Urban Studies

In both the German and US literature on ethnic neighbourhoods, there is considerable debate as to whether living amongst co-ethnics hinders or furthers the integration process for immigrants. Using the detailed data on immigrant integration in the German Socio-economic Panel in combination with zip-code-level data on minority concentration and neighbourhood income levels, the research tests the extent to which ethnic neighbourhoods are economically, socially and/or culturally isolated spaces in Germany. The findings indicate that, although general neighbourhood quality is lower for minorities living within ethnic neighbourhoods, these persons are no more culturally isolated from Germans than their counterparts living outside these areas. Further, minorities living within ethnic neighbourhoods appear no more likely to maintain ties to their country of origin culture than those living outside ethnic neighbourhoods. This suggests that the correlation between social and spatial integration, assumed in much of the immigrant integration literature, requires more careful scrutiny.

The increased research and policy interest in social exclusion has included a focus on the concentration of disadvantage within cities. The role of neighbourhoods in the dynamics of social exclusion is consequently receiving greater attention. This paper reports the results of a major European research programme designed to explore the neighbourhood dimension of social exclusion. The results raise important issues related to the differential opportunities associated with neighbourhoods and the conceptualisation of neighbourhood effects as well as issues for policy. Understanding the role of neighbourhood in social exclusion involves attention to different levels of analysis and different fault lines and to the resources that are produced within neighbourhoods.

One of the most remarkable features of the post-apartheid political landscape in South Africa is the increasingly hegemonic nature of neo-liberal thought and practice. This ideological dominance is most noticeable at the national level but has trickled down to urban policy-making as well. This paper documents the new urban neo-liberalism in the city of Cape Town. Based on extensive interviews, policy analysis and a critique of the track record of local government since 1996, the paper provides the first comprehensive overview of the character and extent of neo-liberalism in a large South African city. The empirical data are coupled with an analysis of the structural and ideological pressures from the national and international levels that have given rise to this policy focus, and an assessment of the room for alternative policy manoeuvre at the local level. We argue that there is considerable potential for policy autonomy in Cape Town, but that non-neo-liberal policy alternatives have been largely ignored, abandoned or intentionally shut out by the majority of senior decision-makers in the city, making for a self-reinforcing loop of neo-liberal discourse and practice at different levels of government in South Africa and with international funding bodies and advisors.

This article explores the role played by community sector organisations in terms of community participation and local governance. It focuses on organisations concerned with waste reduction, reuse and recycling-community waste projects. The current UK government has high expectations of the potential and actual role of the community sector in service delivery. To indicate how these expectations might be fulfilled, the article employs the local governance perspective and reviews claims made for the role played by the community sector in governance processes. The local linkages of community waste projects are then assessed through a 'policy-action' continuum. The article concludes that community waste projects provide significant opportunities for volunteer involvement in their activities. They also have significant impacts on waste governance, through service delivery and participation in related policy processes. However, suggestions that community sector organisations can represent the wishes of local people in policy processes should be treated with caution.

The article puts forward the argument that housing market and property value models currently lack an adequate methodological basis. In order to improve the conceptual framework of the economic analysis of housing market behaviour, necessary institutional parameters need to be included. This, however, causes further difficulties, because some of the institutions are predominantly informal and operate at the cognitive level of market behaviour. While the problem of overstrict assumptions at the aggregate level has been tackled successfully, the next fundamental problem to solve is how to disaggregate feasibly the demand-side analysis. One possibility for this is to generate preference profiles of actors with different institutional backgrounds, using a multicriteria decision technique such as the analytical hierarchy process (AHP).

Hicksian income equivalent variation (EV) has often been used to measure tenants' benefits in evaluating public housing programmes. A number of papers have so far attempted to apply Hicksian EV under the implicit assumption of no constraint on unit size of public housing. As a result, overestimation of tenants' benefits probably occurs where unit size constraints exist, as in Korea's public housing programme. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to measure Hicksian EV with the constraint in unit size of public housing by formulating a revised Hicksian EV equation and comparing the result with constraint-free cases. It is found that Hicksian EV with constraint in unit size decreases relative to that of the constraint-free cases. The extent of EV decrease depends on the income elasticity of demand for housing and the difference between the optimum consumption of public housing under rent support (demand wanted) and the actual constraint of unit size (demand fulfilled).

The paper builds on the results of Clark and Stabler who associated Gibrat's law on the independence of growth rate and city size with unit root tests. The paper proposes a direct test of the unit root hypothesis for firm size based on recently developed panel data unit root tests. The results for a sample of Brazilian cities over the period 1980-2000 favour Gibrat's law. Moreover, the results are robust when one considers sub-samples defined for different population sizes and age of municipality.

A housing purchase certificate (HPC) is a voucher for the purchase of a dwelling unit, either for the full price (up to a programme-determined maximum) or a grant for a partial payment (i.e. a downpayment subsidy). Using a special sample survey of programme participants, this paper examines why some participants have been successful and others not in using the certificates for the full price of a unit distributed under the HPC programme providing assistance to victims of Armenia's 1988 earthquake. Findings indicate that participants with the following attributes are more likely to succeed in finding a unit (and using the certificate): living in more difficult housing conditions at the time they receive the certificate, having more economic resources, considering more units in their housing search, relying on information about available dwellings from friends and family members rather than relying on information in the mass media and searching in markets where the supply of units on offer is relatively great. These findings form the basis for considering ways to increase success rates.

Although China has made tremendous economic progress in recent years, air pollution continues to exact significant health and economic costs. Using pollution data from 38 Chinese cities and China-based epidemiological functions, this paper estimates some of the economic benefits of reducing urban air pollution. It calculates the averted mortality which would result from the clean-up of particulates, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide—a pollutant not included in most previous China studies. The paper expands on earlier studies by examining the impact of seasonal variations in pollution levels. Finally, the monetary valuation of pollution-related averted mortality is developed using a China-based valuation study and, for a number of cities, the valuation is compared with city-level GDP.

Historical designation has become an important tool in efforts to revitalise central-city neighbourhoods. Yet designation has also come under scrutiny because of its presumed association with gentrification and displacement of lower-income residents. Using Fort Worth, Texas, as a case study, the paper asks whether historical designation is associated with demographic change in neighbourhoods. It is found that historically designated areas started out with slightly worse neighbourhood indicators than those without designation—a finding that is consistent with the idea that preservation efforts are targeted to areas in 'need' of revitalisation. However, we find no evidence that preservation efforts altered the demographic composition of neighbourhoods. This finding runs counter to the notion that historic preservation is a precursor to gentrification.