Urban Studies

Metropolitan evolution is conceptualised from a broad, long term perspective that focuses on demographic and sectoral economic variables. Emphasis is placed on understanding these changes from a process-oriented approach that considers its general relevance rather than its outcomes or microanalytic details. A selective review of the literature provides a significant perspective and background on the stages model that is applied to the study of metropolitan change. This is then related to the Pareto city size distribution by considering the interurban population distribution coefficient and its expected performance over the various phases of metropolitan evolution. A hypothetical interurban manufacturing employment distribution coefficient, analogous to the Pareto population coefficient, is also considered and is related to the process of metropolitan and interurban sectoral economic change. The relationship between metropolitan change and national urban size distribution is viewed as a significant component of the emerging hierarchy of global metropolitan cities in both advanced and developing nations.

This paper considers the selection of appropriate functional forms for discrete choice models of housing market behaviour. It is argued that uncritical adoption of linear or log-linear forms may be inappropriate, and that Box-Tukey transformations are unnecessarily cumbersome and mechanistic devices in the search for more general functional forms. An alternative graphical assessment procedure based on partial residuals is first presented and is then applied to an empirical case study of tenure choice in London, England. Results are compared with a Box-Tukey analysis, and suggest that the graphical procedure constitutes an important exploratory modelling tool. Graphical functional form evaluation is thus seen to add important insights to analysis of the policy-dominated United Kingdom housing market.

In the 1970s about 350,000 housing units in multi-family structures in the US were converted to a condominium or co-operative form of ownership. This paper shows how changes in both rents and housing prices influence the expected rate of return on rental property and therefore the probability of conversion. A minimum logit chi-square model was applied to data from 34 metropolitan areas to estimate the effects of these changes. The evidence suggests that changes in housing prices had a greater effect on conversions than changes in the expected net return on rental property.

The impact of manufacturing plant size on urban and regional growth is analysed in the region of Limburg, Belgium, extending both geographically and in scope previous studies on the same issue in Israel and in Brazil. The study reveals that medium size plants are important growth constituents, whose favourable impacts are felt in the immediate local and regional industrial spaces. The study is extended to evaluate the influence of town size on input-output flow patterns and to examine interrelations between plant size and level of technology. Development strategy considerations for peripheral regions are discussed.

The paper reviews the literature related to the assessment of the effects of an establishment on a local community, particularly those concerned with educational establishments. The theory of the methods of impact assessment are reviewed and some of the problems associated with empirical identification and evaluation of effects are highlighted. The limitations of the basic models are considered. In the case of an educational establishment there are a number of specific impacts, such as the effects of student incomes and expenditures. The paper includes estimations of the impact on jobs and incomes in and around Wolverhampton of the Polytechnic and identifies a number of additional benefits which accrue but cannot be given monetary values. A number of assumptions have had to be made in order to assign values to certain impacts. Wherever these occur they are clearly detailed so that they may be open to debate.

Much of the existing literature on land availability centres upon the controversial policy debates concerning land release at the urban periphery. Recently, the Government has assumed that Green Belt policies could be used to redirect development towards inner urban areas. Although inner cities may contain substantial areas of vacant land, there are very real constraints upon its immediate development. Flexible planning policies will not in themselves guarantee inner city regeneration. Complex ownership, physical and price constraints act as blockages in the development process and prolong land vacancy. Future local land policies will need to develop a concerted approach to tackling these constraints if the inner city is to compete with the urban periphery for new development.

The probability that a household will sell its house in a specific year is assumed to be a function of, principally, changes in the characteristics of the household subsequent to purchase. Probit models are estimated from Swedish register data. Leads and lags in the behaviour of the households are introduced. The empirical results indicate that changes in the characteristics of the households do matter. A decrease in income seems to enhance the probability of selling more than an increase in income of the same magnitude. Leads equations exhibit at least as good fit as lags equations. The significance of leads appear to be attached mainly to changes in income while there is a weak indication that lags might be more important concerning the influence of changes in the number of children.