Power in waste: Conflicting agendas in planning for integrated solid waste management in Addis Ababa,Ethiopia

The lower end of the labour service market is often described as a fragmented and insecure section of the economy. The article extends previous research by determining whether labour market insecurity increases perceived threats to the security and affordability of housing. The research draws upon the results of a survey conducted in Oslo of workers in low-paid service occupations. The analyses confirm distinct associations between labour market insecurity and self-reported housing risk. The results further show that perceived insecurity is heightened among three groups, namely non-Westerners, people on low incomes, and housing tenants. When the findings are considered as a whole, a picture emerges of risk cutting into the fringes of the political–economic system.     

New dynamics of rent gap formation in New York City rent-regulated housing: privatization,financialization, and uneven development

ABSTRACT

To explain newfound investor interest in rent-regulated multifamily housing in New York City since 2001, this paper analyzes the transformation in ownership and management of the Riverton Houses, a large rent-regulated housing complex in northern Manhattan. The paper finds new dynamics of rent gap formation at work; rather than depressed capitalized rent attracting investment, increasing potential rent provides a new mechanism for opening rent gaps. The Riverton Houses case shows how three factors increase potentials rents: 1) changes in rent control law that provide new avenues to increase rents, 2) new financial actors and institutions that have higher expectations for risk and return, and 3) longer-term processes of uneven development at the urban scale. Altered rent gap dynamics under processes of privatization, financialization, and uneven urban development complicate the geography of reinvestment beyond a reinvested core and gentrifying periphery. Instead, the urban frontier is drawn recursively within urban space.     

城中村非正规住房的形成机理与管治——以深圳市为例

城中村非正规住房在快速城市化地区普遍存在。以深圳市为例,在梳理城中村非正规住房发展演化过程的基础上,探讨快速城市化地区城中村非正规住房的形成机理与管治对策。研究发现,城中村非正规住房的形成与发展是政策力、市场力和社区力相互作用的结果,处于不同发展阶段的非正规住房,各种动力的大小和方向存在差异。在此基础上,提出城中村非正规住房的管治方向与措施。     

Sustainable Housing Development in Urban Australia: exploring obstacles to and opportunities for ecocity efforts

Basic aspects of sustainable housing design such as increasing density, mixed use and proximity to public transport are being adopted increasingly in Australian cities. Sustainable building codes such as NSW's BASIX and Victoria's Green Star rating systems are also being implemented and advanced. More substantial improvements and endeavours such as onsite food production, energy generation and waste treatment, are being seen increasingly as necessary for urban sustainability, yet little is being done to institutionalise or normalise these through Australia's housing system. Similarly, concerns about the social sustainability of housing identify the need for mixed, flexible tenure and dwelling types, with again little uptake despite evidence of demand. Given that we seem to know what needs doing to move towards sustainability, this paper investigates two ecologically and socially sound community-based housing developments in Australia, with a view to finding what helped or hindered these efforts and what may further the uptake of sustainable design. Assessment of the uptake of sustainable planning initiatives reveals the prevalence of a decidedly neoliberal agenda which shies away from the more substantial challenges ecocity design and community-based enterprise may represent. Such community-based initiatives must, however, be supported at a broader scale, to avoid possible outsourcing of governmental responsibility or the relegation of sustainable design to the sole realm of the wealthy.     

To the market and back: Housing policy and state housing in New Zealand

Housing policy in New Zealand has traditionally been characterised by significant market intervention in support of home ownership and a residual state housing rental sector. Within the context of dramatic social welfare reforms in the 1990s, a set of radical housing reforms was introduced that profoundly transformed the role of the state in the housing system. Key elements of the reforms included the creation of a profit-oriented company to manage state rentals, a move to market rents in the state sector and the introduction of an accommodation supplement. This paper examines the underlying rationale and impacts of the reforms focusing on issues of privatisation, tenant turnover, affordability and tenant protest. Having examined the ongoing problems engendered by these reforms the paper reviews more recent political and legislative reforms that were sought to reassert the state's traditional position within the New Zealand housing market. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Inhabiting the Imaginary: Factory Women at Home on Batam Island, Indonesia

