Suchergebnisse

published_or_final_version ; Housing Management ; Master ; Master of Housing Management

Urban renewal areas are popular but empirically understudied spatial planning instruments designed to prevent urban decline and induce renewal. We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of 22 renewal areas implemented in Berlin, Germany, to increase housing and living quality in the aftermath of the city's division during the Cold War period. Our results suggest that the policy has helped reduce (increase) the number of buildings in poor (good) condition by 25% (10%). Property prices increased at an annual rate of 0.4-1.7% according to our preferred estimates. Evidence is weak at best, however, for positive housing externalities. More generally, our findings indicate that the efficiency of program evaluations for place based -policies using quasi-experimental methods increases with the number of targeted areas and areas that provide the counterfactual.

This dissertation explores the representation of urban renewal in `post'-apartheid Johannesburg and the co-constitution of subjectivities therein. It is particularly concerned with how regimes of representation, embodied in public art projects, were enlisted in the construction of national identity and the expansion of neo-liberal capitalist accumulation in the inner city. By focusing on these representational practices, this study hopes to make a contribution to a broader understanding of how regimes of representation constitute a new domain of politics in post-apartheid Johannesburg.

The city of Tel Aviv needs extensive urban renewal projects to answer the demand for housing. The area suitable for such a project is the older southern part of Tel Aviv, made up of small parcels of land with single units. This area has undergone an extreme gentrification process, which makes assembling small parcels into large ones a very difficult task. Owners holding out for higher prices may either prevent or significantly delay socially efficient redevelopment. The only current option for the Tel Aviv Municipality that will lead to efficient land assembly for private redevelopment currently is the option of private entrepreneurship. We wish to describe a mechanism that will solve the hold-out problem and lead to efficiency in land assembly without resorting to the intervention of the government to execute eminent domain. The mechanism requires the municipality to plan the development that will best suit the city, thus allowing the valuation of the parcel to reflect its true price for the owner. If the owners are still reluctant to sell, the municipality can then tax him according to the new value of the land.