Urban Studies

The efficacy of the urban regime and growth machine concepts beyond the US remains a matter of considerable debate. Some argue that these frameworks retain considerable value so long as they are 'properly' applied and that recent concerns about the limits to these frameworks result from no more than their 'misapplication'. I critically examine this argument through a review of recent work on the mobilisation of business interests in British cities. The central claim is that, even when focused on the 'right' issues and questions, US frameworks quickly exhaust their explanatory capacity. In the context of a widening diversity of alternative approaches, I suggest that it is time to move squarely beyond growth coalition and regime accounts. The paper makes a number of suggestions for ways in which this new phase of theory building might proceed.

This paper documents the fact that the concentration of poverty in the inner city of Chicago declined appreciably during the 1990s. Exploratory data analysis suggests that the decline in family poverty is strongly associated with an increase in the employment of females who reside in those areas. The decade of the 1990s is notable for its strong economy, the large expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and dramatic change in the public assistance programme.

Urban development is frequently accompanied by planning disputes. Such disputes are often the battleground for a variety of opposing views and interests, in relation to specific urban and environmental assets and lifestyles. Analysis of three disputes that took place in Israel recently reveals a similarity in the patterns of argumentation that form the foundations of such debates. These patterns are valid, in spite of considerable differences between the contexts and actors involved in the three disputes. The claims made by disagreeing actors have their roots in common images of the built environment, the conflicting situation and the general politics of the conflict. In addition, in all three disputes, the same symmetrical structure of argumentation emerged, as each statement was countered with an opposite assertion.

This article discusses Norbert Elias' theory of established-outsider figurations and applies it to the case of one deprived inner-city neighbourhood in Germany, Dortmund Nordstadt. According to this theory, the social cohesion of the established together with the stigmatisation of outsiders leads to status and power differentials that exclude the outsiders. In Nordstadt, three levels of established-outsider figurations overlap and influence each other. At the societal level, the legal system assigns to immigrants the position of outsiders. At the city level, Nordstadt is stigmatised as a neighbourhood for workers and immigrants. At the neighbourhood level, immigrants can, thanks to their greater internal cohesion, establish themselves to some degree, while the Germans attempt to implement the established-outsider figuration of the societal level. By way of conclusion, this article discusses the relevance of Elias' theory both for social theory and for urban studies.

As in much of east Asia, the past few decades have seen extraordinary rates of house price inflation in Hong Kong. After a relatively modest downturn in the early 1980s, prices rose rapidly until the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Since then, and despite increased government efforts to stimulate the stagnant property market, prices have continued to fall and negative equity remains pervasive. Given the centrality of property investment and speculation historically for households, financial institutions and for wider government economic strategies, the state of the residential market remains of central political and policy concern. Against this background of Hong Kong's apparently declining economic fortunes and major shifts in housing policy, this paper explores aspects of wealth accumulation in the home-ownership sector. Linking to a well-established set of debates in the academic literature, the paper explores the impact of policy change and house price trajectories on different cohorts of households. For example, those cohorts who entered home-ownership in the late 1980s generally saw rapid increases in their property values fuelled by generous state-assisted home-ownership schemes and a buoyant economy. By contrast, those entering in the late 1990s have experienced a much less favourable policy and economic environment. The paper also explores the extent to which price trajectories have varied in different sectors.

This paper examines the determinants of city growth in China. Evidence is provided that economic reforms played an important role in accelerating urban growth. The relative magnitude of the state sector has a negative impact on city growth and the city's openness to foreign direct investment has a positive impact on city growth. The results also lend support to the impact of other factors on urban growth, such as geography, industrial structure and human capital accumulation.

The continued integration of international economies is an unfolding process that has accelerated in recent years and that is believed to have the potential to impact on the structure of the spatial economy. The process is of interest from the viewpoint of the transport scholar, because a relevant question is whether, and if so to what extent, the economic changes implied by integration can be guided and influenced by transport infrastructure and services. A number of studies have been conducted, in particular in a European setting, that examine the potential links between accessibility and economic activity. The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between intermodal network accessibility and the spatial distribution of economic activities in an east Asian setting. To this end, a multivariate framework based on the use of spatial statistical models is proposed that furthers the methodological possibilities of accessibility analysis. The empirical findings suggest that, once contextual factors are considered, the influence of accessibility as an explanatory factor of the spatial distribution of economic activity in the region becomes very much diminished.

Through a case study of a private developer of housing in India, this paper critically examines the policy advice of enabling markets and market-based actors to provide affordable housing in developing countries. In this case, after receiving public sector help, the developer stopped constructing housing for low-income groups. The paper argues for a more cautious, circumspect and varied approach because enabling strategies focused on market actors can produce highly uncertain outcomes. In addition, it emphasises that policy-makers need a better understanding of how the informal and formal sectors can overlap. Enabling informal developers can be even trickier because public support can reduce their flexibility and incentives, as well as impacting on the expectations and opportunities of the home-buyers.

How does migration contribute to the urbanisation process in Africa? Migrants have traditionally been viewed as responsible for excessive urban growth, for the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas and for urban surplus labour. In light of recent research, this article proposes to re-examine these views in Francophone west Africa. The first part of the article presents the context of urbanisation in this region, the theoretical framework and the recent surveys on which most of the analyses are based. Next, adopting a demographic perspective, the paper shows that migration in fact contributes moderately to urban growth and that new trends in urban to rural migration flows are emerging. The focus then shifts to examine how migrants influence the shape of cities. The final section of this article re-examines the role of migrants in the urban economy.