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As UK cities and towns become increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse, researchers have tuned into how people inhabit multiculturalism. Ethnographic approaches have focused on the kind of togetherness that people generate as they go about their everyday lives, observing the affective textures of interactions and happenings of the here and now in granular detail. Missing from these accounts is what crowdsourced data might add to understandings of how multicultural places are experienced. What is vital about this kind of data is that it is 'big', involving a diversity of voices similarly intent on messaging their experiences, presenting opportunities to scale up the affect of encounters and to quantify what is difficult to qualify. This paper brings Digital Geographies into conversation with research on everyday multiculturalism to examine qualitatively and quantitatively how social media use folds into and expresses various practices of sociality and connection. Our paper involves Twitter, Nando's and the city of Leicester in the UK to challenge and advance ways of understanding everyday multiculturalism in an era of global migration and ethnically complex populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider whether the UK government's levelling-up governance model of Combined Authorities and metro-mayors is the most appropriate solution for beyond the metropolis. We draw on case study research from the Mersey Dee area between North East Wales and North West England. The paper addresses three propositions. First, that the underlying distinction between agglomeration-driven and place-based policy centres on assumptions regarding the homogenous and heterogenous character of place. The paper shows how, in the UK context, the city-region concept has evolved as an agglomeration-driven territorial construct with practical limitations. Proposition two focuses on how a distinctive character of place reflects its particular mix of firms and their resulting combined processes of agglomeration. Proposition three suggests that this mix of firms presents choices for the appropriate design of institutions locally and regionally. Finally, the paper illustrates why the present agglomeration-driven framework is a barrier to enabling levelling-up. Progressing 'levelling up' involves recognition that heterogenous local governance contexts are shaped by history, culture, and geography, where the success of place-based policies is not aided by the top-down imposition of governance models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a personal reflection on working for a charity offering psychotherapeutic help to adolescents in an inner London borough during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper highlights the importance of considering the adolescent's material circumstances together with their developmental needs when setting up remote work. It explores the unconscious meaning of remote contact and of the adolescent's choice of a teletherapy modality, as well as the role of fantasy and the body in the absence of visual information. The paper also considers the impact remote working has had on the boundaries and dynamics of psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore digital consumer activism through a spatial lens, in order to understand how digital and place-based consumer activism intersect and interact. The empirical context is provided by Fairtrade Towns activism in the UK, investigated through netnographic methods. Three main spatialised tactics of digital consumer activism emerged from the analysis: emplacing the digital space; territorialising ethical consumption; and materialising digital activism. Building on these, we theorise hybrid consumer activism as a form of consumer activism whereby activists display belonging and identity both in physical and digital 'places' draw boundaries around spaces of ethical consumption through localised and digital collective action, and form hybrid digital ties. This study contributes to existing scholarship by taking into account placed and spatialised dimensions of digital consumer activism and by questioning the dichotomy between digital and place-based activism through the concept of "hybrid consumer activism". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between public houses or pubs, and crime rates in England and Wales. The impact of pubs on local communities is generally studied and investigated within the context of third places, thus physical places that facilitate the accumulation of social capital within communities. We estimate Poisson Fixed-Effects (PFE) and a frontier Spatial Autoregressive (SAR) model on a unique panel dataset for 375 local authorities in England and Wales between 2003 and 2018. Results from the analysis indicate that the presence of pubs progressively relates to a higher incidence of major crimes when transitioning from rural to urban areas, mainly due to weaker level of community cohesion and a lack of resources to support formal policing in more urbanized centres. These findings highlight the importance of place-based strategies in tackling rising incidences of crimes, indicating that recent pub closures may have contributed to severing community ties that act as a deterrent to crime in certain areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disruptions associated with health and energy crisis have emphasized the need for hyperlocal cities. However, in Europe, a tool to measure the efficiency of land use and accessibility planning for localizing urban mobility is missing. In this paper, we construct a comparable 15-Minute-Walking City (15-MWC) index that assesses the walking performance of 121 European metropolitan areas and seven amenity types. The data are combined equally following the PROMETHEE II multicriteria approach to assign a final score and to present a ranking of 15-Minutes cities. The main visualization demonstrates European-level disparities and indicates that most of leading cities are in Germany, while most of the worst performers are in the UK. We also reveal a statistically significant difference in 15-MWC performance due to their GDP per capita disparities. The empirical results may serve as a referencing tool for cross-city comparisons and may support policymakers when designing transport and city-planning strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green belt, without question the most well-known and influential legacy of town and country planning in the UK, continues to attract interest from a wide range of interested parties – from those eager to maintain the protection it offers to the countryside, to others more concerned at the negative impacts it is argued to have on housing supply and consequently prices. In this paper we explore how the arguments for a green belt around a particular city in the UK – Liverpool – were built up over the middle years of the twentieth century, in particular through