ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit have focused attention on the resilience of key sectors and firms. This paper explores the financial resilience of the 50 largest automotive firms in the West Midlands region of the UK in their response to disruption and economic shocks. The findings demonstrate that 22 firms are at high risk due to poor current liquidity ratios, with Coventry and Birmingham emerging as locations most susceptible to firm closures. High-risk firms include key flagship original equipment manufacturers operating at the downstream end of supply chains. If these firms were to fail, there would be a significant destructive impact on both the industry and the local economy. We assert an effective subnational industrial policy is required in order to support economic resilience in regions such as the West Midlands where a few firms account for a disproportionate share of employment and value-added.
ABSTRACT
The 62nd annual conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ASCP) met from Nov 2-5, 2022 in Toronto, Canada. The conference brought together nearly 1,200 planning educators, researchers and students affiliated from more than thirty countries. Attendees were composed of approximately 700 faculty and more than 400 students. There were nearly 250 sessions including presentation of research papers, roundtable discussions, workshops, career information sessions and mobile sessions. The conference was the first in-person conference after two years of virtual convenings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Local hosts for the conference included the University of Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan University and York University. The focal theme of the conference was "(re)shaping the inclusive city: engaging indigenous and immigrant voices, histories and lived experiences."
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we examine the challenges and opportunities facing the UK's industrial and regional policy in the context of the policy decisions made over recent decades. We argue that the overly centralized and sectoral logic of the UK governance systems has led to a lack of clarity in thinking through place-based issues. This, in turn, has resulted in policy ambiguity, confusion and contradictions, and successfully moving industrial policy and regional policy forward post-Brexit can only take place if conceptual and operational clarity is brought to these matters.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has generated many problems and some opportunities in the housing market. The potential role of privately-owned short-term lets meeting specialist family violence crisis accommodation demand is one such opportunity. This paper engages with an important and increasing practice in the Australian context, of the utilisation of private housing stock as a component part of a public housing crisis response system, in this case explored in relation to domestic and family violence. In seeking to gain insights into the feasibility of this practice, this article will first frame mixed public/private accommodation provision as potentially overlapping relations between a thin territory of insufficient crisis infrastructure and a thick territory of commodified short-term let infrastructure. Second, this paper situates the potential of this intersection of mixed private/public responses in terms of riskscapes by unpacking how risk is perceived within these contested territories. The findings highlight tensions between both real and perceived understandings of safety, housing, wellbeing, economic and political risks. While there was some support for utilising short-term lets for crisis accommodation, barriers were revealed to adding thickness to the crisis accommodation space. Given increasing homelessness in Australia, diversifying crisis models could offer increased violence-prevention infrastructure to support women.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 policy responses have intensified the use of housing as a spatial and material defence against community spread of infection. In so doing, they have focussed attention upon pre-existing inequalities and the effects of socio-economic management of COVID-19. This paper draws upon individual households' accounts to explore these effects on housing inequalities, and then adapts a critical resilience framework from disaster response in order to examine the implications for policymaking. The empirical work centres upon a case study of lived experiences of COVID-19-constrained conditions, based on a longitudinal-style study combining semi-structured interviews with 40 households, photographs and household tours at two datapoints (before/during COVID-19) in Victoria, Australia. The study reveals how these households were impacted across four domains: (1) employment, finances, services, and mobilities;(2) homemaking including comfort and energy bills, food and provisioning, and home-schooling/working from home;(3) relationships, care and privacy, and;(4) social, physical and mental health. The interviews also indicate how households coped and experienced relief payments and other related support policies during COVID-19. Drawing upon literature on disaster response, we highlight the centrality of vulnerability and resilience in recognising household exposure and sensitivity to COVID-19, and capabilities in coping. From this analysis, gaps in COVID-19 housing and welfare policy are exposed and guide a discussion for future housing policy interventions and pandemic planning.
