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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]

In this article, the author opines on the British social scientists which are under increasing government pressure for demonstrating the value of their work. The author opines on London School of Economics (LSE) Growth Commission is a knowledge exchange programme funded by Higher Education Funding Council for England and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), critique of planning, and reiterating arguments related to development in Britain, and Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC).

An introduction is presented to a special issue of the journal devoted to housing, planning and the housing market.

This article examines the experience of operationalising the housing market area (HMA) framework in England and reflects on the value of adopting HMAs in strategic planning of housing. The paper argues that the operationalisation of HMAs in the English regions has been a challenging exercise, but that HMAs have the potential to frame the development of housing market intelligence and to underpin the analysis of housing market functionality at sub-national level. The challenge for policy and practice lies in harnessing this evidence-framing and analytical potential more effectively than has been the case to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of administrative boundaries as approximations of housing markets has long restricted the scope for housing market analysis and planning policy development to be undertaken within a functional housing market framework in England. This has prompted consideration of the value of deriving housing market areas (HMAs) to underpin the development of housing market intelligence for planning and policy purposes. Drawing on a case study of North West England, this paper critically reviews alternative approaches that have been used to define HMAs. The review highlights that in practice technical and methodological constraints have restricted the operationalisation of an idealised conceptualisation of HMAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]