three important (sub-)regional plans. Analysis of those plans is situated within national policy and nationwide rhetoric to illustrate how perfectly justifiable arguments about the need to limit urban sprawl "baked in" resentment and opposition to much-needed housing growth. A situation which, as the final section of the paper briefly reflects upon, not only contributed to the wide-scale construction of high-rise flats in the city from the 1950s onwards, but continues to resonate today through the objections lodged against attempts to enhance the spatial footprint of the city through development on the green belt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its inception, the European welfare state was a contract between the state, civic society, and the private sector. And yet, studies on the architecture and urbanism of the European welfare state frequently overlook the role played by the private sector, as the emphasis is commonly placed on governmental action. However, apart from governments also private actors played an important role in shaping the post-war welfare state. New towns in particular were sites of experiment. Here, public–private partnerships forged novel collective spaces, which challenged and redefined what constituted the civic realm. This paper focuses on one such novel type of collective space: the megastructural 'heart' of second-wave British New Towns. Combining mass consumption with administrative and civic functions, thereby blending the concepts of 'shopping centre' and 'city centre', these structures embodied the welfare state's belief that capitalism could neither live with nor without the existence of a pervasive welfare system (and vice versa). Through the analysis of three megastructures, this paper highlights the important role that private actors played in the formation of the post-war British welfare state; it explicates the lofty societal ambitions that these New Town schemes expressed; and it pinpoints the precariousness of public–private partnerships in the development of urban megastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of research into the range of actors involved in the marketing of urban places as shopping destinations and the processes by which this marketing activity is planned. The paper highlights the differences between the process of marketing planning in this context (at the interface of the public and private sectors), as opposed to processes in private sector organizations from which the majority of current marketing theory was developed. It suggests various implications as to the characteristics of what Ashworth (1993) has termed a 'special type of marketing' to be applied to urban places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge 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.)

The current regulatory and planning environment means that road-based public transport in UK urban areas (with the exception of London) tends to be planned on a piecemeal basis, and there are often conflicts between the needs and priorities of operators, passengers and planners. In consequence, several local authorities are considering adopting an alternative regulatory environment using quality contracts, with a consequent shift towards centralised service planning. There are though no tools readily available to ensure this centralised service planning will lead to a situation, which provides a better balance between the interests of the different stakeholders. This paper describes the development of a methodology to fill this gap, using Southampton as a case study to explore the corresponding improvement methods, which could be applied based on the alternative regulatory environment. The improvement methods, including both bus route design and frequency setting, are considered in this paper, which demonstrates how this service improvement problem can be solved by making use of an optimisation technique, the tabu search algorithm, developed under the environment of ArcObjects for Java. While the methodology is developed in the UK context, the general principles used could be applied more widely to improve transit network planning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The sustainable city has now become a leading paradigm of urban development throughout the world. Although the practices, discourses and ideologies associated with the sustainable city have been widely disseminated, analyses of sustainable urban development remain surprisingly anodyne. Drawing upon the insights of regulation theory, this paper attempts to develop a critical engagement with the sustainable city as a space of socio-ecological regulation. Focusing upon two examples of sustainable urban development in practice—the first, the struggle over work-place environments in Stoke-on-Trent; and the second, the reinsertion of nature into the Black Country urban region—this paper explores the regulatory geography of the sustainable city and the environmental visions and practices with which it is associated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon Colin McFarlane's 2011 call inCityfor an ‘assemblage urbanism’ to supplement critical urbanism. It does so by mapping the spatio-political contours of London's 21st-century housing crisis through the geophilosophical framework of Deleuze and Guattari'sA Thousand Plateaus([1980] 2013, London: Bloomsbury] and Hardt and Negri's analysis of the metropolis inCommonwealth(2009, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). The paper examines the Focus E15 housing campaign based around a group of young mothers in the East London borough of Newham. In 2013, the mothers were living in the Focus E15 foyer supported housing unit for young people in Newham, but they were subsequently threatened with eviction as a result of welfare cuts. After successfully contesting the mothers’ own prospective expulsion from the city, the campaign shifted to the broader struggle for ‘social housing not social cleansing’. The paper draws upon participant observation at campaign events and interviews with key members. The Focus E15 campaign has engaged in a series of actions which form a distinctive way of undertaking housing politics in London, a politics that can be understood using a Deleuzoguattarian framework. Several campaign actions, including temporary occupations, are analysed. It is argued that these actions have created ‘smooth space’ in a manner which is to an extent distinctive from many other London housing campaigns which are rooted in a more sedentary defensive approach based around the protection of existing homes and communities—‘our place’. It is such spatio-political creativity—operating as a ‘nomadic war machine'—which has given rise to the high-profile reputation of the Focus E15 campaigners as inspirational young women who do not ‘know their place’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Currently the job of teaching is being reconstructed through a technicist and managerial account which bleaches out the 'authentic' voice