In 1993, US Congress launched the Urban Revitalization Demonstration program, later to become known as HOPE VI, a national plan whose declared aim was to transform public housing…
Abstract
In 1993, US Congress launched the Urban Revitalization Demonstration program, later to become known as HOPE VI, a national plan whose declared aim was to transform public housing stock into "bridges of opportunities".
In the following decade, Hope VI has awarded grants to demolish public housing projects and replace them with "attractive developments that not only blend with but enhance the surrounding community while providing housing for families of all incomes" (HUD, 1999). In 1995, Congress repealed the one-for-one replacement requirement and de facto Hope VI was turned primarily into a demolition program.
In 2003, the American Dream Downpayment Act re-authorised the Hope VI program throughout the fiscal year 2006. It now seems that the federal government has no intention to continue its financing.
Despite the extensive debate on the program, a comprehensive analysis of the social, economic and political process underlying the transformation of all the specific sites and a systematic overview of the stories behind these projects, from the first decision to build to the decision to raze are not available.
An atlas with a description of the sites, based on qualitative secondary sources (planning and architecture magazines, urban history and geographic history journals, local authorities reports), and three maps for each of them - before and after the public housing project and after Hope VI, could prove to be very useful. Such a tool would indeed provide the context for an interdisciplinary reflection of how the city affects and is affected by a multitude of variables with particular emphasis on the political controversies on location, and the role of different players - city council, public housing authorities, developers, community residents, unions, the media. At the end, city is "history condensed".
Being impossible for a single researcher to complete such a body of work, this paper intends to make a contribution to the existing literature and focus on the projects built between 1933 and 1949, now demolished or in the way to be demolished in 58 cities, "thanks" to Hope VI (1).
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In 2002, an issue of Open House International had already addressed the subject of war and the city. Scholars with different backgrounds and experiences reported on a number of…
Abstract
In 2002, an issue of Open House International had already addressed the subject of war and the city. Scholars with different backgrounds and experiences reported on a number of cities. They analysed and reflected on the situation before the armed hostilities, both in physical terms and in terms of the conflicts of ethnic and civilian character, and the role of external forces and actors; the war in its different manifestations: a never ending conflict, a succession of battles and precarious truces, bombing, the threat of bombing; and the prospects of reconstruction, with particular reference to the different effects for the various groups and interests.
If ever Africa had disappeared, it has now reappeared on the maps of investors seeking for land and resources. The entire continent seems to have become attractive for…
Abstract
If ever Africa had disappeared, it has now reappeared on the maps of investors seeking for land and resources. The entire continent seems to have become attractive for international financial institutions, which intensify their recommendations to single national Governments in order for them to further remove obstacles and make Africa an “ever better place to do business”.
Rwanda represents an emblematic example of the rapidity and size of transformations Africa is faced with, which touch every sector, from the land ownership model to the modes of land use, from the distribution of population, to the construction of infrastructure.
It is a fertile country, with a good water supply and two crop seasons, and is almost entirely cultivated. The majority of the inhabitants work the land, and subside thanks to agriculture. Today, however, the Government's goal, synthetically expressed in the slogan that defines the future of Rwanda as Africa's Singapore (Vesperini, 2010), is the modernization of agriculture, and the reduction of its weight in favour of a service economy. The most visible effects of this approach are the expulsion from the countryside of a huge number of families which lose any type of sustainment, and the grouping of many small plots in large territorial extensions which are often given for long term use to multinational agribusiness corporations. The transformation of agriculture is accompanied by the redistribution of population, traditionally settled in scattered patterns across the whole country. The massive migration from the countryside is explicitly sought by Government, whose target is to reach, by 2020, a 35% urbanization rate up from today's 18%.
The three issues, total and unconditional opening to foreign investment, population resettlement and transformation of the agricultural activities, which are the pillars of the development programs initiated by Government and international advisors, are producing dramatic changes on the physical and built environment, and affect the living conditions of the weakest groups (White, Borras, Hall, Scoones, Walford, 2012).
The paper proposes a reflection on themes which have general relevance, but which also need to be locally grounded. Of particular importance are urbanization, the relationship between towns and countryside, and the relationship between social and economic structure and territorial planning.
In 2012 the author took part as consultant to the drafting of the Urbanization sector strategic plan 2012-2017. The views expressed here are personal and do not in any way represent the Government or Institutions’ point of view.
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Yonca Hürol, Fernando Julia Koschinsky, Stephen Graham and Ayona Datta
TIME-BASED ARCHITECTURE
METHODOLOGIES IN HOUSING RESEARCH
AT WAR WITH THE CITY
DESIGNING SOCIAL INNOVATION-PLANNING-BUILDING-EVALUATING
These are Working, Learning and Living. The first and last of Working and Living have been addressed in some of the previous issues of the journal. ‘Working’ has been supported…
Abstract
These are Working, Learning and Living. The first and last of Working and Living have been addressed in some of the previous issues of the journal. ‘Working’ has been supported and developed by books, journals and projects. User decision making processes lie central to these concepts.