ABSTRACT
Global rates of excess mortality attributable to the Covid-19 pandemic provide a fresh impetus to make sense of the associations between income inequality, housing inequality and the social gradient in health, suggesting new questions about the ways in which housing and health are treated in the framing and development of public policy. The first half of the paper uses a social harm lens to examine the threefold associations of the social inequality, housing and health trifecta and offers new insights for policy analysis which foregrounds the production, transmission, and experience of various types of harm which occur within the home. The main body of the paper then draws upon the outcomes of an international systematic literature mapping review of 213 Covid-19 research papers to demonstrate three specific harms associated with stay-at-home lockdowns: (i) intimate partner and domestic violence, (ii) poor mental health and (iii) health harming behaviours. The reported findings are interpreted using a social harm perspective and some implications for policy analysis are illustrated. The paper concludes with a reflection on the efficacy of social harm as a lens for policy analysis and suggests directions for further research in housing studies and zemiology.
ABSTRACT
This article draws upon novel survey evidence to examine the possible regional impacts of Brexit as a ‘disruptive process' to manufacturing operations and logistics in the automotive industry, in the context of the regional resilience literature. The current Brexit (and Covid-19) context, along with the sector's need to re-orientate towards electrification, provides renewed urgency to reconsider industrial policy in spatial terms. The findings have salience not only in the context of anticipating and reacting to Brexit-induced economic shocks at a regional level, but also over the role of decentralized regional bodies. In this regard, the UK government's agenda of ‘levelling up' will be challenging, especially in the context of the place-based shocks likely to arise from Brexit as well as the impact of Covid-19. The article concludes that a more place-based regional industrial policy is required both to anticipate and to respond to shocks and also to reposition the sector in the region going forward.
ABSTRACT
The necessary social distancing to limit the spread of COVID-19 during the recent pandemic implies that regions with higher essentiality and teleworking levels have lower vulnerability to poverty and inequality, the opposite occurring in regions intensive in closed activities. Using the latest 2020 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, we estimate that in the absence of compensating measures, this shock can result in sizable but unequal increases in poverty (between 8.3 and 20.7 percentage points (p.p.)) and wage inequality (between 2.6 and 6.0 Gini points) across Spanish regions. Moreover, inequality between regions can rise, which would erode regional cohesion in Spain.
ABSTRACT
El subarriendo de habitaciones es una realidad ampliamente extendida en las grandes áreas urbanas;sin embargo, la ausencia de estadísticas al respecto dificulta su análisis. Gran parte de la población inmigrante accede a una vivienda mediante esta modalidad. Por ello, en este estudio se analizan 27 entrevistas semiestructuradas para evaluar el papel del subarriendo en la trayectoria residencial de dicho colectivo en el Área Metropolitana de Barcelona. Los resultados confirman la creciente dificultad que tienen los inmigrantes que han llegado recientemente para avanzar en la escala habitacional y, más concretamente, el protagonismo del subarriendo como recurso residencial precario de dicha población, en particular en las etapas tempranas de inserción residencial, aunque no exclusivamente, pues también se ha detectado la existencia de trayectorias residenciales inversas. Se comprueba también la presencia de submercados de habitaciones a los que se accede de manera exclusiva a través de cadenas migratorias.Alternate :The subleasing of rooms is a widespread reality in large urban areas, however, the absence of statistics in this regard makes its analysis difficult. A large part of the immigrant population has access to a dwelling through this modality. Therefore, in this study, 27 semi-structured interviews are analyzed to evaluate the role of subleasing in the housing patterns of this group in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. The results confirm the increasing difficulty that recent immigrants have to advance in the housing scale and, more specifically, the prominence of subleasing as a precarious residential resource for the population, particularly in the early stages of residential insertion, although not exclusively, since the existence of reverse residential trajectories has also been detected. We also verify that the presence of submarkets rooms that are accessed exclusively through migratory chains.
ABSTRACT
In research and policies, the identification of trends as well as emerging topics and topics in decline is an important source of information for both academic and innovation management. Since at present policy analysis mostly employs qualitative research methods, the following article presents and assesses different approaches – trend analysis based on questionnaires, quantitative bibliometric surveys, the use of computer-linguistic approaches and machine learning and qualitative investigations. Against this backdrop, this article examines digital applications in cultural heritage and, in particular, built heritage via various investigative frameworks to identify topics of relevance and trendlines, mainly for European Union (EU)-based research and policies. Furthermore, this article exemplifies and assesses the specific opportunities and limitations of the different methodical approaches against the backdrop of data-driven vs. data-guided analytical frameworks. As its major findings, our study shows that both research and policies related to digital applications for cultural heritage are mainly driven by the availability of new technologies. Since policies focus on meta-topics such as digitisation, openness or automation, the research descriptors are more granular. In general, data-driven approaches are promising for identifying topics and trendlines and even predicting the development of near future trends. Conversely, qualitative approaches are able to answer "why” questions with regard to whether topics are emerging due to disruptive innovations or due to new terminologies or whether topics are becoming obsolete because they are common knowledge, as is the case for the term "internet”.
