In the early 1980s, suburbanization and periurbanization processes became widespread in major cities within Spain. An interesting stage of returning to city centers commenced that materialized in the start of rehabilitation policies within historic centers. These processes coincided with weak population growth, an acute industrial economic crisis, and new democratic policies in municipal counci...

Regime theory, the dominant paradigm in the study of urban politics, maintains that cities are governed by informal arrangements consisting of public and private sector elites. Because economic growth is the main policy objective of regimes, research has tended to focus on mayoral coalition building and development policy. Thus much less attention has been paid to policies that more directly im...

This article examines how narratives surrounding qilou (arcaded buildings) have changed through three very different moments over a period of almost a century in Guangzhou, China. As a result, what public discourse once perceived as a new, modern form now serves as a symbol of traditional local culture. The metamorphosis of the qilou narrative in response to different visions, social circumstan...

To an economist, the justification for publicly provided urban shelter or urban renewal projects is much stronger if they are socially ‘profitable’ than if they are merely politically acceptable forms of redistribution towards deserving groups. Indeed, if such programs pass the cost-benefit criterion of social profitability, then efficiency can be improved with no sacrifice of distributional go...

HOUSING POLICY DEBATE VOLUME 17 ISSUE 3 © 2006 FANNIE MAE FOUNDATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Abstract This article examines the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), Mayor John F. Street’s plan to revitalize Philadelphia’s distressed neighborhoods by issuing $295 million in bonds to finance the acquisition of property, the demolition of derelict buildings, and the assembling of large trac...

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan and the revitalization of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn offer insights into the intersection of arts and urbanization after World War II. This intra-city comparison shows the aggrandizing pull of the international arena in the shaping of Lincoln Center and the arts it featured in contrast to the local focus and debate that transfor...

"Americans ense that something iswrong with the places where we live and work and go about our daily business." So begins a recent jeremiad by author Howard Kunstler on the "environmental calamity" we call the suburbs [Kunstler, 1996, p. 43]. Critics point to fundamental spects of post-war planning, such as zoning, highway dependence, and decentralization, asthe determinants of our current subu...

The notion of sustainability is widely used from micro to macro scale studies but only few approaches deal with its measurement. Increased global interest in sustainability has triggered attention in indicators as a means of achieving a more sustainable world. Although the search for indicators has led to the development of criteria for good indicators, it has also been dominated by scientific ...