundamenty i Mekhanika Gruntov, No. 6, pp. 12–15, November–December, 2004.