ABSTRACT
PurposeThis study aims to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted and changed Airbnb market in the Greater Melbourne area in terms of its temporal and spatial patterns and identify possible shifts in underlying trends in travel activities.Design/methodology/approachA panel data set of Airbnb listings in Melbourne is analysed to compare temporal patterns, spatial distribution and lengths of stay of Airbnb users before and after the COVID outbreak.FindingsThis study found that the COVID disruption did not fundamentally change the temporal cycle of the Airbnb market. Month-to-month fluctuations peaked at different levels from pre-pandemic times mainly because of lockdowns and other restrictive measures. The impact of COVID-19 disruptions on neighbourhood-level Airbnb revenues is associated with distance to CBD rather than number of COVID cases. Inner city suburbs suffered major loss during the pandemic, whereas outer suburbs gained popularity due to increased domestic travel and long stays. Long stays (28 days or more, as defined by Airbnb) were the fastest growing segment during the pandemic, which indicates the Airbnb market was adapting to increasing demand for purposes like remote working or lifestyle change. After easing of COVID-related restrictions, demand for short-term accommodation quickly recovered, but supply has not shown signs of strong recovery. Spatial distribution of post-pandemic supply recovery shows a similar spatial variation. Neighbourhoods in the inner city have not shown signs of significant recovery, whereas those in the middle and outer rings are either slowly recovering or approaching their pre-COVID levels.Practical implicationsThe COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted short-term rental markets and in particular the Airbnb sector during the phase of its rapid development. This paper helps inform in- and post-pandemic housing policy, market opportunity and investment decision.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first attempts to empirically examine both temporal and spatial patterns of the COVID-19 impact on Airbnb market in one of the most severely impacted major cities. It is one of the first attempts to identify shifts in underlying trends in travel based on Airbnb data.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has left society dazed and confused. Self-evidently momentous, its multifaceted impacts upon the functioning and experience of city living have been swift and deep. This has precipitated a range of laudable research in planning, which, among other foci, has sought to examine how the disruption is amplifying inequities (Cole et al., Citation2020), improving urban environmental quality (Sharifi & Khavarian-Garmsir, Citation2020) and generating enhanced demand for public space (Sepe, Citation2021;Ugolini et al., Citation2020). The pandemic has also heightened interest in re-engaging planning with its roots in public health (Lennon, Citation2020;Scott, Citation2020). Here, an emerging strand of research is exploring how to better proof our cities from the ill-effects of future contagions (Bereitschaft & Scheller, Citation2020;Martínez & Short, Citation2021). Yet, there is another dimension to the pandemic that may have impacts which shake the very foundations of how we think cities could and should evolve. This results from the current great experiment in spatial reorganisation that stretches well beyond the requirement of social distancing. Specifically, never before in a time of peace have so many peoples' lives been so comprehensively decoupled from their places of work for such an extensive period of time. Indeed, while the effects of social distancing are immediately apparent in how we have found new ways to negotiate spaces, it is perhaps remote working that will have the longest impact on our cities. This was alluded to but not elaborated on in a recent superb editorial by Jill Grant in this journal (Grant, Citation2020). Hence, I propose in this short comment piece to extend this line of speculation.For centuries cities have pulled people into their orbit in search of employment, education and new experiences. Conventionally conceived as places of opportunity, cities are seen to thrive where a critical threshold of population and capital spawn dynamic and diverse economies and cultures, in which residents flourish in choice and convenience. Yet despite such lofty descriptions, for most cities it is employment that is the magnet and motor of urban land use that heavily influences where people live, shop and recreate. These two cardinal poles of home and work have long dictated how people flow around and use urban spaces: from school runs to restaurants;from retail to recreation. It is this spatial relationship embedded in the daily patterns of life that helps create and carry communities. But if people are no longer limited by their place or time of work, will it follow that they will choose to lumber themselves with the outsized mortgages, additional expenses and stresses of urban living?
