The Provision of Furnished Accommodation by Local Authorities

Providing furnished accommodation is one of the means by which local authorities can provide a benefit to their residents in response to the government's attempts to limit social security expenditure. The provision of furniture can also be used to increase lettings in hard to let areas and to reduce the turnover of property. This paper describes the spread of furnished lettings among different authorities and considers in detail the introduction of part-furnished accommodation in Newcastle upon Tyne. The service provided in Newcastle is evaluated using the local authority's tenancy records and interviews with tenants. The results showed clear benefits to both the council and its tenants in providing furnished accommodation.     

Meaning of Functionalism

Abstract

This study explores the recent spatial politics of John F. Kennedy Plaza, “Love Park”—a piece of Philadelphia's mid-1960s Penn Center redevelopments. By the turn of the century, Love Park had become a center of a growing international skateboard culture, appearing widely in magazines and videos and on ESPN. In 2002, the city redesigned the park in order to deter the skateboarders, to the vocal protests of a broad-based coalition that included Edmund Bacon and over half the city council members. Through a review of city planning documents, local newspaper reportage, and personal interviews, I argue that the Love Park debates illustrate the extent to which “bohemian” or “countercultural” lifestyles are becoming institutionalized as instruments of urban development.     

South Korea's urban green energy strategies: Policy framework and local responses under the green growth

Environmental and energy problems confronting South Korea brought a paradigm shift in the urban development toward “low-carbon green city” since the declaration of “Green Growth Strategy” in 2008. The South Korean governments set the goal to increase urban energy self-sufficiency through renewable energy generation and implemented various urban energy projects. However, the outcome of those urban green energy projects showed a varying degree of success. While the top-down approach led by the government facilitated the spread of urban green energy strategies in a short period of time, it also showed some drawbacks, such as the gap of willingness between the central government and the local governments and low level of community involvement. Although the importance of citizen participation in the transition to urban energy self-sufficiency has been emphasized in a rhetoric, energy projects that residents played a key role were rare in Korea. The urban energy transition in the low carbon green city projects needs to be supplemented by reinforced bottom-up approaches with the momentum from local governments as well as active citizen participation during the planning and implementation process.     

Auckland: Rescaled governance and post-suburban politics

The nature and politics of urban development in Auckland have undergone rapid transformation following amalgamation of eight separate authorities in 2010. Institutions governing metropolitan planning and infrastructure provision were rescaled to form the Auckland ‘Super City’ Council in 2010, with an ambitious vision to become the world's most liveable city and ongoing political contestation between the local and central government. Amalgamation of Auckland's governance was conceived and imposed by the central government as part of a broader economic strategy for “competitive cities”. However, Auckland Council's first strategic plan adopted a contrasting agenda, centred around the goal of “liveability”. Auckland's recent developments illustrate the challenges of a distinctly post-suburban polity. The majority of employment is located in suburban areas and the city has variegated and overlapping patterns in spatial form generated through inconsistent infrastructure interventions across local and national authorities. Conflicting urban policy agenda at national and local scales shows a tension between the pursuit of economic development and provision for collective needs. The politics of post-suburban development create specific challenges for Auckland's governance. Liveability and economic competitiveness are treated as complementary terms in political rhetoric, however trade-offs emerge at a smaller spatial scales. Public concern over housing affordability and risks to the financial stability of New Zealand's economy have led to central government intervention and renegotiation of authority between different tiers of government for land use and infrastructure provision. Auckland's position as New Zealand's largest city and economic centre frequently blurs the distinction between issues of local and national significance. Auckland's governance challenges are not unique, however the current tensions are exacerbated by its dominance in a small and geographically-isolated nation.     

Spatial variations in awareness of air pollution distributions

The accuracy of people's information concerning the spatial extent of air pollution in Christchurch is tested. Overall, the information was generally accurate, though people were more aware of the smoke pollution in the inner city area than of the sulphonation in an outer suburb. Of groups living in different parts of the city, residents of the more polluted areas are more aware of the local problems than are the population as a whole, whereas residents of the “cleaner” suburbs tend to over‐stress this characteristic.     

