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This paper develops an understanding of the structural and spatial characteristics of regulated forms of temporary use across England's core cities. The paper's contribution lies in its adoption of an extensive research design that goes beyond the intensive qualitative approaches that predominate in the temporary use literature. We employ a novel data set of 5890 temporary use interventions that have been recorded over a 15-year period (2000–2015). Informed by the temporary use literature, we distinguish between 'extraordinary' (e.g. urban beaches) and 'ordinary' (e.g. car parks) forms of temporary use alongside other characteristics that include the time of occurrence, the function of space appropriated, decisions taken and whether instances were isolated or reoccurring. Logistic regression is used to test whether the odds that a temporary use was defined as 'ordinary' or 'extraordinary' increased or decreased owing to their underlying structural characteristics. The analysis revealed that applications for extraordinary temporary uses increased in the period following the 2007/2008 financial crisis but that ordinary forms of temporary uses remained much more common before and after the recession. It also revealed differences between ordinary and extraordinary uses in relation to the functions of the spaces appropriated and decisions taken by the planning authority in processing the application. Geospatial approaches were then applied to two case study cities – Bristol and Liverpool. The analysis revealed a tendency towards the clustering of temporary uses that was spatially and temporally uneven, with extraordinary uses in particular concentrated in the cores/downtowns of the two cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the impact of existing land use patterns on housing supply price elasticities in local areas of England, under existing planning policies. The paper demonstrates that, despite common national planning policies, local supply responses to market pressures vary considerably, because of differences in historical land uses. The study area covers the Thames Gateway and Thames Valley, which lie to the east and west of London respectively. However, whereas the latter is one of the wealthiest areas of England, the former includes some of the highest pockets of deprivation and was a government priority area for increasing housing supply. Due to differences in historical land use and geography, the price elasticity in the least constrained area is approximately six times higher than the most constrained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the haunted realms of everyday mundane space. Based on the author's journey to work by car, a series of sites that evoke an absent-presence of working-class life are depicted. It is argued that these spaces, including housing estates, old railways, patches of derelict ground and old cinemas, are replete with ghostly effects. Drawing upon the examples provided, the article goes on to examine in more detail these hauntings, focusing upon the sensual, half-recognizable and imaginary qualities that are provoked by absences, vestiges and peculiar recontextualizations. It is contended that such sites are particularly haunted because unlike the more dynamic spaces of regenerated urban space, the past lingers in people, spaces, textures and things and is not so rapidly disposed. The paper concludes by investigating the ambiguities produced by the ghostly absent-presence of the working class, both in lived space and in academic discourse, and evaluates the advantages of spectral indeterminacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing attention has focused on relational spatial entities as potentially embedding renewed and alternative paths of local development. This paper discusses the intertwining of an emerging relational configuration of space and the pursuit of post-industrial development, by analysing the formation of an organisational identity. The case of NewcastleGateshead (UK) is interpreted as a brand emerging from urban collective strategy-making, involving two partner cities, thus crossing administrative borders. By suggesting the importance of the emergence of ‘branded relational spaces’, research results stress the active role of a collective construction of meanings and their communication in the creation of relational spatial entities. This provides an opportunity to reflect on the extent to which branding, here interpreted as collective strategy-making, goes beyond mere communication and fosters an institutionalisation of the branded space, thus influencing the way in which local development is spatially and strategically conceived. [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]

The Olympic Games have come to be viewed as an unprecedented opportunity to leverage a short-term event into a long-term positive legacy. Although the Olympics are assumed to yield economic benefits, there has been no rigorous analysis of the impact of hosting on residential real estate markets. Utilising a substantial dataset for six host cities and comparable cities between 1984 and 2000, this paper employs an adjusted interrupted time-series approach to estimate the house price impacts of hosting the Olympic Games. The results suggest that the Olympics are not a ‘one size fits all’ economic development strategy and that potential outcomes are dependent on a number of factors, including the co-ordination of planning and Olympic-related development and the relative scale of the total Olympic investment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper applies an extensive literature that argues that political leadership and local government activity enhance urban performance. Using the State of the Cities Database of 56 Primary Urban Areas in England, it tests for the impact of consolidated governance, political stability, planning performance, average service performance, local government capacity and planning development expenditure on jobs and population growth from 1995 to 2005. The regression analysis finds that the competence of service delivery is weakly associated with full-time jobs growth and that a consolidated governance structure is weakly associated with greater population growth. None of the other tests is statistically significant. Overall, the findings place doubt on the salience of the political determinants of economic performance in English cities for the period in question. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the wide usage and popular appeal of the concept of sustainability in UK policy, it does not appear to have challenged the status quo in urban regeneration because policy is not leading in its conceptualisation and therefore implementation. This paper investigates how sustainability has been conceptualised in a case-based research study of the regeneration of Eastside in Birmingham, UK, through policy and other documents, and finds that conceptualisations of sustainability are fundamentally limited. The conceptualisation of sustainability operating within urban regeneration schemes should powerfully shape how they make manifest (or do not) the principles of sustainable development. Documents guide, but people implement regeneration— and the disparate conceptualisations of stakeholders demonstrate even less coherence than policy. The actions towards achieving sustainability have become a policy ‘fix’ in Eastside: a necessary feature of urban policy discourse that is limited to solutions within market-based constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]