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Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores how far policy-makers understand the structure of the development industry, the perceived characteristics of developers and the extent to which such actors can be considered policy-responsive. If these matters are poorly understood, the effectiveness of planning policy may be undermined, especially where the private sector is responsible for undertaking most development. The paper is based upon empirical research on the Scottish Executive’s perceptions of, and policy stances towards developers between 1999 and 2007. It finds that the Executive appeared to have only limited understanding of what drives the development process or motivates individual developers and seemed unfamiliar with important differences within the industry, sectorally and geographically. Instead, ‘the notional property developer’ was incorrectly conceived as a malleable and potentially compliant partner with shared objectives to the State. The paper calls for a more thorough understanding of the development industry as a prerequisite to effective urban policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Selective migration flows are thought to be a key means by which the intended benefits of area-based initiatives `leak out' of target areas, undermining their effectiveness. To date, direct evidence on the scale or impact of these flows has been weak since they are difficult to assess using survey methods. Using 2001 census data for England and Scotland, this paper looks at the scale and composition of flows for deprived neighbourhoods with a particular focus on educational attainment. It analyses the impacts of these flows on the characteristics of deprived areas, exploring differences between regions and comparing neighbourhoods involved in two major regeneration programmes with other deprived areas. The paper shows that selective migration flows do serve to reinforce spatial segregation but that the scale of this effect appears very modest and that impacts vary between regions. Flows for the regeneration areas are less adverse than for similarly deprived neighbourhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether receipt of a Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grant has a causal impact on plant total factor productivity (TFP). To tackle the problem of self-selection into the treatment group, propensity score matching is employed. In order to control for the endogeneity of other variables in the model, estimations are performed using the system GMM estimator. The results show that for low technology manufacturing, receipt of an RSA grant leads to a fall in TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I explore how the culture of land-use planning in Scotland has been targeted as an object of modernising reform, exploring how ‘culture change’ initiatives played a prominent role in stabilising a new settlement around ‘open for business’ planning between 2006 and 2012, containing potential tensions between diverse goals to make planning more efficient, inclusive and integrative. This highlights the potentially significant role of governance cultures in containing tensions and securing consent to processes of state restructuring. I therefore argue that greater empirical attentiveness to the cultural micro-politics of state restructuring can improve understanding of complex, contemporary dynamics of change, and the contested role of the neoliberal hegemonic project in reshaping urban governance. I conclude by arguing that the continued power of neoliberal critiques of the inefficiency of land-use planning indicate a need to acknowledge and engage contemporary cultural battles over the purposes of planning and urban governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing policy focus since the 1970s in Scotland, the UK and internationally on ‘community’, community development and community ownership and enterprise has facilitated a certain growth of the community sector and therefore of concern for related discussions of theory and practice. This paper positions this turn to community within the shifting global political economic context, in particular the rolling out of the neoliberal state internationally from the 1980s and a related urban crisis management of structural inequality (Brenner and Theodore, 2002). By focusing on the emergence of community anchor organisations – understood in the UK context as multi-purpose, local community-led organisations – within Scottish and UK policy-making since the 2000s, the central dilemma for critical community sector theory and practice of sustaining a local egalitarian vision and practice (Pearce, 2003) given this neoliberal context is explored. A Scottish urban community anchor provides an illustration of this challenge for theory and practice and of how it can be re-considered through discussions of ‘progressive mutualism’ (Pearce, 2009) and ‘resilience, re-working and resistance’ (Cumbers, 2010; Katz, 2004). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws on recent theorising on policy mobility and post-politics to investigate the planning of a New Urbanist settlement, Tornagrain, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, and designed by Andres Duany. It details Duany's role as an influential ‘persuasive guru’ of New Urbanism and his signatory charrette as a participatory method for engaging local citizens into the New Urbanist model of place-making. Nonetheless, the Tornagrain case raises non-trivial questions about this model, not least the faith being placed in a globally mobile policy evangelist becoming, in effect, a doctrinal conduit for convening local democracy. The paper then contributes to recent debate on post-political planning, particularly in terms of how latent expressions of dissent in local planning processes often appear to be deamplified through endeavours to forge a post-political consensus, in part to masquerade rent hikes and profiteering on behalf of powerful landowners, glitzy architects, consultants and other associates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Influenced by Nikolas Rose’s concept of ethopolitics, this paper explores attitudes to home and tenure amongst low-cost homeowners in Scotland. In doing so, it seeks to highlight the contested nature of contemporary governing practices and the way in which ‘governable subjects’ can challenge, reinterpret and resist dominant policy discourses, which promote homeownership as the preferred tenure of choice, whilst simultaneously pathologising and problematising social housing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the impact of demographic change on the housing market. More specifically, a difference-in-differences methodology is used to explore the effect of population decline and population ageing on house prices in Scotland and England/Wales. The analysis suggests that population decline and population ageing put downward pressure on prices. Therefore, the long-run trend of rising real house prices can not be assumed to continue into the future, particularly in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban regeneration (UR) programmes are recognised as a type of Population Health Intervention (PHI), addressing social and health inequalities. Policy recommends programmes involve communities through engagement and empowerment. Whilst the literature has started to link empowerment with health improvement, this has not been within an UR context. As part of broader research on the economic evaluation of community empowerment activities, this paper examines how health gains can be generated through promoting empowerment as well as identifying whether feelings of empowerment are associated with residents personal characteristics or perceptions of their neighbourhood. Using 2011 Community Health and Wellbeing Survey (GoWell) cross-sectional data, ordinal logistic regression and simple linear regression analysis of 15 Glasgow neighbourhoods undergoing regeneration with 4302 adult householders (≥16 years old) was completed. Analyses identified strong associations (P≥ 0.05) between empowerment and the mental health subscale of the SF12v2 and with several items of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) scale. Furthermore, residents’ who felt more empowered reported more positive attitudes towards their surroundings and housing providers. This concurs with recent evidence of the importance of residents’ psychological investments in their neighbourhood influencing their sense of place attachment. Such analyses present initial evidence of the value of investing resources within UR programmes to activities geared towards increasing residents’ empowerment as a means of producing those health gains often sought by more costly aspects of the programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language of participation and empowerment has become a convention in urban redevelopment practice. While on first glance there is little to disagree with, a critical literature has emerged around the notion that participation has become a new ‘tyranny’ that, despite its claims, is little more than tokenism. However, it is the contention of this paper that the impacts of participation in community-based urban regeneration projects are complex, usually contested and often contradictory. While an uncritical vocabulary of ‘participation’ has proliferated in both cultural and regeneration policy, the actual practice on the ground reveals significant difficulties which have implications for policy goals of community participation and empowerment, and for the community itself. Rather than seeing it as a problem, or something to be removed as soon as possible from the process, contestation and conflict should be recognised as appropriate reflections of community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From 2001, the construction of flats and high-density developments increased in England and the building of houses declined. Does this indicate a change in taste or is it a result of government planning policies? In this paper, an analysis is made of the long-term effects of the policy of constraint which has existed for the past 50 years but the increase in density is identified as occurring primarily after new, revised, planning guidance was issued in England in 2000 which discouraged low-density development. To substantiate this, it is pointed out that the change which occurred in England did not occur in Scotland where guidance was not changed to encourage high-density residential development. The conclusion that the change is the result of planning policies and not of a change in taste is confirmed by surveys of the occupants of new high-rise developments in Leeds. The new flat-dwellers were predominantly young and childless and expressed the intention, in the near future, when they could, of moving out of the city centre and into houses. From recent changes in guidance by the new coalition government, it is expected that the construction of flats in England will fall back to earlier levels over the next few years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A key objective