of the teacher. This paper is an attempt to recover the commitments which a particular group of teachers (urban teachers) bring to their work and explore the way their perspectives are infused with their class histories, class consciousness and their teaching experiences. The paper is divided into two main sections. The first part briefly examines the contested classed position of teachers and argues that there is a need to distinguish between economic and subjective class identities. The second part draws on a small data set of interviews conducted with seven experienced and long-stay inner-city teachers and argues that (these) teachers do what they do because of their classed identities and subjectivities. While these sorts of teachers may always have been in a minority (Grace 1978), nevertheless they are still out there teaching in the city. Through their perceptions, values and sometimes their actions, they are contesting normalizing discourses of what it is to be a teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Abandonment of property in all housing tenures is a problem in some British inner cities, especially in the north of England. The paper outlines the causes of this phenomenon and describes some of the social problems that arise in areas containing significant quantities of abandoned property. A principal underlying cause of abandonment is low demand creating, initially, voids and vacancies in the dwelling stock and ultimately housing abandonment. The paper considers the relationship between empty stock and abandonment particularly in the social housing sector. It reviews the US and UK literature and concludes that the UK literature and research agenda is deficient in its analysis of the problem of abandonment. The paper then explores evidence of the source of the abandonment problem in the low demand for housing in some parts of the country, particularly those affected by industrial collapse. Abandonment is also explained as a case of policy failure particularly due to the housing subsidy system and the conflicting interests of central and local government. Finally, the social consequences for communities afflicted by low demand and abandonment are explored and evidence is presented of the severe impact on neighbourhood stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a wealth of academic research focusing on the origins and development of association football in Britain during the nineteenth century, academics have failed to reach a consensus regarding the early history of the game with the emergence of contrasting ‘orthodox’ and ‘revisionist’ interpretations. Much of the current research has focused on tackling the subject on a national level and this has resulted in many towns, cities and regions across the country being overlooked when sports historians discuss the origins of modern football. One such region is North Staffordshire, more commonly referred to as The Potteries, which, despite having played a key role in the formation of the Football League, possessing one of the oldest professional football clubs in the country and an early county football association, has never been the subject of an in-depth academic study. Using a range of archival sources this paper provides an overview of the origins and early development of association football across The Potteries from the 1850 to 1870s, emphasizing the influence of Stoke City Football Club and provides a fact based resolution to the debate surrounding the club’s origin and formation. The wider development of the game in The Potteries is also explored, tracing the early informal football activities taking place at fairs, fetes and the wakes holidays to the establishment of a football culture in the 1870s following the formation of organized football clubs and the Staffordshire Football Association. This paper concludes that neither the orthodox nor the revisionist interpretations of the game’s origins can fully explain the region’s football development and that further research into the region is required to understand the significance of The Potteries in relation to the national picture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examined plant-based product (PBP) consumption, related motivations and barriers, and PBP attributes of importance. An online survey collected responses (n = 456) from PBP consumers and non-PBP consumers in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) and the United Kingdom (UK). Responses were analyzed using univariate statistics, binary logistic regression, and Principal Component Analysis. Females, and those living in urban areas were more likely to consume PBPs. Primary motivations for consumption were 'sustainability,' 'animal welfare' and 'health.' Barriers to consumption for non-PBP consumers were 'not seeing a need to change their diet' and 'taste.' Taste, health, and product information on the label were cited as the most important PBP attributes. Findings are of relevance to PBP manufacturers and marketers; the paper presents related recommendations for PBP marketing strategies, considers how best to target both usage segments (PBP and non-PBP consumers), and evaluates the usefulness of a usage segmentation approach for this product category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visibility modelling calculates what an observer could theoretically see in the surrounding region based on a digital model of the landscape. In some cases, it is not necessary, nor desirable, to compute the visibility of an entire region (i.e. a viewshed), but instead it is sufficient and more efficient to calculate the visibility from point to point, or from a point to a small set of points, such as computing the intervisibility of predators and prey in an agent-based simulation. This paper explores how different line-of-sight (LoS) sample ordering strategies increase the number of early target rejections, where the target is considered to be obscured from view, thereby improving the computational efficiency of the LoS algorithm. This is of particular importance in dynamic environments where the locations of the observers, targets and other surface objects are being frequently updated. Trials were conducted in three UK cities, demonstrating a robust fivefold increase in performance for two strategies (hop, divide and conquer). The paper concludes that sample ordering methods do impact overall efficiency, and that approaches which disperse samples along the LoS perform better in urban regions than incremental scan methods. The divide and conquer method minimises elevation interception queries, making it suitable when elevation models are held on disk rather than in memory, while the hopping strategy was equally fast, algorithmically simpler, with minimal overhead for visible target cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure & Events is the property of Taylor & Francis 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 Regional Studies is the property of Routledge 