Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

A contingent valuation (CV) study was undertaken to investigate individuals' stated willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce perceived risks of illness from the quality of bathing water at two beaches in East Anglia, United Kingdom. One beach, Great Yarmouth, failed to meet the EC (European Community) Bathing Water Quality Directive standard, whereas the other at Lowestoft passed. The analysis focuses on determinants of individuals' WTP, including measures of risk perception and attitudes to health not usually measured in CV studies. A conceptual model is then presented which sets the valuation of individual preferences in the context of personal worldviews, and external cultural, societal, and environmental factors which may influence, directly or indirectly, an individual's stated WTP.

Geographical and political research on urban service delivery—who benefits and why—has proliferated during the past two decades. Overall, this literature is not characterized by a particular attention to the importance of method in drawing conclusions about spatial equity based on empirical studies. Specifically, there has been scant interest in the effect of geographic methodology on assessing the relationship between access and socioeconomic characteristics that are spatially defined. In this paper we take a spatial analytical perspective to evaluate the importance of methodology in assessing whether or not, or to what degree the distribution of urban public services is equitable. We approach this issue by means of an empirical case study of the spatial distribution of playgrounds in Tulsa, Oklahoma, relative to that of the targeted constituencies (children) and other socioeconomic indicators. In addition to the ‘traditional’ measure (count of facilities in an areal unit), we consider a potential measure (based on the gravity model), average travel distance, and distance to the nearest playground as indicators of accessibility. We find significant differences between the spatial patterns in these measures that are suggested by local indicators of spatial association and other techniques of exploratory spatial data analysis. The choice of access measure not only implies a particular treatment of spatial externalities but also affects conclusions about the existence of spatial mismatch and inequity.

In this paper I use discrete-time proportional hazards models of competing risks to assess the association between household transitions and housing transitions for individuals in the rental sector. Specifically, moves within the rental sector are treated as a competing risk with moves to homeownership. A series of longitudinal models indicates the differential role household transition serves in predicting each of these movement types. This research confirms the association between relative household stability, relative income level, and the move to homeownership. Conversely, homeownership remains unattainable for individuals with relatively low incomes, in relatively transient household types, and especially for minorities.

The antagonism of neoliberalism to local intervention raises questions over the future of planning theory and practice. Recent reviews suggest planning's response to regulatory reform has been to become more flexible, although this may simply reflect nothing more than instrumental pragmatism. Drawing on regulation theory in this paper I review the reforms which have taken place in New Zealand since 1984, when New Zealand moved sharply from a form of regulation described as ‘peripheral Fordism’. Planning after Fordism risks being confined to mediating environmental relations, despite the likelihood of far-reaching social conflict and economic contradictions in the emergent form of capitalism. Two choices face planning in New Zealand; adapt to the mandate of environmental management or extend planning to confront other (social and economic) challenges in the emergent form of capitalism. The second alternative requires planners to adopt a more active and critical role than has been evident to date.

In this paper evidence from the 1991 Scottish House Condition Survey is used to analyse the extent to which, after over fifteen years of continuing sales under the right to buy, there still remains further scope for sales under this policy. The authors confirm that there are continuing cohorts of people who express a desire to buy in the near future. Multivariate analysis indicates that the motivation to buy is chiefly created by the households' economic circumstances, but family characteristics, the type and perceived quality of the house, and rent levels also exert an independent influence. Analysis also suggests that the responses to the relatively hypothetical questions about future intentions appear to be consistent both with aggregate outturns and with the expected characteristics of possible purchasers.

An operational model of household activity scheduling is proposed. The model is based on a theory entailing behavioral principles of how persons acquire, represent, and use information from and about the environment. Choices of destinations and departure times are consequences of the scheduling of a set of activities to be executed in a given time cycle. Illustrative computer simulations of the operational model show realistic effects of work hours, living in or outside the center, and travel speed. Several necessary improvements of the theory and operational model are discussed, such as incorporating learning effects and choice of travel mode for home-based trip chains. Strategies outlined for empirical tests include comparisons with existing models, psychological experiments illuminating basic assumptions, and the use of geographical information systems to process travel-diary data for single cases.