of the Glasgow housing stock transfer in 2003 was promoting community empowerment, community control and community ownership. The first-stage transfer was from Glasgow City Council to Glasgow Housing Association and it was assumed by many that transfer to local housing organisations (LHOs)--thus promoting community ownership--would follow. This paper assesses the nature of community empowerment in LHO management committees and is part of a wider programme of research on governance, participation and empowerment. The study found that, despite its construction and aims, stock transfer policy is not able to deliver a uniform policy outcome in terms of community empowerment. No unitary relationship between community empowerment and community ownership was observed: it is suggested that the opportunity and capability to make choices about preferred management/ ownership arrangements is more empowering than ownership per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK has had a long history of market provision of household insurance. Recent years, however, have seen a decline in the traditional insurance market distribution channels aimed at low-income and/or rented-sector households. The products, pricing and method of payment currently offered by insurers have exacerbated the exclusion of many in social housing from this important financial services product. Research suggests that only 50 per cent of people living in rented or local authority housing insure their contents, compared with 93 per cent of homeowners. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the degree to which tenants in public-sector housing participate in low-cost household insurance schemes promoted by their landlord and to assess the reasons behind this level of participation. This study suggests that, despite value-for-money schemes being available, the take-up rates by tenants are low and that the providers of social housing need to be more vigorous and imaginative in their promotion of low-cost insurance schemes if this form of financial exclusion is to be tackled successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a contingent valuation survey, this paper provides the first empirical test of the proposition that intangible impacts might justify hosting major sporting events on cost—benefit grounds. Respondents, drawn from London, Manchester and Glasgow, were asked for their willingness to pay (WTP) to host the 2012 Olympic Games in London on the basis of the intangible impacts that this event might provide. Annual mean WTP is £22, £12 and £11 per year (for 10 years) in these 3 UK cities respectively. An illustrative total (UK) WTP for intangible impacts is in the region of £2 billion. Statistical analysis of WTP determinants reveals a range of plausible explanatory factors such as respondents' degree of support for the bid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The findings of the Barker review, which examined the reasons for the undersupply of UK housing, have important implications for the devolved constituents of the UK, including Scotland. This paper traces the emergence of the brownfield regeneration policy agenda across the UK and examines how the Barker review connects with this brownfield policy focus. The paper compares housing and brownfield policies and practices in England and Scotland, places them in an international context and elicits wider lessons for devolved governance in relation to housing policy, in terms of 'centrist-local' tensions. Estimates based on published data suggest that Barker's emphasis on increased housing supply cannot easily be reconciled with the current emphasis on brownfield development and is likely to require a return to greenfield development in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A theoretical model is developed of house market disequilibrium. Price and quantity adjustments occur as the consequence of inventory adjustment in the absence of a market-maker. This approach reveals a process of dynamic adjustment whereby sellers alter their reservation prices in response to implicit time on the market as a signal of excess demand. Unobservable equilibrium house prices are estimated using time on the market and house price data for Glasgow between 1999 and 2007. Empirical estimation models sellers’ reservation price response to the overhang of unsold houses and the excess demand curve within an econometric framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

High rates of tenancy turnover in social rented housing have increasingly been identified as problematic both in the UK and elsewhere. High turnover has been variously associated with management failings, individual vulnerability or (absence of) tenant choice. Drawing on original research into 'prematurely terminated' tenancies in Glasgow, we investigate explanatory factors associated with tenancy sustainment rates. In doing so, we interrogate the (managerialist) rationale which positions such residential mobility as potentially 'excessive' and therefore 'problematic'. The empirical findings demonstrate evidence for all three posited explanations for high tenancy turnover but also suggest that some tenants vacating their homes after only a short time may be making a positive choice. They also emphasise that, in seeking to reduce early tenancy termination, social landlords should recognise the importance of improving mainstream housing management services and the condition of the housing stock, as well as attempting to address individual vulnerability through targeted support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]