Urban Studies

This paper sketches a characterisation of the regime of urban marginality that has emerged in advanced societies since the close of the Fordist era, highlighting four logics that combine to produce it: a macrosocietal drift towards inequality, the mutation of wage labour (entailing both deproletarianisation and casualisation), the retrenchment of welfare states, and the spatial concentration and stigmatisation of poverty. The rise of this new marginality does not signal a transatlantic convergence on the American pattern: European neighbourhoods of relegation are deeply penetrated by the state and ethnoracial tensions in them are fuelled, not by the growing gap between immigrants and natives, but by their increasing propinquity in social and physical space. To cope with emergent forms of urban marginality, societies face a three-pronged alternative: they can patch up existing programmes of the welfare state, criminalise poverty via the punitive containment of the poor, or institute new social rights that sever subsistence from performance in the labour market.

This paper investigates the effect of city size on income inequality in Germany after reunification. Using the Gini index, income inequality is computed. No correlation between income inequality and city size can be found, but dividing Germany in East and West Germany gives further insight into the dependence. It can be seen that a positive connection between city size and income inequality exists in West Germany, while in East Germany no correlation can be found. Another interesting point is the development of income in East German cities. It is shown in this paper that incomes increase rapidly in all cities while the increase in inequality is astonishingly small.

An increasing proportion of change to the built environments of Western countries consists of adaptations of existing physical forms. Many changes are small-scale and piecemeal, but cumulatively they have a major impact on the physical character of the environment. This paper considers the physical changes that have taken place in one of the most extensive types of area in English cities: the suburbs created by private enterprise between the two world wars. Within each of the two cities studied, Birmingham and London, the form and density of the original development were major factors influencing the distribution of additional dwellings, demolitions and modifications of existing houses, and the types of new dwelling constructed. Between the mid 1950s and the mid 1960s in London, but a few years later in Birmingham, the insertion of additional houses by developers was the main type of change. From the early 1970s, individual householders became major instigators of change to existing houses, especially in London, where incomes rose more rapidly. House extensions were an important element in this change, despite the decline in household size. The large majority of planning applications for changes to existing houses, but only about one-half of those for the construction of additional dwellings, were approved.

The last generation of British new towns is being completed with the dissolution of the New Towns Development Corporations. As the final chapter of the new town movement in Britain draws to a close, this paper examines their financial success by focusing on Milton Keynes. Reputedly one of the most successful new towns, Milton Keynes was the last new town to be started and had the largest projected population. The paper examines the financial accounting reports from 1971 to 1993 and computes the economic returns for the new town as a whole and for each of the major property types. We find that Milton Keynes lost more than one-half a billion pounds. The paper explores why this happened and what the lessons are for new town development efforts around the world. The paper concludes that while it is possible to develop financially successful new towns, it is extremely difficult.

This paper makes contributions to long-established debates about the meaning of home-ownership and to the growing interest in discourse and language in urban and housing research. It outlines a theoretical framework in which analogy and metaphor are crucial devices in the social construction of home-ownership knowledge. The paper draws upon some results from qualitative fieldwork undertaken amongst a small group of home-owner households in Bristol, UK, to illustrate metaphorically structured, common-sense aphorisms as rhetorical techniques in the mobilisation of tenure prejudice. The paper concludes by outlining new directions for research exploring the cultural significance of housing tenure, and makes some more general observations regarding the significance of analogy and metaphor in urban studies.

In England, the use of targeted training and employment initiatives directed at particular localities, particular sectors of the local economy or particular social groups characterised both mainstream urban regeneration initiatives of the early and mid-1990s, such as Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), and special urban regeneration initiatives, such as City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget Challenge Fund (SRBCF). This paper focuses specifically on business support for ethnic minority groups in City Challenge areas.

This paper analyses the continuing crisis of the Brazilian housing finance system in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s. The paper assesses the impact of the closure of the Brazilian National Housing Bank in 1986 on future developments within the circuit of housing finance and in relation to social housing production. The paper briefly analyses the SEAC scheme, set up during the Sarney government (1985-89) and the MAS/CEF housing programme, set up during the Collor government (1990-92). The paper adds to a previous Urban Studies paper which focuses on developments in the first half of the 1980s.

The traditional rental adjustment equation is flawed in that the equilibrium paths for the adjustment of rents and vacancy rates cannot hold simultaneously over time. This paper suggests a two-equation model of rental adjustments based on adaptive expectations rather than the single-equation model presented in the traditional literature, and provides empirical tests. Annual data from the housing market in Hong Kong during the 1980-96 period are consistent with the adjustment equation. The results also show that the rate of change of real rents is neutral with respect to inflation.

Housing policy formulation should be informed by a careful understanding of the behaviour of the urban housing market, as reflected by housing demand behaviour. Such basic information is important, not only for improved project design but also for the development of better sector-wide policies. The overall analysis in this paper stresses the importance of prices and income on the demand for housing in Mumbai metropolitan region. Estimates of housing demand function are given. In our analysis, we account for rent control in Mumbai which distorts rents. The results indicate that housing demand is elastic with respect to income and price. The income and price elasticities are around 1 and — 1 respectively. We also estimate income and price elasticities for different income classes. The paper concludes with policy prescriptions.