Current understanding of and approaches to devising and selecting infrastructural and ultimately ... more Current understanding of and approaches to devising and selecting infrastructural and ultimately land-use interventions for better urban economic performance are often of limited capacity in providing long-term ‘place-based’ blueprints. These have been best framed by Sir David Higgins, the former Chair of HS2 Limited, as a need for an overall national transport strategy for and against which individual interventions can be constructed and appraised. These issues are also echoed in the Productivity Insights Network’s Infrastructure and Regional and City Productivity Debates evidence reviews. These reviews have specifically highlighted a number of gaps in our understanding and framing of the wider effects and role of infrastructure, particularly that of mobility and transport, on the productivity prospects of the UK cities. Difficulties in directly determining and measuring precise improvements in overall GVA as a result of particular transport infrastructure interventions and a lack of mechanisms/tools that would enable a more longer-term oriented planning of infrastructure targets have specifically been highlighted. The present study focuses on aspects relating to the interrelation of the effects of urban connectivity, agglomeration, and morphology on efforts seeking to increase urban and regional output through transport interventions in a UK context. We attempt to assess the feasibility of quantifying a sense of productivity premium that may be associated with the spatial organization and connectivity of small area neighborhoods and their demographic profiles within cities. Using the Sheffield council area as a testbed, this project examines ways to quantify productivity potentials, albeit not in monetary terms, in long-term planning for land-use and transport infrastructure within an agglomeration-compatible framework
Focuses on assessing the merits and limitations of three recommended sets of housing market area ... more Focuses on assessing the merits and limitations of three recommended sets of housing market area geography with respect to planning, policy setting, delivery and monitoring.
The recession has generated wide-ranging impacts on housing market performance and socio-economic... more The recession has generated wide-ranging impacts on housing market performance and socio-economic conditions within neighbourhoods. This report looks at these pressures and how they manifest themselves from the national to the neighbourhood level, highlighting the fragile and uneven recovery from the recession. This has major implications for how national policies, such as fiscal incentives, result in very different effects locally, because of the institutional, economic and tenure structure of local housing markets.
The emergence of new, non-statutory or informal spaces can be found at multiple levels across Eur... more The emergence of new, non-statutory or informal spaces can be found at multiple levels across Europe, in a variety of circumstances, and with diverse aims and rationales. This book moves beyond theory to examine the practice of soft spaces.
This paper provides new conceptual and empirical insights into the role city-regions play as part... more This paper provides new conceptual and empirical insights into the role city-regions play as part of a geopolitical strategy deployed by the nation state to enact its own interests, in conversation with local considerations. Emphasis falls on the performative roles of economic models and spatial-economic imaginaries in consolidating and legitimising region-building efforts and the strategies and tactics employed by advocates to gain credibility and traction for their chosen imaginaries. We focus on the Sheffield City Region and Doncaster within it (South Yorkshire, England) drawing on 56 in-depth interviews with local policymakers, civic institutions and private sector stakeholders conducted between 2015 and 2018. In doing so, we identify three overlapping phases in the building of the Sheffield City Region: a period of initial case-making to build momentum behind the Sheffield City Region imaginary; a second of concerted challenge from alternative imaginaries; and a third where the...
This paper develops an understanding of the structural and spatial characteristics of regulated f... more This paper develops an understanding of the structural and spatial characteristics of regulated forms of temporary use across England’s core cities. The paper’s contribution lies in its adoption of an extensive research design that goes beyond the intensive qualitative approaches that predominate in the temporary use literature. We employ a novel data set of 5890 temporary use interventions that have been recorded over a 15-year period (2000–2015). Informed by the temporary use literature, we distinguish between ‘extraordinary’ (e.g. urban beaches) and ‘ordinary’ (e.g. car parks) forms of temporary use alongside other characteristics that include the time of occurrence, the function of space appropriated, decisions taken and whether instances were isolated or reoccurring. Logistic regression is used to test whether the odds that a temporary use was defined as ‘ordinary’ or ‘extraordinary’ increased or decreased owing to their underlying structural characteristics. The analysis revea...
