A City without Slums: Urban Renewal, Public Housing, and Downtown Revitalization in Kansas City, Missouri

Most scholarly efforts to understand the political economy of postwar urban redevelopment have typically viewed urban renewal and public housing as "housing" programs that originated with the "federal" government. Yet this view is problematic for two reasons. First, it fails to specify the key actors and organized interests, especially real estate officials and downtown business elites, in the programmatic design and implementation of urban renewal and public housing. Second, this view does not fully acknowledge the dislocating and segregative effects of urban renewal and public housing on central city neighborhoods and the role these private-public initiatives played in shaping demographic and population patterns in the postwar era. I draw upon archival data and newspaper articles, real estate industry documents, government reports, and interviews to examine the origin, local implementation, and segregative effects of urban renewal and public housing in Kansas City, Missouri. I explore the role of the ideology of privatism—the underlying commitment by the public sector to enhancing the growth and prosperity of private institutions—in shaping the postwar "system" of urban economic development in which urban renewal and public housing were formulated and implemented. Focusing on the interlocking nature of race and class, I identify the critical links between urban renewal and public housing, and the long-term impact of these programs on metropolitan development in the decades after World War II.     

政府"赋予能力"与旧城改造

本文从西方国家住房政策的演变脉络,简述了政府"赋予能力"思想出现的社会经济背景.基于我国旧城改造中的问题、旧城区的特点与社会发展目标,作者认为在市场经济条件下,通过国家提供与市场提供两种方式都不能理想地实现旧城改造的目的,而实施政府"赋予能力"政策应是旧城改造的一条新思路.     

战后美国城市改造对社会公正的侵蚀

战后美国的城市改造,主要在住房建设和城市更新两个方面展开,目标是兼顾城市的经济发展和社会公正.然而,在实施过程中,由于联邦住房政策二元结构的形成,首先是联邦政府的住房政策偏离了建设公共住房的初衷,基本上没有达到政策的目标;其后是城市更新运动在强势利益集团的主导下,漠视了低收入家庭的住房需求,侵蚀和损害了社会公正.     

Effects of residential relocation on household and commuting expenditures in Shanghai, China

Over the past three decades, China's cities have undergone massive spatial restructuring in the wake of market reforms and economic growth. One consequence has been a rapid migration of urban residents to the periphery. Some movers have been forced out either by rising urban rents or government reclamation of their residences. Others have relocated willingly to modernized housing or for other lifestyle reasons. This article examines the effects of relocation to the urban edge on household well-being. It explores the factors underlying changes in housing and transportation costs as households move to the periphery. The research also examines whether those who moved involuntarily are affected differently from those who moved by choice. Results show that, relative to those who moved by choice, involuntary movers are disproportionately and adversely affected in terms of job accessibility, commute time, housing consumption and disposable income. The findings also show that, compared with higher-income households, lower-income groups are disproportionately affected in relation to housing costs, accessibility losses, disposable income and household worker composition. These results indicate that relocation compensation for involuntarily relocated households should be expanded to include more than just housing value: it should encompass urban location changes, household needs and relocation costs.     

UNRAVELLED HOMES: Forced Evictions and Home Remaking in Jakarta

This article explores the contours of modernization in the unmaking and remaking of homes among evicted and resettled families in highrise housing. We examine the trajectories of forced eviction by drawing upon interviews with 17 individuals from nine evicted families who have transitioned from living in informal settlements to highrise social housing (rusunawa) in Jakarta. Drawing on two strands of literature—‘developmental idealism and the family’ from population studies and the critical geographies of ‘homemaking’—we argue that the demolition of houses is but an initial event in a long, quiet and subtle, yet profoundly defining, process of ‘upgrading’ families as part of ‘improving’ society, according to developmental logic. The disciplining of the urban poor does not end with the demolition of their houses, but rather continues as part of the fulfilment of shelter. This article attends to the slow unravelling of home hidden and embedded in post-eviction everyday lives, which are often overlooked because of the overt and violent brutality of forced eviction. While eviction can be seen as the violent visual expression of developmentalism, we argue that the relocation in rusunawa is where this ideal permeates into daily domestic life, making mundane activities a battleground for different ideals of ‘home’.     

Housing Preferences of Temporary Migrants in Urban China in the wake of Gradual Hukou Reform: A Case Study of Shenzhen

In the wake of the recent announcement by the State Council concerning the provision of public rental housing across China, and the gradual reform of China's household registration system (hukou), this article explores how potential adjustments in government housing policies (namely access to public rental housing) influence the housing preferences of temporary migrants who are currently residing inside the chengzhongcun (urban villages) of Shenzhen. The results indicate that dissatisfaction with rental cost and living conditions in these urban villages are the key reasons for migrants wishing to move into public rental housing if it is offered to them — and not the fact that they are treated differently within the hukou system. Public rental housing is welcomed in particular by newly arriving migrants who live outside the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ), and migrants who have decided to remain in Shenzhen for the foreseeable future. By contrast, dissatisfaction with urban villages is the sole contributor to housing preferences for those residing inside the SEZ.     