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 Leisure Studies is the property of Routledge 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 argues that the town/city square, through its role as an urban node, has an important potential role in the creation of competitive place differentiation, especially in terms of the activities occurring therein (with particular reference to retail activities, such as periodic markets), which can, in turn, be considered as contributory elements in existing conceptualisations of an urban place “product”. Drawing on the concepts of rhythmanalysis and synchronisation, the paper suggests the existence of a more overt temporal dimension which can contribute to the creation of agenius loci(or “spirit of the place”), which can be capitalised on for place marketing purposes. The paper considers such issues in the specific context of St Ann's Square in Manchester, in the north west of England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses a brief description of the history of the archive collection and the "Town and townscape" project with some final reflections on planning archives and planning history in Great Britain. It notes that the collection comprises extensive professional and personal correspondence, maps, plans, and related illustrated material. Meanwhile, the arrangement of the collection respects the original organization by Thomas Sharp. Moreover, the "Town and townscape" planning history archival project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council's (AHRC) discontinued Resource Enhancement Scheme.

This paper considers the development of a “Liverpool model” for culture-led urban regeneration, based on an analysis of the competition to become the UK's first City of Culture (UKCC) for 2013. The paper outlines New Labour's developing approach to culture-led regeneration, placing the UKCC in the context of the use of culture for various local development policies, particularly city branding and urban regeneration (Evans & Shaw, 2004; McGuigan, 2005). Within this context, the paper considers how Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2008 has been narrated by New Labour and the manner in which this narrative has influenced the development of the UKCC programme (Department for Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS], 2009; Garcia, Melville & Cox, 2010). The paper demonstrates how this narrative overlooks the ultimate specificity of Liverpool's success (Liverpool Culture Company, 2009; Garcia et al., 2010), which suggests a unique combination of political circumstance, cultural leadership and public and private investment are at the root of the perceived success of Liverpool's ECoC 2008, rather than an exportable, replicable policy (O'Brien & Miles, 2010) described by the policy literature, and substantiated by the competition to select the UKCC 2013 (DCMS, 2009). The paper's conclusion problematises the prospect of another city repeating the Liverpool experience. The “Liverpool model” of culture-led regeneration is shown as one which limits prospective cultural policies to a narrow vision of the possible, a vision which is unlikely to be sustainable in the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge 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 the idea that some urban areas in the UK are crystallising around new poles of racial and religious segregation, manifested in ghettos and secessionary spaces. The paper suggests the need to rethink the theoretical conceptualisation of the links between ethnicity, culture, housing processes and dynamics of urban segregation. It argues that the work of Bourdieu, Elias and Weber provides a historically-grounded framework for exploring culture, conduct and residence and illustrates this by sketching the relationship between religion and housing. The paper then explores the paradigms of ghettos and secessionary urban spaces and applies Diken's and Alsayyad & Roy's conceptualisations of the camp as a site of exception to critique the notion of the non-antagonistic city and to suggest that the aim of urban policy should be the facilitation of civility between diverse populations rather than an overly ambitious, ahistorical and assimilationist project of 'community' cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Etherington D. and Jones M. City-regions: new geographies of uneven development and inequality, Regional Studies. Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning literature on the 'new regionalism'. Protagonists have made persuasive arguments about regions as successful models of economic and social development. This paper argues that the championing of 'city-regions' provides an opportunity for taking these debates further. It draws on research taking place on the Sheffield City-Region, UK, and particularly discusses the interrelationships between competitiveness, work-welfare regimes - those policies and strategies dealing with labour market governance and welfare state restructuring - labour market inequalities and low pay. The paper suggests that city-regions reinforce, and have the potential to increase, rather than resolve, uneven development and socio-spatial inequalities... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dargan L. Participation and local urban regeneration: the case of the New Deal for Communities (NDC) in the UK, Regional Studies. The contention of this paper is that the policy discourses of 'community' and of 'participation' underpinning area-based regeneration programmes are overly simplistic, and their use in regeneration policy is, as a consequence, highly problematic. Based on an analysis of a regeneration partnership in the north of England, this paper will demonstrate that, while partnership members share the same levels of access in decision-making structures, the members of partnership boards have such different understandings of the purpose of participation and the role of residents in the regeneration process that it has created conflict serious enough to affect delivery of regeneration. [image omitted] Dargan L. La participation et la restauration urbaine locale: l'etude de cas du New Deal en faveur des communautes au R-U, Regional Studies. Cet article cherche a affirmer que les discours politiques sur les notions de 'communaute' et de 'participation' qui etayent les programmes de restauration territoriaux sont trop simplistes et, par consequent, leur emploi dans la politique de restauration s'avere tres problematique. A partir d'une analyse d'un partenariat de restauration dans le nord de l'Angleterre, cet article cherche a demontrer que, tandis que les membres du partenariat jouissent des memes niveaux d'acces aux structures dans la prise de decision, la comprehension des membres des commissions partenariales quant au but de la participation et au role des habitants dans le processus de restauration varie tellement qu'il en a resulte un conflit suffisamment important que la restauration s'avere touchee. New Labour New Deal for