高等院校老校区学生居住空间的反思与重塑

该文主要从高等院校老校区学生居住空间现状说起,并对其根本症结进行分析,提出校内校外一体化解决学生居住问题的新见解,即在校园内外结合部建学生居住"就地平衡次结构",通过改造学生村、学生公寓以及移植"教学磁极"等主要措施,精心构筑校园内外结合部多功能综合学生生活区,丰富学生的日常生活和满足不同学生的多样化需求。     

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.     

State of the Art in Planning for College and University Campuses: Site Planning and Beyond

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Colleges and universities have been planning their campuses for centuries, yet scholars have conducted little empirical research regarding the nature of campus planning in the United States. We review recent scholarship on campus planning, discovering that it is dominated by case studies (sometimes in edited collections) and some comparative studies. In this review we organize the literature into 3 geographic scales: the campus per se (or campus park), the campus–­community interface, and the larger campus district. The literature addresses 5 topics: land use, design, sustainability, economic development, and collaboration. Most of the studies focus on research-oriented universities in metropolitan locations. The literature emphasizes how campus master planning can support student learning, how design and building guidelines can make a campus more cohesive, and how campuses are adopting sustainable development and operations. At the campus–­community interface, the research documents how some colleges and universities have expanded beyond their traditional boundaries, invested in local economic development, and worked with their communities to improve transportation and reduce environmental impacts. Studies of campus district planning emphasize community adoption of development regulations and code enforcement procedures to reduce the impact of students living in nearby neighborhoods. The literature stresses the importance of partnerships, collaboration, and enhanced communications between the university and the community.

Takeaway for practice: University planners should continue to focus on site design that reinforces student learning and environmental sustainability and on community interface planning that supports economic development and reduces environmental impacts. City planners should expand campus district planning to address a broad array of issues and opportunities. Both university and city planners should facilitate collaboration between their institutions. Scholars should study a wide range of colleges and universities, including 2-year as well as 4-year institutions and those in nonurban settings.     

CAN COMMUNITY AND EDUCATION ORGANIZING IMPROVE INNER‐CITY SCHOOLS?

ABSTRACT: Traditional community organizing processes and tactics are being applied throughout American cities in order to transform inner‐city public schools. This paper utilizes a theory of change to demonstrate how the growing “education organizing” movement seeks to improve both schools and communities by focusing on problem issues, cultivating social capital, developing indigenous leaders, building power, and demanding greater public accountability. We apply a series of indicators to highlight both community and school outcomes achieved by a variety of groups to date, with a case study of several local affiliates of the national Industrial Areas Foundation. Specifically, we find that education organizing has made a qualitative difference in the lives of students, parents, teachers, and school administrators; this process has turned former adversaries into allies for change. However, certain school outcomes, such as increased student achievement, and advancements in curriculum and instruction, are lagging behind expectations. Overall, education organizing achievements stand out significantly against the backdrop of urban disinvestment, poverty, and segregation. Importantly, while education organizing flows from overall community organizing, successes in schooling help overall community development efforts.     

Engineering a Millennium City in Accra, Ghana: The Old Fadama Intractable Issue

This article examines the attempted illegal forced eviction of residents in Old Fadama, Accra??s largest informal settlement. Firstly, it reviews the most recent newspaper articles and official government documentation, to demonstrate the instrumental portrayal of the settlement and its residents as nuisance, dangerous and unsanitary. It shows that the normative discourse of ??squatters?? and ??informality?? used by the municipal authorities situates Old Fadama??s residents within the sphere of illegality. As a result, residents are physically situated within, but conceptually outside of the boundaries of Ghanaian society, which serves to justify the eviction to the wider constituency, especially as the accompanying propaganda has resulted in the settlement being a ??no-go?? area for other residents in Accra due to fear of insecurity. Secondly, it explores the complex web of social and economic relationships between the settlement and Accra??s wider urban fabric that renders the simple dichotomies of planned and legal versus unplanned and illegal unfeasible. It argues that situating the emergence and expansion of Old Fadama in Ghana??s wider national migration patterns, as well as the country??s housing and urban planning policy history, and uncovering the settlements multiple relationships with Accra and Ghana??s governing structures as well as the city??s multiple economic networks provide an alternative reading of Old Fadama??s development and growth than that usually allowed for within this discourse of illegality and squatting used by the local authorities.     