Current understanding of and approaches to devising and selecting infrastructural and ultimately ... more Current understanding of and approaches to devising and selecting infrastructural and ultimately land-use interventions for better urban economic performance are often of limited capacity in providing long-term ‘place-based’ blueprints. These have been best framed by Sir David Higgins, the former Chair of HS2 Limited, as a need for an overall national transport strategy for and against which individual interventions can be constructed and appraised. These issues are also echoed in the Productivity Insights Network’s Infrastructure and Regional and City Productivity Debates evidence reviews. These reviews have specifically highlighted a number of gaps in our understanding and framing of the wider effects and role of infrastructure, particularly that of mobility and transport, on the productivity prospects of the UK cities. Difficulties in directly determining and measuring precise improvements in overall GVA as a result of particular transport infrastructure interventions and a lack of mechanisms/tools that would enable a more longer-term oriented planning of infrastructure targets have specifically been highlighted. The present study focuses on aspects relating to the interrelation of the effects of urban connectivity, agglomeration, and morphology on efforts seeking to increase urban and regional output through transport interventions in a UK context. We attempt to assess the feasibility of quantifying a sense of productivity premium that may be associated with the spatial organization and connectivity of small area neighborhoods and their demographic profiles within cities. Using the Sheffield council area as a testbed, this project examines ways to quantify productivity potentials, albeit not in monetary terms, in long-term planning for land-use and transport infrastructure within an agglomeration-compatible framework
Focuses on assessing the merits and limitations of three recommended sets of housing market area ... more Focuses on assessing the merits and limitations of three recommended sets of housing market area geography with respect to planning, policy setting, delivery and monitoring.
The recession has generated wide-ranging impacts on housing market performance and socio-economic... more The recession has generated wide-ranging impacts on housing market performance and socio-economic conditions within neighbourhoods. This report looks at these pressures and how they manifest themselves from the national to the neighbourhood level, highlighting the fragile and uneven recovery from the recession. This has major implications for how national policies, such as fiscal incentives, result in very different effects locally, because of the institutional, economic and tenure structure of local housing markets.
The emergence of new, non-statutory or informal spaces can be found at multiple levels across Eur... more The emergence of new, non-statutory or informal spaces can be found at multiple levels across Europe, in a variety of circumstances, and with diverse aims and rationales. This book moves beyond theory to examine the practice of soft spaces.
This paper provides new conceptual and empirical insights into the role city-regions play as part... more This paper provides new conceptual and empirical insights into the role city-regions play as part of a geopolitical strategy deployed by the nation state to enact its own interests, in conversation with local considerations. Emphasis falls on the performative roles of economic models and spatial-economic imaginaries in consolidating and legitimising region-building efforts and the strategies and tactics employed by advocates to gain credibility and traction for their chosen imaginaries. We focus on the Sheffield City Region and Doncaster within it (South Yorkshire, England) drawing on 56 in-depth interviews with local policymakers, civic institutions and private sector stakeholders conducted between 2015 and 2018. In doing so, we identify three overlapping phases in the building of the Sheffield City Region: a period of initial case-making to build momentum behind the Sheffield City Region imaginary; a second of concerted challenge from alternative imaginaries; and a third where the...
This paper develops an understanding of the structural and spatial characteristics of regulated f... more This paper develops an understanding of the structural and spatial characteristics of regulated forms of temporary use across England’s core cities. The paper’s contribution lies in its adoption of an extensive research design that goes beyond the intensive qualitative approaches that predominate in the temporary use literature. We employ a novel data set of 5890 temporary use interventions that have been recorded over a 15-year period (2000–2015). Informed by the temporary use literature, we distinguish between ‘extraordinary’ (e.g. urban beaches) and ‘ordinary’ (e.g. car parks) forms of temporary use alongside other characteristics that include the time of occurrence, the function of space appropriated, decisions taken and whether instances were isolated or reoccurring. Logistic regression is used to test whether the odds that a temporary use was defined as ‘ordinary’ or ‘extraordinary’ increased or decreased owing to their underlying structural characteristics. The analysis revea...
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