Communities (NDC) Restauration Participation Communaute Discours Dargan L. Beteiligung und lokale Stadtsanierung: der Fall des 'New Deal for Communities (NDC)'-Programms in Grossbritannien, Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag wird die These aufgestellt, dass die von der Politik im Zusammenhang mit Gebietssanierungsprogrammen eingesetzten Diskurse der 'Gemeinschaft' und 'Beteiligung' ubermassig simplistisch sind, weshalb ihre Verwendung in der Sanierungspolitik ausserst problematisch ist. Ausgehend von der Analyse einer Sanierungspartnerschaft in Nordengland wird in diesem Artikel nachgewiesen, dass die einzelnen Partner zwar einen gleichberechtigten Zugang zu den Entscheidungsstrukturen haben, doch dass die Mitglieder in den Vorstanden der Partnerschaft derart unterschiedliche Auffassungen uber den Zweck der Beteiligung und die Rolle der Anwohner im Sanierungprozess haben, dass ernste Konflikte entstanden sind, die sich auf die Umsetzung der Sanierung auswirken. New Labour New Deal for Communities (NDC) Sanierung Beteiligung Gemeinschaft Diskurs Dargan L. Participacion y regeneracion urbana local: El caso del New Deal for Communities (NDC) en el Reino Unido, Regional Studies. En este articulo explicamos que los discursos politicos de 'comunidad' y de 'participacion' que socavan los programas de regeneracion de areas son demasiados simplistas y por consiguiente es muy problematico que se usen para la politica de regeneracion. Basandonos en un analisis de una colaboracion de regeneracion en el norte de Inglaterra, en este articulo demostraremos que, si bien los miembros de sociedades comparten los mismos niveles de acceso en las estructuras de toma de decisiones, los miembros de las juntas directivas en sociedad tienen opiniones diferentes en cuanto a la finalidad de la participacion y el papel de los residentes en el proceso de regeneracion, lo que ha creado conflictos lo suficientemente graves como para afectar a la realizacion de la regeneracion. Partido Laborista New Deal for Communities (NDC) Regeneracion Participacion Comunidad Discurso [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical discussion of the uses and meanings of temporary outdoor ice rinks, which have become increasingly popular in UK cities over the last decade. The installation of ice rinks in cities in winter time is framed in a number of contexts, including entrepreneurial governance and civic boosterism, the uses of culture by the local state, invented winter and Christmas traditions, the effects of cold winter weather on sociality and other forms of embodied play argued to be reshaping urban socialities. Conceiving ice rinks as a form of 'entrepreneurial display', the paper also draws on theories of 'expressive embodiment' to explore how rinks also encourage particular ways of performing and interacting that contest current critiques of the effects of entrepreneurial urban governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local municipalities are the public sector organizations closest to citizens and therefore they have the first responsibility for solving citizens' problems and needs. The Best Value framework, developed in the UK, has been a useful tool for improving local services. This paper reports on an evaluation of the impact of the Best Value framework on Portuguese municipalities. Four hypotheses about the impact of the four pillars (the 'Four Cs') of Best Value on market performance were tested through structural path analysis. The results show that 'challenge' and 'consult' had a significant and positive impact on market performance, whereas 'compare' and 'compete' did not have a significant impact. Using the Best Value framework improved Portuguese local municipalities' market performance. The use of benchmarking was particularly successful. Local public authorities worldwide should definitely be questioning themselves about the services they provide and to what extent these services are responding to their citizens' needs and problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point for this paper is the argument that increased weight of money into commercial property in this decade has led to a convergence of UK provincial city office yields. The paper begins by reviewing the concept of a property yield cycle and the notion of a city risk premium, and then considers exogenous and endogenous influences on the determination of urban office yields. This provides the framework for the empirical analysis. The study examines the trends in office yields in the major provincial office centres of the UK over a period of more than 20 years. It reviews the changing city risk premiums relative to the City of London, including their spread, over this period and relates this to the weight of money invested in different provincial cities. This descriptive analysis provides the context for the development of a formal model of local office yields that is tested with a panel regression. The findings suggest that there are some local or fixed effects on yields in different cities and that exogenous investment funds are a significant influence in the short term but not the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK has become a leading proponent of European restrictionalism and has focused its efforts on developing policy that excludes asylum seekers from mainstream society. Dispersal policy has focused upon sending asylum seekers to excluded urban areas where there is an excess of available housing. This paper discusses the potential impacts of this approach on the economic prosperity and social cohesion of UK dispersal areas and focuses specifically on new migrants who arrived under the NASS dispersal programme. It demonstrates that, whilst newly arrived asylum seekers and refugees (ASRs) have both skills and qualifications, they are currently experiencing high levels of unemployment and those who are employed are working in low-skilled jobs with earnings far below the average. The paper contends that the high levels of unemployment and underemployment currently experienced by ASRs may serve to exclude them from society in dispersal areas and in so doing exacerbate the general levels of social exclusion in those areas. It is argued that ASRs could offer new opportunities for deprived areas if initiatives were introduced to help them access work commensurate with their skills and qualifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to examine current and evolving supply side transition policy initiatives in the light of (a) particular demand side needs of urban young people classified as those most disadvantaged and potentially marginalized; and (b) the emerging realities of accessing and operating within particular examples of high value-added knowledge work arenas of the new urban economies in the UK. The paper is a synthesis of qualitative research undertaken by the author over the last five years that has examined notions of transition, development and learning for both young people and adults as they