Technoparks and Technology Transfer Offices as Drivers of an Innovation Economy: Lessons from Istanbul's Innovation Spaces

Universities can significantly contribute to the regional development and innovation capability of a city if the knowledge produced in universities can be appropriately cycled back to the city in the form of technological innovation. Technology parks and technology transfer offices (TTOs), as urban knowledge and innovation spaces, are two important channels of building research platforms with enterprises where universities can disseminate knowledge. While technology parks create space for knowledge generation and innovation within a city, university TTOs play a critical role in enhancing knowledge spillover and creating new start-up firms. This paper highlights the contribution universities can make to Istanbul's potential of becoming an innovative city that houses successful urban knowledge and innovation spaces. By conducting interviews with the managers of technoparks and TTOs in Istanbul, we explore how the existence of technoparks and TTOs within a university affects the success of technology-transfer mechanisms.     

Impact of ecological disturbance on awareness of urban nature and sense of environmental stewardship in residential neighborhoods

Experience with nature contributes to human wellbeing and environmental stewardship. Both may be affected when people experience local environmental disturbances. I test the hypothesis that relatively gradual ecological disturbance in urban areas increases awareness and appreciation of urban nature and environmental stewardship. In recent years the Emerald Ash Borer killed 10,000 street trees in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Information on residents’ attitudes and behavior regarding urban nature and street trees was collected from a mailed survey returned by 594 homeowners. Residential properties in the sample were distributed across the city as 24 pairs of nearest neighbor streets, including a “treatment street” (>70% street trees lost) and a “control street” (<30% street trees lost).Findings indicate that those experiencing tree loss were significantly more engaged with nature and more willing to participate in stewardship. The degree of increased engagement was directly related to the individual's proximity to the disturbance. Proximity to the loss was also a significant contributor to respondents’ appreciation of urban nature and the feeling that street trees enhance sense of wellbeing. However, regardless of proximity to tree loss, responses to items concerning appreciation of urban nature and the feeling that street trees enhance sense of wellbeing were extremely high. The results of this study suggest that recovery from ecological disturbance may be best supported by stewardship activities that engage citizens in what the care about, in ways that foster wellbeing of both the self and the urban ecosystem.     

PhD students’ housing experiences in suburban Sydney,Australia

The place of student housing in the built environment and everyday life of the city has been the focus of much research. Much of this literature has focused on the experiences and impacts of undergraduate student populations. We bring to the debate a different cohort of students—those undertaking PhDs. Drawing on 30 interviews with PhD students living in Parramatta, Sydney, we position PhD students as a fundamentally different student cohort with distinct housing needs and experiences. PhD students experience a strong connection to their university as their workplace and require their housing to facilitate this relationship. The nature of the student/university relationship and the different family/age composition results in different housing needs compared to undergraduate students. Simultaneously, given that many, primarily international, PhD students live in the private rental sector, they represent a distinct sub-category of the low-income private rental market at risk of extreme housing stress.     

IS THE PRICE RIGHT? GAUGING THE MARKETPLACE FOR LOCAL SUSTAINABLE POLICY TOOLS

Local government sustainability has become a cause célèbre in urban policy. Extant research has attempted to construct narratives of sustainable environmental, economic, and social equity motivations by grouping together multifaceted types of policies adopted to deal with multidimensional problems of land use, transportation, energy, solid waste, carbon emissions, and other functional areas of local government. Yet, decades of policy adoption and implementation research suggest some policies or policy tools require a far greater commitment of resources and administrative and political buy‐in than others. We explore whether the degree of such commitment reflects different motivations at play and test for distinct political economies for specific categories of energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction policy tools. We find evidence that the determinants for the two types of policies are distinct, and subsequent research requires refocusing theoretical and empirical efforts at differentiating “win‐win” tools from more “altruistic” commitments to sustainable action by governments.     

