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Planning for housing in England: Understanding recent changes in household formation rates and their implications for planning for housing in England
Posted on: 20 January 2014
By: mackene
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New research published by the Royal Town Planning Institute suggests that local councils in England may be underestimating housing need by up to 30% in some cases, due to an overreliance on Government household projection data.
The ABC of housing growth and infrastructure: Report and case studies
Posted on: 20 January 2014
By: mackene
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This project forms part of The Housing Forum’s Building Homes for the Future workstream. It has been led by senior practitioners from the housing field who have over the past decade or more been concerned at the UK’s poor performance in providing sufficient homes for a growing population and the low quality of much of what is built. The report argues that the biggest challenge of all is to address the issue of land supply and its cost.
New lenses on future cities
Posted on: 17 January 2014
By: mackene
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Published by Shell and Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities, this report explains why the compact city model is key to resource efficiency, and how these cities can also be highly liveable.
Back to rising damp? Addressing housing quality in the private rented sector
Posted on: 17 January 2014
By: mackene
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This paper explores the nature of the private rented sector as it exists today, looking at changing patterns of occupancy and the characteristics of the sector itself. It explores the growth of the housing benefit submarket, and what the tenure means for tenants themselves and the neighbourhoods that private rented housing helps to shape.
The Brits who built the modern world, 1950-2012
Posted on: 17 January 2014
By: mackene
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In February 2014 the Royal Institute of British Architects will open its new public gallery with regular, free exhibitions. The launch event, The Brits who built the modern world, 1950-2012, tells the global story of how British architecture underwent a transformation in the post-war years to become world-leading in the second half of the 20th century. The exhibition runs from 13 February – 27 May 2014.
Technology Roadmap: Energy efficient building envelopes
Posted on: 17 January 2014
By: mackene
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The International Energy Agency (IEA) has launched a new publication which presents detailed strategies and actions to transform the way buildings are constructed by 2050. Key elements include the increased deployment of existing building materials and practices, the introduction of existing solutions to developing markets, and the development of new technologies with higher performance and lower cost. The building envelope, also known as the building shell, fabric or enclosure, is the boundary between the conditioned interior of a building and the outdoors. The energy performance of building envelope components, including external walls, floors, roofs, ceilings, windows and doors, is critical in determining how much energy is required for heating and cooling.
On city size distribution: Evidence from OECD Functional Urban Areas
Posted on: 17 January 2014
By: mackene
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An increasing amount of empirical evidence documents that city-size distribution within a country follows a power law, often in the form of Zipf’s law. This paper provides new comparative evidence on city size distribution across OECD countries. It uses a database where urban agglomerations are consistently identified across different countries, through an algorithm based on population density and commuting patterns. The paper investigates whether Zipf’s law fits well with data. A robustness check is carried out using a traditional administrative definition of cities. Results show that Zipf’s law describes well city size distribution not only at country level, but also at wider spatial scales. The law does not fit as well with the data when using a traditional administrative definition of cities.
Urban climate adaptation and leadership: From conceptual understanding to practical action
Posted on: 17 January 2014
By: mackene
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The impacts of climate change are expected to create numerous challenges for cities. This report synthesizes key points raised in a series of discussions among “adaptation leaders” from fourteen cities around the world. Critical issues for urban adaptation that emerged from the discussions include the need for political commitment at multiple levels of government, information and data as a basis for understanding potential risks and vulnerabilities, meaningful and effective stakeholder engagement shaped by local contexts, and sustained financial and staff resources that are sensitive to urban variability. Further, the findings highlight how policy-makers and international organizations working with cities on issues of adaptation and resilience must support and facilitate processes of testing ideas, learning from experiences, and recalibrating as new information is obtained and lessons are learned.
The effectiveness of port-city policies: A comparative approach
Posted on: 17 January 2014
By: mackene
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The relation between ports and their cities have evolved: it is no longer evident that well-functioning ports have automatically a net positive impact on the port-city. There are various trajectories and many ports and port-cities attempt to stimulate port-city development by a range of public policies. Yet, little is known about effectiveness of policies to promote performance of ports and port-cities. This paper aims at filling this gap, by assessing the effectiveness of port-city policies, within various policy areas including port development, port-city economic development, transportation, environment, research and development, spatial development and communication. This is done via a principal component analysis (PCA), based on a database constructed for the purpose of this paper with outcome variables and scores of policies for a set of 27 large world port-cities, that makes it possible to identify policies that are associated with effective policy outcomes and show patterns of related policy outcomes and policies.
UNWTO Africa: Issue 1, December 2013
Posted on: 16 January 2014
By: mackene
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The World Tourism Organisation has launched its first quarterly newsletter on developments in Africa.
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