attempt to navigate their pathways in, and through, the new economies of the post-industrial urban context. The paper communicates the importance of a number of sociocultural theoretical concepts as a way of illuminating transition choices, actions and opportunities for disadvantaged young people. These concepts also enable a broader set of critical questions to be asked about current 14–19 transition policy and practice, particularly with regards to Connexions and the Careers Education and Guidance in England 11–19 National Framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is the analysis and prediction of local office rents and in particular the development of econometric models for two UK cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow. This paper reviews the current state of modelling and forecasting for office markets and notes the sparsity of urban office rent models. The urban models that exist suffer from data problems and either make the fatal flaw of ignoring supply constraints or consider supply in terms of net change in floorspace. The objective of this paper is to address some of the deficiencies in this empirical work on office market dynamics; it is the first attempt to use local take-up as a variable to model urban rents. Two approaches to modelling urban office rents are undertaken. The first model adopts a single reduced-form price equation using direct demand and supply measures, and suggests that variation in market dynamics exists between the two centres. However, these equations for the two cities have statistical weaknesses. The second model is a three-equation 'structural' model. The results of this analysis also suggest that Edinburgh responds more quickly to fundamental changes in supply-demand imbalances than Glasgow in the determination of office rents. The variation between Edinburgh and Glasgow, two cities within one administrative region of the UK, exemplifies the arguments in favour of urban analysis and the deficiencies in the regional approach to forecasting. The results of the empirical analysis also emphasise the importance of including local supply variables. Urban analysis still suffers from a paucity of published local economic data and recourse to regional data remains theoretically unsatisfactory. However, the use of a demand flow variable as demonstrated here is not only significant but arguably encompasses local economic drivers, and thereby negates to some extent the need for local economic indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the international migration dynamics of the highly skilled “creative class”. To date, little research has been undertaken to provide an in-depth understanding of the underlying reasons behind the movements of these workers. By providing a micro-level, qualitative analysis of the motivations, experiences and migration trajectories of a sub-group of these workers, namely “creative Bohemians”, this paper offers a perspective that is currently lacking in the literature. These individuals are considered to be particularly attracted by diverse and open urban milieus, as well as being instrumental in creating the type of urban environment that attracts other members of the “creative class”. Birmingham, UK, was chosen as an example of a European city emulating “creative city” policies and being potentially well-placed to attract international talent due to its culturally diverse population and reputation for “tolerance”. Findings call for a more nuanced understanding of the factors associated with both the attraction and retention of international talent, as it is clear that migration decisions depend on factors other than simply “quality of place” or diversity and tolerance. Policies focusing on subjective concepts of place attractiveness are thus unlikely to be successful. Instead, cities need carefully targeted policies that address their particular socio-economic and physical realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the differentiation between business centres in Britain using data on business location from the Census of Employment analysed at postcode district level. The paper uses a combination of micro-analytical, central place theory and interregional trade theory to argue that centres can be expected to be differentiated from each other in the form of a hierarchy. The paper uses a spatial interaction model to test various possible forms of hierarchy. A five-level hierarchy is demonstrated for national/international, regional, sub-regional and local centres, as well as sub-regional centres that are 'shadowed' by nearby regional centres. Whilst the paper is exploratory, so that we would not argue that any one centre is rigidly at any single position in the hierarchy, the paper strongly demonstrates the continued importance of urban hierarchy in business location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1903, the world's first garden city was founded in Hertfordshire, England. The utopian dream to combine the best of town and country living was about to be progressed from concept to reality. A hundred and ten years later, Letchworth Garden City is a thriving town of 33,000 people who enjoy living in a place of beauty, underpinned by a strong sense of identity and community. This paper examines how the legacy of the original garden city masterplan by Parker and Unwin is protected. It considers how the town manages its architectural heritage while striving to maintain its economic viability and responsiveness to today's challenges. The paper also discusses how a Community Benefit Society – The Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation – manages the town's social reinvestment model, which ensures that commercial earnings within the town are shared for the benefit of local communities. The paper looks at the Heritage Foundation's governance structure and how it is accountable to the local residents and businesses. A case study summarizing a community consultation exercise to consider the future of the town centre is also included. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The urban condition, as we know it, might be becoming obsolete: the continuous growth of urban textures points toward a total urbanization of the world. Together with the superimposition of electronic and virtual spaces in the city, this urban expansion furthers a radical alteration of our daily urban experiences, which in turn transforms the parameters of intervention for aesthetic production. This paper aims to outline three components of this aesthetic problem: 1) trans-industrial change, understood as the shift from industrial to postindustrial stages considered asin an ongoing process); 2) the specificities of aesthetic thought, understood as an independent mode of approaching the world differing from mathematical, political, or philosophical thought; and 3) realms of visibility, as informed by the digital and new media revolutions, which are reshaping our modes of communication. To discuss the parameters of this problem, I will draw from a number of examples originating in the United Kingdom, a territory whose cities were at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but which have witnessed a spectacular shift to a global service economy in the late twentieth century: as such, Great Britain offers a metonymical entry into the global context that constitute the framework for this reflection. Within this framework, crucially, the paper identifies the interstice, a crevice between two things, and interstitial space as a privileged locus of aesthetic intervention to be explored within the new terms of a total urbanization. It will evoke the interstice's capacity to divert the flattening impact of homogenizing tendencies and unveil new material and spiritual objects in the urban fabric. Finally, with the work of the Northern Ireland-based artist Conor McFeely, it will offer an artistic articulation addressing head on the problem of imagination in the context of the multilayered and digital/virtual urban becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents results of a recent research project that focuses on the influence of mobile technologies on social exclusion. It investigates the impact of two distinct approaches by local government to providing access to local support and services. Aug City advocated a bottom-up infrastructure-based model with non-state involvement after the technology was embedded. Conversely, Mobile City used a centrally planned model where the state acted as service custodians through teams of visiting officers and a mobile office. A case study approach was utilized focusing on two urban area of the UK, that adopted contrasting initiatives for implementing mobile information and communication technologies (MICT) to provide access to local government support and services. Activity Theory was used to provide a theoretical and analytical framework. A range of pre-existing information needs and barriers were revealed, but in some cases the technology itself presented a barrier. Issues with literacy, technology skills and in some cases the socioemotional condition of some of the socially excluded combined with the complexity of their information needs fundamentally undermines the direct access model for this section of the community. There are implications for social policy and practice. It is important to understand and address existing information needs and barriers (such as literacy and IT literacy, and social-emotional issues), ahead of new MICT initiatives to ensure the fullest chance of success and benefit for targeted communities and individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Creative cities are seen as important sites for the generation of new ideas, products and processes. Yet, beyond case studies of a few high-profile cities, there is little empirical evidence on the link between local creative industries concentration and innovation. This paper addresses this gap with an analysis of around 1,300 UK small- and medium-sized enterprises. The results suggest that firms in local economies with high shares of creative industries employment are significantly more likely to introduce entirely new products and processes than firms elsewhere, but not innovations which are simply new to the firm. This effect is not exclusive to creative industries firms and seems to be largely due to firms in medium-sized, rather than large, cities. The results imply that creative cities may have functional specialisations in new content creation and so firms are more innovative in them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cities are central to ethno-national conflicts, where tailored myths and memories are used to lay claim to the rightful ownership of certain sites. In this context, spatial practices that harness memory become a critical part of a purposive reconstruction of the past, and memory discourses become a major constitutive facet of contested cities. This paper explores the relationship between current memory discourses and urban design and spatial practices in contested and divided cities, examining building projects and planning practices. The execution of official policies of erasure is also explored through the destruction of buildings and the continuing effect of transmitted memories on individuals' use of the city. This paper aims to illustrate how several aspects of memory, which are of increased significance in conflict situations, affect the city as spaces are designed to project certain meanings, to reflect mythologies related to official historical narratives, and to embed certain images into the fabric of the city and into the imaginations of its residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK, functional city-regions are usually determined by travel-to-work areas (TTWAs): discrete bounded areas defining a threshold for self-containment for commuters. Since their establishment in the 1980s, changes in commutes have pushed TTWA boundaries further. This can only be observed through historic comparison at the sub-regional level, which has not been possible due to data limitations. By systematically analysing commuting patterns between 1981 and 2001 using geographically consistent data, this paper looks at longer-term socio-economic dynamics affecting the structure of city-regions. The findings are critical in anticipation of updated TTWAs based on 2011 Census commuting data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public space is a feature of the urban built environment that has received increasing attention in recent years. Discussion has focused on the theoretical decline of public space, as private and institutional forces take on increasing influence. At the same time, many such "in-between spaces," even privately owned ones, are used and experienced as public on a daily basis. Few studies, however, have explored how spaces understood as public are used and practised as such. To address this gap in the literature this paper draws upon ethnographic data collected on the "South Bank" in London (United Kingdom) to argue that "play" is a recurrent trait of sociospatial practices enacted in public space. Three interrelated typologies of playful practices in public space are discussed: child's play, plays on meaning, and play as simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010, the funding of local government in the UK changed fundamentally. Through an austerity approach to development, local planning authorities (LPAs) have been required to make significant budgetary savings, raising questions over what services are legally and morally dispensable. One service severely impacted has been green space (green infrastructure) management. In many locations, this has generated negative responses, as the proposed cuts are perceived as decreasing the liveability of urban areas. In response, LPAs are engaging in an examination of how they can manage development to more effectively fund green infrastructure provision. Such debates draw on a range