2006 was our 30th year of publication - quite a feat considering that our financial muscle is dependent on a relatively small group of subscribers and seven institutional…
Abstract
2006 was our 30th year of publication - quite a feat considering that our financial muscle is dependent on a relatively small group of subscribers and seven institutional subscribers. Like a poor distant Elsevier relative we had no cash to have a party or to give away subscriptions but we did look around and say that we had achieved a lot with some color issues, a web site and some double length issues. In 2006, Open House International was covered by the Thomson ISI products namely, The Social Science Citation Index, The Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Sci-Search, Current Contents/Social & Behavioral Sciences, Current Contents/Arts & Humanities and Journal Citation Reports / Social Sciences Edition. This was a kind of 30th birthday present. It must not be overlooked that this success was not without the unfailing support of our Board of Editors (referees) and guest editors of theme issues who have maintained the highest standards of editing through their rigorous approach to the written words of authors and to referencing and citation levels of author's manuscripts. My job, more managerial by nature, has been and still is to ensure that timely publication is maintained and that a healthy flow of quality articles is achieved. Without all these attributes citation index rating cannot be considered.
Bojun Hou, Yifan Zhu, Jin Hong, Jingjun Wei and Shuai Wang
Based on the density dependence theory, this paper attempts to explore how two types of interdependence among firms located in the same national high-tech zones (NHTZs) �…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the density dependence theory, this paper attempts to explore how two types of interdependence among firms located in the same national high-tech zones (NHTZs) – mutualism and competition – affect entrepreneurship in the NHTZs. The authors suggest that increasing firm density can help enhance legitimacy and form mutual networks. However, as the competition becomes fierce, the above positive relationship will weaken when the firm density exceeds a certain level. In addition, the authors are interested in whether the age of NHTZs would affect their sensitivity to legitimacy and competition and whether firm density affects entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach
This article formulates two hypotheses from the theoretical deduction. The hypotheses are examined using the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with a unique, unbalanced panel dataset of Chinese NHTZs spanning from 2014 to 2021. Considering potential endogeneity risk among the variables, the authors attempt to lag variables and ultimately find the results are still robust.
Findings
Drawing upon the density dependence theory, the empirical results show firm density is conducive to promoting entrepreneurship, while the positive relationship between community density and NHTZs' entrepreneurship gradually weakens as the firm density surpasses a certain level. The dynamics between mutualism and competition have different impacts on NHTZs' entrepreneurship. In addition, the results demonstrate that the linkage between firm interdependence and entrepreneurship is stronger for younger NHTZs. Firm density has an impact on entrepreneurship through legitimacy and excessive competition effects.
Research limitations/implications
On the one hand, the research period of this paper is 2014–2021, as the China Torch Statistical Yearbook only started to publish operating revenues in 2014, so the data period of this paper is relatively short. More research can be done in the future when more data is disclosed. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis cannot be conducted because of the limited data and materials. In future research, the qualitative analysis of entrepreneurial activities in NHTZs, such as questionnaires or case studies, needs to be supplemented, which will be an interesting direction.
Practical implications
Most existing research has not distinguished the differences between NHTZs (Wang et al., 2019), especially the differences in legitimacy and access to resources caused by the age of NHTZs. This article considers the heterogeneity between NHTZs, which helps to provide theoretical and practical evidence for a transition economy like China to make trade-off decisions on balancing absorbing new entrants with promoting the efficient allocation of resources based on the density and age of NHTZs.
Social implications
Drawing upon density dependency theory, this paper enriches the literature on agglomeration and entrepreneurship with a new perspective and extends the study to NHTZs.
Originality/value
First, this paper provides new evidence on how agglomeration affects entrepreneurship from an ecological perspective with the help of mutualism and competition interdependence. Most studies have explored the role of agglomeration in entrepreneurship, focussing on social networks, knowledge spillovers or resource endowments (Acs et al., 2013; Capozza et al., 2018; Yu, 2020). Drawing upon density dependency theory, this paper enriches the literature on agglomeration and entrepreneurship with a new perspective and extends the study to NHTZs. Second, the emphasis of science parks has been primarily on qualitative or case studies (Salvador et al., 2013; Guo and Verdini, 2015; Xie et al., 2018). We have diversified the quantitative research between agglomeration and entrepreneurship by using panel data from Chinese NHTZs from 2014 to 2021. Third, most existing research has not distinguished the differences between NHTZs (Wang et al., 2019), especially the differences in legitimacy and access to resources caused by the age of NHTZs. This article considers the heterogeneity between NHTZs, which helps to provide theoretical and practical evidence for a transition economy like China to make trade-off decisions on balancing absorbing new entrants with promoting the efficient allocation of resources based on the density and age of NHTZs. Finally, this paper meticulously investigates the profound influence and underlying mechanisms of firm density within NHTZs on entrepreneurship. It discerns two distinct mechanisms at play: the legitimacy effect and the impact of excessive competition resulting from firm density. This comprehensive analysis significantly contributes to our comprehension of the intricate interplay between firm density and entrepreneurship, shedding light on the dynamics of competition and mutual benefits.