Batam Island, Indonesia, located a short ferry ride away from Singapore, is a place where tourism and industry have been developed simultaneously and a border area where “developed” and “developing” nations meet. Government officials, investing international corporations and the “factory women” who work in the island's industrial estates arrive in Batam ‐ native to none of them ‐ with their own preconceptions and goals. When challenges not foreseen through master planning arise, the authorities cling ever more tightly to their physical and structural development model: the nearby city‐state of Singapore. Conversely, the factory workers who travel intranationally to work in this export processing zone (EPZ) find their objectives contested in the face of the Master Plan, corporate agendas and ethnic fusions characterising this transnational capitalist space. Entering into the homes of three groups of women migrants living and working in Batam, the relationship between the private realm that they inhabit and the social contexts in which they participate publicly is investigated. Some of the choices that women make at and about home are identified, and their ability to “micro‐resist” these external structures is explored. At home, the dynamic relationship between the Batam development project and the women's own hopes and visions of the place ‐ sometimes parallel and sometimes incongruous ‐ are revealed. As they experience life on Batam, their “social imaginaries” of it are shaped into various new realities, and their homes, removed from the confines of the factory floor, thus become spaces of release from these tensions.     

土地房产GIS空间要素的GML模型与实现

在分析土地房产要素特点的基础上．探讨了土地房产空间要素的GML模型及其应用。基于GML语言设计了土地房产空间要素的XML Scenma模式．定义和描述了土地房产要素及其属性．探讨了基于XML和XQuery实现大数据量的地籍对象查询．利用Java DOM和SAX开发了一个基于GML的土地房产GIS系统．实现了土地房产权籍要素图形和属性的一体化管理系统应用表明了所提出的模型和实现是可行的。     

Analysis of a kinematic self‐centring seismic isolator

This investigation deals with the analytical formulation and experimental validation of a prestressed reinforced concrete seismic isolator with kinematic constraints at both ends. The kinematic isolator was proposed initially as a low‐cost solution for seismic protection of low‐income people housing usually placed at the periphery of big cities where regular to bad soil conditions are common. So, the isolator is also a pile foundation with a central prestressed cable and two rolling steel surfaces at the top and bottom ends. By varying the shapes of the end rolling surfaces, different force–deformation constitutive relationships for the isolator may be obtained. Energy dissipation is introduced by yielding of passive reinforcement at the rolling interphase. Apart from stating the large‐deformation formulation of the element, several relevant aspects of the behaviour of these devices are studied herein, such as the increase in the tension of the central prestressed cable, responsible for the self‐centring action of the isolator, the floor uplift that results from the geometry of the isolator, and the vertical stability of the system. Experimental and theoretical results obtained for a group of 9 testing specimens show an excellent agreement in the force–deformation constitutive relationship. Although not the intent of this article, the device proposed may be extended directly as a coupling beam element for shear wall systems. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Refugees and village renewal in Yugoslavia

Using statistics collected by UNHCR and the Serbian government, the paper examines aspects of the refugee problem in FR Yugoslavia whose war-affected population amounted to 646 066 persons in 1996 (a figure that is almost certainly an underestimate). Relatively few refugees will return to their homes even with a political settlement because so many homes are damaged or destroyed. Many people would like to settle in Western Europe and some have already succeeded (especially in Scandinavia where asylum seekers from Former Yugoslavia accounted for 80 percent of the applications in January-September 1993). But regulations are being tightened and asylum seekers are now facing deportation. Housing refugees in FRY is expensive (only 350 refugees got new homes and permanent citizenship in 1994), but some exchanges have been arranged between Serbs arriving from Croatia and Croats established in Vojvodina who are willing to move in the opposite direction. The most promising solution discussed in the paper is resettlement in border villages which have experienced steady depopulation since the Second World War. Houses are available for refurbishment and arable land is cheap. The resettlement of refugee farmers could make an immediate impact on food production and over the longer term there could be sustained economic growth in the context of a newly-constituted Euroregion. Such a strategy would make a virtue out of necessity by helping the refugees and the border regions which have had their potential enhanced by cross-border cooperation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Vietnamese activity in the Adelaide real estate market

Significant real estate activity by Vietnamese households in Adelaide did not occur until 1979, and since then the groups buying activity has been heavily concentrated in the northwest region of the metropolitan area. Therefore, the median housing price paid by Vietnamese buyers has not kept pace with the median price paid by all buyers. Concentration also causes Vietnamese buyers to be disproportionately active in the middle‐to‐lower end of the market, within which there has been a strong preference for rural properties and for houses rather than home units and maisonettes. Amongst Vietnamese buyers who subsequently sell their properties, the majority have not re‐entered the market and their capital gain from ownership has been marginal.