of options from public, private and community funding sources, creating further complexity within LPA financing. To explore these options, this paper discusses the appropriateness of different funding mechanisms proposing a multi-option approach for the long-term management of green infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring sustainability is not only a contentious issue, but one which has captured the attention of both academics and politicians since the late 1980s. A plethora of methods and approaches have been developed over the last decades or so, from rapid measurements as inputs to specific projects, to longer-term processes of research, monitoring and wider learning. Indicators have been, however, the most influential measuring tool of all and despite the fact that the tensions between expert-led and citizen-led models in their development have fuelled much debate in the literature. It has been suggested that integrating the two approaches would tap into various levels of ‘knowledge’ of sustainability and thus, be a better way of assessing sustainability. However, little is known of whether these ‘integrated’ sets of sustainability indicators work in practice, or indeed reflect the local perspectives, values and understandings of sustainability which they aim to represent. This paper aims to fill this gap. First, an ‘integrative’ set of indicators is designed and second, this is discussed with over 60 ‘sustainability experts’ and 130 residents living in three urban areas in the UK. It is found that the set of indicators is generally a good reflection of urban sustainability in these areas, however, people tend to assign different degrees of ‘importance’ to individual indicators, something which is little accounted for when measuring urban sustainability. The paper concludes that sustainability indicators are not isolated pieces of information, but manifestations of local underlying processes and interconnections that can be mapped and which have the potential to expand our understanding of local sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to linear cities of the early 1960s, especially that of the British town of Hook (which was not built), two linear towns were planned in Israel during the years 1960–1962: Arad (completed) and Ir HaBesor (remained on paper). The two Israeli towns highly resembled the British town, at least regarding the basic linear scheme of traffic separation, phased town growth and planning based on walking distances. However, a more thorough examination reveals an essential difference between the British linear cities and the Israeli ones, especially concerning their technological components, which were absent from the Israeli planning. This paper examines the difference between town planning models in passing from one culture to another, while focusing on the desire to impart an ‘urban character’ to the new cities. The paper claims that ideological contents negating urbanism as a concept stood behind the Israeli linear town model, and that this fact surprisingly preserved the town's vitality for many years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equity is central to sustainable development. Yet the vast majority of urban sustainability assessment tools do not address equity concerns. One notable exception is the United States' environmental equity assessment process. However, in many countries no analogy exists. Accordingly, research was undertaken to develop a prototype framework, which would help examine the local environmental equity implications of proposed urban developments within the UK. This paper briefly introduces the role of equity in sustainable development in order to contextualize a discussion on the concept of environmental equity and its assessment. The paper then provides an overview of the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Sharp was a prominent figure in planning in the UK in the middle part of the twentieth century, both as a writer on planning issues and as a producer of plans. He tends to be remembered as something of an outsider from the main body of the planning profession, for being an early and prominent critic of garden city principles, from the early 1930s, and for his sensitive townscape analyses in his 1940s reconstruction plans. The main argument of this paper is that these were important contributions to planning debate and practice; they should be viewed as part of an alternative schema of planning; and that Sharp was advocating a modern urbanist approach to urban form which stood distinct from the dominant paradigms of the garden city movement and Corbusian modernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planner, Thomas Sharp, has often been portrayed as an outsider in the wider British town planning movement. In part this reputation reflects his prickly personality and a widespread professional perception in the 1950s and 1960s that he was a quirky individualist at odds with the mainstream of town planning's evolution. This paper argues, however, that in the 1930s and 1940s Sharp was central to British planning history. In part, the marginalisation of Sharp reflects the tendency to write the story of British planning in terms of two visionary movements - the garden city and modernism - with neither of which he felt comfortable. Often dismissed by his critics as a traditionalist, he actually sought physical modernisation that cherished and reproduced in new development, without imitating, what he saw as the best of what already existed. From this perspective and his unique insights on the depressed north east of England, Sharp made seminal contributions to the growing anti-suburban and rural preservationist movements and fed the arguments for a national policy for more balanced regional development. All were central strategic priorities of post-1945 planning policies. His pre-war writings and 1940s plans were also seminal to all townscape analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing public attitudes and behaviour is key to achieving the UK target of a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Top-down campaigns that have provided information to a passive public have not necessarily resulted in pro-environmental behavioural change. This paper examines the use of a personalised social marketing approach to engage the public in changing their personal travel. It provides the results of a project in the City of York to foster voluntary travel behavioural change. Using face-to-face discussions, personalised information and incentives, a statistically significant reduction in car use and an increase in cycling and the use of public transport were achieved over a six-month period. However, this change was not sustained 12 months later. The paper explores the contrasting perspectives on behavioural change and examines the possible lessons that can be learnt to foster voluntary behavioural change in other aspects of household consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]