ABSTRACT
La crise sanitaire a fortement perturbé l'économie mondiale, les marchés du travail et notre mode de vie. Cette crise a replacé la santé au centre de nos préoccupations, nécessitant un rétablissement fondamental de la santé physique et mentale. Notre environnement spatial peut affecter notre humeur et nos comportements au quotidien, notamment pendant le confinement. Cette crise a également affecté la qualité de vie dans les espaces de travail, nous obligeant à les repenser tout en respectant la distanciation sociale. Cette distanciation est un défi à exploiter dans l'aménagement des espaces de travail. Notre réflexion ne va pas limiter les espaces intérieurs à un simple lieu de contamination, mais plutôt le considérer aussi comme une nouvelle piste exploitable tout en respectant les contraintes sanitaires et en anticipant les urgences futures. Dans ce contexte, de nombreuses questions se posent : Comment repenser nos espaces de travail pour respecter la distanciation sociale et les adaptés aux incertitudes de demain ? Comment le design peut répondre aux futurs enjeux économiques, sociaux et environnementaux ?Alternate :The health crisis has greatly disrupted the global economy, labor markets, and our way of life. This crisis has put health back at the center of our concerns, requiring a fundamental restoration of physical and mental health. Our spatial environment can affect our daily mood and behaviors, especially during confinement. This crisis has also affected the quality of life in workspaces, forcing us to rethink them while respecting social distancing. This distancing is a challenge to be exploited in the layout of workspaces. Our reflection will not limit interior spaces to a simple place of contamination, but rather also consider it as a new exploitable issue while respecting health constraints and anticipating future emergencies. In this context, many questions arise: How can we rethink our workspaces to respect social distancing and adapt them to the uncertainties of tomorrow? How can design respond to future economic, social, and environmental challenges?
ABSTRACT
Problem, research strategy, and findingsPlanners have not paid enough attention to managing the risk of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), of which COVID-19 is the most recent manifestation. Overlooking aggressive policies to manage this risk of zoonotic viruses reassorting between sick animals and humans misses the greatest opportunity for stopping future disease pandemics. In this study we review several disciplines, outline the scant planning literature on EIDs, and identify the increasing calls from virologists and medical professionals to address urbanization as a key EID driver. Using the case of avian influenza outbreaks in Vietnam in 2004 and 2005, we conceptualize a preventive planning approach to managing the risk of zoonotic transmission that results in EID pandemics.Takeaway for practiceWe make several recommendations for planners. Practicing planners should consider how their plans manage the risk of zoonotic disease transmission between animals and humans through land use planning and community planning. Planning education and certification organizations should develop positions regarding the role of planning for EIDs. Food systems planners should consider the importance of livestock practices in food production as a risk factor for EIDs. Diverse research teams should combine geographic scales, data sources, and disciplinary knowledge to examine how an extended series of upstream and downstream events can result in a global pandemic. Such empirical examination can lead to effective planning policies to greatly reduce this risk.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has created opportunities for cities to close streets to automobile traffic in the name of public health. Although these interventions promise numerous benefits, neighborhood activists and scholars of color suggest they can perpetuate structurally racist inequities. In this Viewpoint, we implore planners and other city builders to think critically about the impact of these interventions by employing an environmental justice framework. Applying this framework in the open streets context exposes several potential paradoxes that arise. We conclude with a set of best practices that can help city builders transcend these paradoxes and extend this livability revolution to all.
ABSTRACT
Since 2019, the year of the COVID-19 outbreak, many businesses have been shut down across different industries and geographical locations, and the construction industry is one of those that has suffered more than any other due to its volatile nature. This study emphasizes the impact of COVID-19 on project management within construction companies and the ways it has affected the completion of projects. The literature review was provided with effective theoretical information regarding the research topic by highlighting key concepts, theories, and models after identifying crucial aspects that resulted in cost and time overruns in the context of UK construction projects. This study has been conducted as a primary qualitative method to gather firsthand data employing interviews with five construction project managers from the UK. The researcher has discussed interpretivism research philosophy, the inductive research approach, and explanatory search design and has conducted purposive sampling. In addition, primary qualitative data collection and thematic data analysis have been discussed in this study. The research has identified 10 types of themes focused on the transcript, which were developed through interviews. Further, a detailed comparative discussion was made on three top themes, which were based on cost overrun, and time extension of construction projects during COVID-19. The interviewees have outlined the significant impact of COVID-19 on supply chain management and the labor force. The multimethod approach helps in understanding the diverse point of view across different countries and geographical regions and finally reaching a conclusion with a comparative approach.