公共租赁住房租金定价方法比较研究及其借鉴

从英国开始推行公共租赁住房以来,公共租赁住房已经有几百年的历史。公共租赁住房的租金定价关系到政府的财政负担、社会投资者的收益和保障对象的可支付性,因此成为学术探讨和实践中的热点问题。本文总结了国内外公共租赁住房定价的影响因素,总结了定价方法,分为市场法、成本法和收入法,分析了各自的优劣势。并且结合北京公租房项目实践设想了一种综合上述三种方法的定价方法,具体为：在提供政策性土地和金融支持以及税费减免基础上,先测算住房建设规划期内区域单个项目的成本租金,然后根据市场租金设定每个项目的参照成本租金,并且进行多项目参照成本租金平衡。公租房租金和租房补贴分离,租房补贴与保障对象的收入匹配,使保障对象实际支付可负担租金,从而提高定价的效率和公平。     

Squatting and urban renewal: the interaction of squatter movements and strategies of urban restructuring in Berlin

Squatting as a housing strategy and as a tool of urban social movements accompanies the development of capitalist cities worldwide. We argue that the dynamics of squatter movements are directly connected to strategies of urban renewal in that movement conjunctures occur when urban regimes are in crisis. An analysis of the history of Berlin squatter movements, their political context and their effects on urban policies since the 1970s, clearly shows how massive mobilizations at the beginning of the 1980s and in the early 1990s developed in a context of transition in regimes of urban renewal. The crisis of Fordist city planning at the end of the 1970s provoked a movement of "rehab squatting" ('Instandbesetzung'), which contributed to the institutionalization of "cautious urban renewal" ('behutsame Stadterneuerung') in an important way. The second rupture in Berlin's urban renewal became apparent in 1989 and 1990, when the necessity of restoring whole inner-city districts constituted a new, budget-straining challenge for urban policymaking. Whilst in the 1980s the squatter movement became a central condition for and a political factor of the transition to "cautious urban renewal," in the 1990s large-scale squatting — mainly in the eastern parts of the city — is better understood as an alien element in times of neoliberal urban restructuring.     

Urban Renewal in Istanbul: Reconfigured Spaces,Robotic Lives

The article discusses Turkey's property‐led residential redevelopment model. This entails the demolition of an existing settlement, replacing it with blocks of apartments (usually constructed on the exact same site and at a higher density), some of which are then made available to displaced residents for purchase via mortgage loans with long maturities. While the authorities promote this model of urban renewal as an innovative public housing policy, I argue that, far from being an exception to market‐rate housing, the model is in fact a market‐disciplinary tool. It seeks to incorporate into the formal market not just spontaneously developed and only partially regulated spaces, but also the conduct of residents living in these informal neighborhoods. The article contributes to the immense literature on urban renewal and organized struggles around the right to housing by showing that urban renewal is not simply about dispossession and displacement. In the Turkish case, urban renewal does not necessarily seek to displace poor residents (even though it often ends up doing so), rather to incorporate them into a nascent mortgage origination market. The second half of the article introduces and elaborates on a case study in Istanbul.     

AN EVALUATION OF BOTSWANA'S STRATEGIES TO REGULARIZE INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS

The government of Botswana has adopted simple but workable strategies to tackle the entire problem of informal settlements that have arisen in the urban areas due to fast urbanization. Through a two-pronged strategy of self help squatter upgrading and site and services program, low income persons have been provided with serviced land, security of tenure, and help to build their own shelter. Also provided is social, economic and line infrastructure. Today self help urban housing accommodates more than 60% of Botswana's urban population. To enable replicability and sutainability of this program, the principles of cost recovery, cross subsidy and affordability have been introduced.     

Old homes, externalities, and poor neighborhoods. A model of urban decline and renewal

This paper investigates urban decline and renewal in the United States using three panels that follow neighborhoods on a geographically consistent basis over extended periods of time. Findings indicate that change in neighborhood economic status is common, averaging roughly 13 percent per decade; roughly two-thirds of neighborhoods studied in 1950 were of quite different economic status fifty years later. Panel unit root tests for 35 MSAs indicate that neighborhood economic status is a stationary process, consistent with long-running cycles of decline and renewal. In Philadelphia County, a complete cycle appears to last up to 100 years. Aging housing stocks and redevelopment contribute to these patterns, as do local externalities associated with social interactions. Lower-income neighborhoods appear to be especially sensitive to the presence of individuals that provide social capital. Many of the factors that drive change at the local level have large and policy relevant effects.     