Industrial districts are usually referred to as spatially concentrated networks of small and medium-sized firms. These have been seen in Europe and North America, but, so far, have been almost undiscovered in developing countries. Based on the assumption of the strong embedding of the stable and ‘pure’ district model, in this paper we examine a new-tech agglomeration in Beijing, as a variant of such districts in the making, and explain it with the use of concepts adopted from the industrial districts school. The Beijing case represents an experiment in the conscious public creation of new industrial spaces founded on the spontaneous action of key individuals. Initially it progressed as an embryonic industrial district that, in its early development, appeared to contain all three elements of entrepreneurship: small firms, new firm formation, and innovativeness. However, it has eventually been stranded by a unique combination of weaknesses. These include strong hierarchical restraints from the state-owned institutions or firms on local networking, and direct global linkages with the multinationals, which expose local economies to volatile world competition. We pinpoint the necessity for a developing country to rest its development of industrial districts on self-sustained innovativeness, and highlights the difficulties encountered in such a process.

The author is concerned with exploring the relationship between patterns of ethnic residence in ‘complex’ cities and the character of social division in class terms in such cities. Data from the 1991 UK Census are analyzed in order to examine the patterns of social division and ethnic residence in two large manufacturing cities in the United Kingdom—Leicester where the main ethnic minority is of Indian origin, and Bradford where it is Pakistani. Both cities are socially divided and can be considered, at the very least metaphorically, as taking the form of ‘butterfly attractors’, but the relationship between social division and ethnicity is not the same either in both places or for both ethnic groups. Pakistanis in both cities are predominantly located in poorer areas. Indians in Leicester live both in affluent and in poorer areas, and some residential areas which are predominantly Indian are affluent. The author concludes that the residential patterns described are a complex resultant of locality effects and ethnicity effects, and notes that observed ethnic residential patterns in both cities support neither the assertion that the United Kingdom has ethnic ghettos nor any general account of ethnic minorities of South Asian origin as confined to ‘underclass’ positions in the general social order.

Four models are estimated to examine the consumption of fuelwood in selected countries of Sub-Saharan Africa from 1970 to 1990. Using a two-stage least squares estimation technique, we use the models to analyze the effects of income and price on fuelwood demand. Variables included in the models are income, price, and precipitation with a dummy variable based on level of development. The best model yields an income elasticity of 0.39 and a price elasticity of −0.28, indicating that fuelwood is a superior, normal good. Attending to the mounting concerns about fuelwood depletion in Sub-Saharan Africa, we feel the results provide insights for the formulation of effective energy policies. Specifically, policy measures that simultaneously address household income and fuel price are required. Increasing household income, directly with income supplements or indirectly with the provision of energy-efficient cookstoves, has the potential to decrease fuelwood consumption. Similarly, price reforms that force the price of energy to reflect its real economic cost encourage more efficient consumption.

The morbidity and mortality caused by epidemics threaten social functioning of complex societies. Societies mount a social response to epidemics in order to contain the potential damage from uncontrolled disease. Despite the threat posed by epidemics, social and contextual ‘vulnerabilities’ often impede efforts to contain epidemics. The AIDS epidemic provides an example of a ‘peculiar’ epidemic, in which threat to social welfare failed to provoke adequate social efforts at containment. In order to examine the miscarriage of epidemic response, we interviewed 31 AIDS providers in Alameda County, California, about the development of their AIDS-related services. According to the people interviewed, epidemic response in the County was marred by stigma associated with AIDS, lack of adequate funding, difficulties in building collaborative effort in a fragmented care system, and other political and social problems. In spite of these obstacles, social mobilization enabled directors of a wide variety of health care agencies to incorporate care and prevention into their services. The findings support the concept that ‘vulnerabilities’ can derail epidemic response, making widespread social mobilization an essential tool for epidemic control. The discussion centers on the implication of these findings for the theoretical understanding of social response to epidemics.