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Abstract—Governmental programs proposing rental supplements for low‐income families assume that social and economic conditions of these families may be improved by such subsidy. However, this assumption has not been adequately tested by social science research. Data presented here were gathered at an urban renewal relocation housing project in Lubbock, Texas, and suggest that when families who, before urban renewal, were self‐sufficient in slum housing are forced into welfare situations because of rent subsidy programs, dissatisfaction with relocation facilities results. The data also indicate that dissatisfaction is correlated positively with the number of persons in the household, the age of residents, and socioeconomic status.

For over two decades China has faced a veritable e-waste challenge due to the continuous increase in quantities of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) coming from foreign and domestic sources. Over more than a decade, the government's response has been focussed on developing large-scale recycling facilities so as to recover the valuable materials within WEEE. Simultaneously, China is home to a vast, informal segment, which engages in the collection, refurbishment, and processing (dismantling, extraction of components and materials) of obsolete electronics, thus directly competing with the formal system for devices and for the profits that they generate. The official discourse and most of the existing research concentrates primarily on WEEE recycling. However, project-based field research and interviews by the author in Beijing and Guangdong province have indicated that the repair, refurbishment, and reuse of discarded electronics are widespread and profitable practices of the informal domain. This paper aims to analyse the institutional, i.e., rule-based, mechanisms behind these activities and, via an institutional economics approach, to highlight how formal and informal rule-based practices structure WEEE refurbishment and reuse in China. The results show that informal activities are dominant due to the well-developed collection and transfer networks, the division of labour amongst informal actors, and the high responsiveness to market prices and consumer demand.

open ; From 1971 to 2001, more skilled cities grew more quickly than less skilled cities. A 10 percent increase in the initial share of college-educated residents is associated with an increase in the subsequent employment growth rate of roughly 0.8 percent. This result holds both at the local labour market (LLM) level and at city level. Most of the connection employment growth-human capital is due to productivity related effects at LLM level; in contrast consumption externalities play an important role in cities. In the latter case, quality of life growth explains from 31 to 43 percent of the association education-employment growth. By using the Bank of Italy's survey on household income and wealth (SHIW) dataset and censuses data, we also find that human capital helps cities to better adapting to negative economic shocks and to restructure their economies as in the case of the North-West. Finally, we try to explain why, in our sample, education predicts employment growth but population decline at the city level. By introducing individuals' heterogeneity, we test the hypothesis according to which a process of "gentrification" may have occurred in Italy. Our findings give us a prelimary evidence of this phenomenon, but additional work is required. ; Economia Politica ; Labour Market Education Economics Regional and Urban Economics Real Estate, Retail and Transport Economics ; open ; Giffoni, Francesco ; Giffoni, Francesco

Wide participation, in the urban planning context, is justified as the means of balancing multiple interests outside the traditional decision-making setup. However, this article argues that the participatory paradigm provides at best inadequate justification to the planning process. Particularly if consensus building is the aim of the participatory process, it suffers from a number of impossibility results well documented in the political economics literature. 'Lazy deliberators' will arrive at the acceptance of a priori median preference, and participatory processes necessarily exclude some groups, even under equitable capability and power distribution. This article intends to contribute to the debate on the nature of participatory planning by critically analyzing the motivations of participation and limitation of the participatory planning paradigms, and advocates a temperate view on their efficacy.

This article describes the economic history of the town and its dynamics. As part of the historical reality, urban economics further accentuates its economic elements based on trade, industry and services activities. Of the three factors above, which one actively contributes to growth in urban economic development? Or, among the three, may be intertwined or synergised, which in turn form a support force that can stimulate the economic growth rate of a city. However, is it that simple in explaining the economic history of the town?, because a historical study must also be considerate of changes over time, while when discussed is the economic dimension, then, we are dealing with statistical data used to understand a change in time, as is done by quantitative economic history. This paper takes spatial space in the cities of Surabaya and Semarang as both cities, dominantly influenced by elements of trade, industry and services.

ABSTRACT Most contributions in the academic literature identify a positive effect of transport infrastructure on land prices. However, their short-run dynamics has not been routinely analyzed. One of the reasons for this lack of research is because neoclassical urban land economics models underlie, in some cases implicitly, most of the available literature on the topic. In this theory, land values converge to their long-term trends regardless of short-term shocks. We build upon post-Keynesian monetary circuit theory to design a spatial urban economics testing framework, building upon the contributions of Abramo (2011) and Alfonso (2007, 2017). In this tradition, short-term shocks have long-term effects on the spatial distribution of land values due to radical uncertainty. Our case study is Transmetro, a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project in Barranquilla (Colombia). We use static and dynamic panel-estimation to test the short-run dynamics of spatial land price adjustments during 2000-2010, including the construction and delivery years 2006-2010. This case study offers a good assessment opportunity because of featuring prominent problems and delays. We find volatile short-run adjustments that run counter to neoclassical predictions, while resembling spatial land price adjustments exposed to radical uncertainty.

Sustainability - with its promise of economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental integrity - is hardly a controversial goal. This book examines sustainability conceptually and as it actually exists on the ground, with a particular focus on Western European and North American urban contexts.

Modern computational techniques offer new horizons for urban economics in the form of agent-based simulation frameworks. This paper reports on a cellular automata (CA) simulation in which urban land transforms on the basis of locally optimal bargaining between developers and local communities (local governments). Because CA is an explicitly spatial modelling methodology, the space-time-specific paths to global equilibrium can be observed. Because it is an atomistic methodology (cells represent decision units), it is suitable for articulating microeconomic theories of urban processes including planning. We present a space-time-specific simulation of cities evolving under two alternative planning regimes. In one, the community has property rights and uses planning conditions, planning gain, impact fees and so on to ensure that each development occurs at a socially optimal density. This is a theoretically simplified rendition of the British development control system-simplified in the sense of acting from a position of perfect knowledge and having a single objective of optimising locational externalities. In the other simulation, developers have the right to develop but the community is allowed to make (rather than receive) compensatory payments in order to achieve socially optimal land-use patterns and densities. Decision-making in both systems is local and socially efficient. However, case-by-case ad hoc development control with compensatory exactions has the effect of steering development to the least-polluting locations. Although socially optimal densities can occur under alternative control regimes (as the second simulation demonstrates), the stylised British development control process acts like a decentralised locational pricing system and, by definition, yields a superior land-use pattern than any other style of planning system. At one level, our model articulates the Coasian invariance theorem-the same partial equilibrium outcome can be achieved whichever way the property rights (over land development) fall. At another level, the results demonstrate that in a spatial resource allocation problem such as land-use planning, global equilibrium is not independent of property rights. The total social product in the urban land economy is greater when the community holds rights over development.