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Notes from Sejong City
Posted on: 18 September 2014
By: mackene
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The brand new city of Sejong in South Korea has so far received little academic attention internationally. This is surprising, given the scale of the undertaking; when complete, it will accommodate up to half a million residents, with the national government footing the bill. In a new thought piece published on our website, Rob Cowley, one of the doctoral researchers at the University of Westminster, reflects on a recent fieldwork trip to Sejong. He discusses the nature of the lessons that might be learnt from new-build eco-cities of this type, given that their emergence depends on very context-specific favourable conditions, and suggests that it may be unhelpful when plans to build whole new cities are dismissed as problematically utopian.
Silent majority: How the public will support a new wave of social housing
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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The focus of the report is public opposition to new housing as an explanation for why successive governments seem unable to address the growing affordability crisis in UK housing. Lack of public support for new housing, particularly social housing, is often used as a reason for not doing more, for why government shouldn’t be involved and why this is no longer part of what the local state should be focused on. The Fabian report seeks to dispel this myth, suggesting that nearly 60% of people would actually support more social housing and many would be positive about the government playing a key part in provision.
Culture and heritage seminar. London, 9 September 2014
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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In partnership with the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA), Visit Britain held a seminar on how to market culture and heritage internationally. The event was attended by attractions and destinations across Britain. Presentations are available online.
Place-based policies
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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Place-based policies commonly target underperforming areas, such as deteriorating downtown business districts and disadvantaged regions. Principal examples include enterprise zones, European Union Structural Funds, and industrial cluster policies. Place-based policies are rationalized by various hypotheses in urban and labor economics, such as agglomeration economies and spatial mismatch, hypotheses that entail market failures and often predict overlap between poor economic performance and disadvantaged residents. The evidence on enterprise zones is very mixed. We need to know more about what features of enterprise zone policies make them more effective or less effective, who gains and who loses from these policies, and how we can reconcile the existing findings. Some evidence points to positive benefits of infrastructure expenditure, and also investment in higher education and university research, likely because of the public-goods nature of these policies. However, to better guide policy, we need to know more about what policies create self-sustaining longer-run gains.
Climate change: Implications for transport
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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Business for Social Responsibility has issued a summary report to distil key findings on the effects of transport on climate change from the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report. The report includes implications for road, rail, air, and shipping and is part of BSR’s Business in a Climate-Constrained World Initiative.
A natural offset for the Rio 2016 Olympic Park
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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The Rio 2016 Olympic Park, on the city’s waterfront, is converting its degraded landfill into an ecological restoration project. This is not an isolated initiative but is part of a larger ecological and landscape strategy for lagoon borders and ecological corridors for the city of Rio de Janeiro.
BIM explained (part six): reference list
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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This article lists the currently available BIM standards and guidance available to the construction sector.
Visitor Attraction Trends in England 2013
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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This latest annual report from Visit England found that in 2013 there was a 5% overall increase in visits to attractions across the UK compared to a 1% decline in 2012. Out of a surveyed 1,568 English visitor attractions throughout the UK in 2013, the report found that the Tower of London was the most visited attraction in the paid for category with 2.9 million visits, marking an increase of 18.4% since 2012, closely followed by St Pauls Cathedral with 2.1 million visits, and Westminster Abbey with 1.8 million visits. Out of the 20 most visited free attractions in England, the top three most visited were the British Museum (5.58 million), the National Gallery (5.2 million) and the Natural History Museum (5 million). The survey also found that museums and art galleries also saw an increase in visitor numbers with an increase by 4% in 2013.
Asset or liability? Owning a listed building in the 21st century
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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This report surveyed 130 private listed building owners and found that 80% believe listed building consent decisions can be illogical or inconsistent across different building types and applications. The findings commenting on listed building consent system and the application of conservation principles come from owners, not of stately homes but normal homes and businesses. These, according to the author Dr Patricia J Smith, represent by far the largest body of custodians caring for the national building heritage, but recent reforms in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 are targeted mostly at improving the system for developers not for small scale owners.
Targeting the countryside
Posted on: 17 September 2014
By: mackene
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A new research paper from the Campaign to Protect Rural England shows that steep targets for the amount of land councils must allocate for housing are opening the door to major housing developments in the countryside. The paper studies the appeal decisions on applications for major housing developments on greenfield land between March 2012 and May 2014. It finds that planning inspectors overturned the decisions of local councils in 72 per cent of cases where there was no defined land supply.
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