ABSTRACT
Participatory planning traditionally requires face-to-face meetings with the public in community fora, design charrettes, planning commission meetings, and so on. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and aided by online participatory technologies, planners have been translating their face-to-face practices for use in digital forums. These new tools are equipping planners with greater ability to control meeting interactions, including the ability to stifle dissent. In this Viewpoint, we argue that planners should devise the means to protect modes of digital dissent if they want to avoid propagating the injustices of physical participatory processes in the digital world. Based on ongoing research, we offer guidance to planners about how to begin discussing the meaningful roles dissent could play and how it might effectively and fairly be incorporated into virtual participatory planning processes. In practice, this means that planners must pay more explicit attention to the norms and rules of participation as they evolve for online settings and to avoid hasty judgments when confronted with dissenting voices.
ABSTRACT
Currently, the global situation of COVID-19 is aggravating, pressingly calling for efficient control and prevention measures. Understanding the spreading pattern of COVID-19 has been widely recognized as a vital step for implementing non-pharmaceutical measures. Previous studies explained the differences in contagion rates due to the urban socio-political measures, while fine-grained geographic urban spreading pattern still remains an open issue. Here, we fill this gap by leveraging the trajectory data of 197,808 smartphone users (including 17,808 anonymous confirmed cases) in nine cities in China. We find a general spreading pattern in all cities: the spatial distribution of confirmed cases follows a power-law-like model and the spreading centroid human mobility is time-invariant. Moreover, we reveal that long average traveling distance results in a high growth rate of spreading radius and wide spatial diffusion of confirmed cases in the fine-grained geographic model. With such insight, we adopt the Kendall model to simulate the urban spreading of COVID-19 which can well fit the real spreading process. Our results unveil the underlying mechanism behind the spatial-temporal urban evolution of COVID-19, and can be used to evaluate the performance of mobility restriction policies implemented by many governments and to estimate the evolving spreading situation of COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine information and volatility linkages among real estate, equity, bond and money markets in Australia.Design/methodology/approachA novel rational expectations framework of financial contagion (Kodres and Pritsker, 2002), along with a combination of robust statistical methods including simple and dynamic correlations and generalized impulse response (Fereidouni et al., 2014) have been employed using data covering three dynamic pre-pandemic economic cycles, namely, global financial crisis (GFC) period, pre-pandemic housing boom and pre-pandemic housing downturn from 2008 (February) to 2019 (December).FindingsResults reveal information linkages across real estate, equity, bond and money markets through correlations in return and volatilities of these series. Finding indicates that the three financial markets (equity, bond and money markets) are interdependent and integrated through information and volatility linkages during the GFC period and pre-pandemic housing downturn period. Financial markets have stronger associations with real estate market during pre-pandemic housing boom. The findings contribute to the general notion that the performances of three financial markets are closely related to the "boom” phase of the real estate cycle.Originality/valueThis research provides an extension of existing literature regarding the information and volatility contagion of the expanded set of core investment markets in Australia. The findings could assist household buyers and investors in designing strategic investment portfolios/hedging strategies and minimizing asset specific risks through diversification over short-term and long-term. In addition, results could support the maintenance, growth and development of a combination of competitive balanced investment markets including real estate, equity, bond and money markets in post-pandemic economy.
ABSTRACT
Production fragmentation across multiple regions can result in a regional shock propagating along value chains to a wider array of regions. We propose a methodological framework to measure the economic exposure to regional value chain disruptions due to city lockdown during Covid-19. The exposure index is evaluated by applying a hypothetical extraction method to a regionally extended inter-country input–output framework incorporating China's interregional input–output table. Our methodology can be adapted to conduct disaster impact analyses at city, state and country levels. It provides a tool for the immediate assessment of the economic risks of value chain disruptions, enabling quick policy responses.