GENTRIFICATION AND THE GRASSROOTS: POPULAR SUPPORT IN THE REVANCHIST SUBURB

Abstract: Most existing research on neighborhoods facing gentrification has portrayed residents as resistant or politically quiescent. Drawing from a year of fieldwork in Dundalk, MD, I argue that developers and the neoliberal state will probably find popular support for gentrification as they reinvest in the politically divided industrial suburbs of the United States. Local homeowners and community associations have emerged as gentrification supporters for three interrelated reasons. First, many of them have drawn from a resurgent national conservatism to explain decline as an effect of government subsidies and “people from the city;” their desire to reclaim suburban space—a “suburban revanchism”—although avoiding accusations of racism makes gentrification‐induced displacement appealing. Second, the rebirth of urban neighborhoods and other industrial suburbs provides visual evidence of gentrification's success. Third, the neoliberal state's retreat from social programs and its emphasis on private‐sector redevelopment allay suspicion of government and enable collaboration between the local state, developers, and homeowners. The redevelopment efforts of two local organizations illustrate how residents have become indispensable partners in Dundalk's emergent pro‐gentrification coalition.     

Planning,Public Participation,and Money Politics in Santa Ana (CA)

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In this study, we analyze why a low-income community failed to meaningfully affect plans for the redevelopment of the Station District in Santa Ana (CA) although they used three avenues to do so: public participation, liberal democracy, and deliberative democracy. The city provided opportunities for public participation but controlled the agenda, effectively preventing residents from reframing the discussion. The liberal democratic electoral system failed residents because many were ineligible to vote, while city council members received campaign contributions from external business interests. Residents did develop extensive deliberative democratic processes that produced collaborative plans; however, these plans were not well incorporated into the official plan. In addition, the city refused to sign a community benefit agreement through which residents could hold the city and developer responsible for the redevelopment plan.

Takeaway for practice: We suggest that planners have an obligation to improve the participatory process by empowering community residents to set the agenda and frame the issues at the local level while addressing the role of corporations in local politics and in campaign finance, and by seeking to achieve elections that more fairly represent spatially segregated public interests. Less-ambitious changes to the public planning process will fail to achieve a balance of power among low-income communities of color, city officials, and those representing private market interests.     

Greasing the wheels,or a spanner in the works? Permitting the adaptive re-use of redundant office buildings into residential use in England

This paper explores the challenges involved in planning the adaptation of the urban built environment. It approaches this subject by appraising a recently introduced national planning policy (the permission to convert office buildings into residential use without planning permission) in England. Drawing on interviews conducted with planning practitioners, it is possible to unravel the impact of this policy instrument at the coal face of the discipline. The office-to-residential conversion policy has removed the long-established process of local planning discretion in England in favour of a developer led planning policy. Consequently, there has been a tactical manipulation of additional planning tools, originally designed for other use, to re-exert influence at the local level by local planning authorities. Rather than greasing the wheels of office-to-residential conversion, the new policy has thrown a spanner in the works of a unique local planning process that was originally developed to manage urban change. The paper concludes by calling for local planners to reformulate their role in planning urban adaptation by reasserting their role as “market actors” through the development of city information models, the exploitation of professional communication networks and the transference of their own tacit knowledge.     

城市居民水表户表改造的必要性与可行性分析

解释了城市居民用户水表一户一表改造工程的定义,针对城市居民用户共用总表存在的问题,分析了城市居民用户水表一户一表改造的必要性,并通过具体实例,从技术与经济的角度探索了其改造的可行性,推动了节水事业的发展。     

A NEW URBAN CONSERVATISM: The Case of Hartford,Connecticut

ABSTRACT: A new urban conservatism has developed in Hartford, Connecticut, one of the US' poorest cities. Over one-quarter of its population lives below the poverty level, and every modern urban problem exists within the city. Since 1993, the local government has been controlled by a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats that has set a distinctive tone in local governance, responding heavily to business elements over the poor. Three controversies that illustrate this conservatism are analyzed: (1) an attempt at private management of the school system; (2) the utilization of zoning to curtail social services in the city; and (3) the limiting of public participation and oversight of city council activities. These developments suggest that a new type of urban conservative regime may be developing, stemming from a new ethos of privatism and the emerging global economy.