国外住房保障制度比较研究

分析了美国、英国、德国、日本、韩国、新加坡等国家城市中低收入者住房保障体系的主要特色。重点分析了美国从供需两方面进行补贴的保障模式、英国的混合产权补贴方式、日本的住房保障三大支柱,同时,还比较了德国、韩国和新加坡三国住房保障体系的差异。概括出这些国家城市中低收入者住房保障体系的主要特征和存在的矛盾,即从补贴卖方到补贴买方的转变,根据发展阶段确定需要补贴的卖方以及以需求补贴为主导的特色补贴模式。最后,对国外城市中低收入者住房保障体系进行了评价,指出了公房建设与国民经济发展、政府与民间团体以及政府与城市中低收入者之间存在的三大矛盾。     

住房、交通与城市空间规划

首先归纳了城市空间结构理论框架下居住模式和交通体系空间互动关系的基本理论,之后对国际学术界相关的定量研究成果进行了综述,着重讨论了住房与交通相互作用所形成的社会效应,包括对居民住房支付能力、中低收入者福利和环境的影响,最后提出了住房和交通相协调的城市空间规划的三个目标,并就我国目前的实际情况提出了若干政策建议.     

经济适用房不同补贴方式的效果

通过数学模型,分析政府对经济适用房生产商或购买者实施补贴对购买者的效用影响、对生产商行为的影响、对政府补贴成本的影响,及至对经济适用房成交量、成交价格和净社会福利的影响。研究结果表明：对经济适用房生产商采用降低土地价格的补贴方式不如对其按单位价格补贴或按成交价的一定比例补贴,这后两种方式都更有效率,能够降低政府补贴成本,减少政府腐败行为,促进房地产商开发适合低收入者所需要的住房并提高销售效率。     

Tax expenditures and other programs to stimulate housing: Do we need more?

Discussions to aid the housing industry raise several questions. First, does stimulation of housing demand require new direct subsidy programs? And, second, are any programs to increase demand worth their costs to society? The results in this paper indicate that the answer to both questions is no: the existing subsidy to homeownership in the tax code is, when combined with mortgage instruments that offset cash flow problems, fully capable of generating large increases in demand at the cost of significant tax expenditures; and the social benefits of increased housing demand are shown to be worth only about 60% of their costs. Consequently, increasing housing demand can be readily achieved, but doing so will be costly to the government and inefficient for society.     

Social mix policies in Paris: discourses, policies and social effects

Since the 1980s, the issue of social mix has become a public policy category in France. Enshrined in legislation, yet remaining controversial, it represents a major premise on which housing policies have been reconfigured. The concept of social mix is essentially based on who lives where, but it is also evoked in the context of urban renewal schemes for social housing estates, as well as in relation to new-build developments. A study of the bases of social mix policies conducted in Paris since 2001 in the context of the embourgeoisement of the capital shows the fundamental role of social housing stock. The City Council has become involved in policy decisions about both the location and the allocation of social housing. Particular attention has been paid to the middle classes in the name of the principle of ‘balancing the population’. In order to measure the effects of the policy, this article relies on an analysis of two City of Paris schemes that have the stated intent of creating social mix. One of these schemes consists of redeveloping a working-class neighbourhood, Goutte d'Or, while the other involves the new acquisition of social housing in various more affluent neighbourhoods in the capital. This comparative study of the population shows that, whether in a neighbourhood poised for gentrification or in a more affluent neighbourhood, this policy has major effects on forms of local social cohesion, setting in motion individual trajectories and reshaping social and/or ethnic identities.     

Spatial dynamics and metropolitan change

"This special issue presents contributions to a collaborative effort to analyze 'the dynamics of metropolitan processes and policies'....[It] contains four papers which focus on industrial change and economic restructuring; two papers deal with population relocation and migration processes; one paper contains a study of economic cycles in space and one paper treats the assessment of urban investment and urban renewal projects." The geographic focus is on the developed countries.     

Location incentives in the low-income housing tax credit: Are qualified census tracts necessary?

The low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) is the largest project-based housing subsidy in the United States. Within the program, private developers receive a subsidy in exchange for constructing apartment units that rent for a predetermined affordable rate. Because the subsidy requires apartment buildings to charge a lower rental rate, the opportunity cost of developing subsidized housing in a location is the market rent that a developer could have charged if he had not received the subsidy. This study characterizes how profit incentives motivate location decisions within the LIHTC program by showing that opportunity cost causes more LIHTC development in locations with low market rent. This result implies that additional financial incentives, like the qualified census tract, may not be necessary to promote construction of subsidized housing in low-rent areas.     

论城市房屋拆迁中物权流转模型的构建及保护对策——兼评《国有土地上房屋征收与拆迁补偿条例》

拆迁问题引发的社会矛盾愈演愈烈,制度设计的缺陷难辞其咎.论文在抽离拆迁行为的基础上,构建公益性房屋拆迁模型与商业性房屋拆迁模型,并以物权的变动为线索,剖析现行拆迁制度,旨在对拆迁立法的完善提出更有针对性的建议,以规范相关物权的归属与保护;并对<国有土地上房屋征收与拆迁补偿条例>(征求意见稿)进行评析.     

The reduced form price elasticity of housing

This paper focuses on the modeling of the housing market. First, there is a discussion of terminology. The importance of distinguishing between housing and structures, and between reduced form and supply elasticities is emphasized. Second, the role of tastes and technology is emphasized. Third, the integration of the housing market into a general equilibrium urban model to investigate such issues as the effects of a housing subsidy is discussed. Throughout attention is drawn to what additional information is needed to provide an adequate empirical characterization of the housing market.