Suchergebnisse

After briefly sketching a suitable analytical framework for local labour markets the paper applies the analysis to the problems identified as peculiar to the inner city. It concludes that inner city labour market problems are not peculiar to such areas but result from the economics of urban structure compounded by general labour market deterioration.

"Cover page " -- "Halftitle page " -- "Title page " -- "Copyright page " -- "Urban Problems in Western Europe: A Postscript" -- "Title page " -- "Copyright page " -- "Acknowledgements" -- "Contents" -- "List of Tables" -- "1 Introduction" -- "The historical process of urban development" -- "Forces for urban revival: employment" -- "People" -- "Policy implications" -- "Structure of the book" -- "2 Background and the use of Functional Urban Regions" -- "Functional Urban Regions" -- "FURs and spatial disparities" -- "FURs and residential segregation" -- "Separating decentralization from decline" -- "FURs as labour markets" -- "Selection of FURs for analysis" -- "Technical Appendix: Chapter 2" -- "3 Problems of urban decline and growth: a review" -- "Systematic studies of European urban development" -- "Further evidence on stages of urban growth" -- "Population or employment change" -- "The role of demographic factors" -- "Decentralization and urban decline: what is urban decline?" -- "Forms of urban decline" -- "Urban decline and industrial decline -- or deindustrialization as international industrial restructuring" -- "The causes of urban decline" -- "Spatial restructuring and industrial restructuring" -- "The macroeconomic context of restructuring" -- "Urban decline as a manifestation of underlying economic and social problems" -- "Comparison with other diagnoses of the causes of urban decline" -- "4 Urban areas in the EC: problems of decline and growth 1971 – 84" -- "Measuring population change" -- "Measuring 'urban decline' and 'urban growth' problems" -- "The variables" -- "The results" -- "Changes through time" -- "Technical Appendix: Chapter 4" -- "5 The analysis of case studies" -- "The questionnaire survey" -- "Population" -- "Migration and natural change" -- "Population age structure" -- "Employment" -- "More general patterns

This volume is a follow-up to the earlier Urban Economics, Volume 2 of Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edited by Edwin Mills. The earlier volume, published in 1987, focussed on urban economic theory. This new handbook, in contrast, focuses on applied urban research. The difference is of course in emphasis. The earlier volume was by no means entirely concerned with theoretical research and this one is by no means entirely concerned with applied research. There have certainly been important theoretical developments during the last decade, and they are surveyed at appropriate places in this volume. However, there has been an outpouring of high quality applied research in urban economics, as in other specialties. The reasons for the rapid growth of applied research are not difficult to identify; improved theoretical frameworks within which to do applied research; improved econometric techniques and software; more and better data; and, probably most important, ever cheaper computing power, which is being ever more widely distributed within the research community, providing increasingly easy access to and analysis of, data. Selection and classification of topics to include in this handbook has inevitably depended on the editors' perceptions of subjects on which important research has been undertaken. It has also depended on the availability of authors who were able and willing to write critical surveys of large amounts of international research. An attempt was made to include authors and have them survey research from a variety of countries. However, there is still a US bias in applied urban research, partly related to the availability of data and computers but also to the sheer size of the US research community

Britain tightly restricts the supply of office space, creating substantial economic rents, but its development restrictions are politically administered and therefore gameable, inducing rent‐seeking activity. We find that 'trophy architects' (TAs)—prior winners of a lifetime achievement award—obtain more space on a given site apparently by signalling architectural merit. Analysis of 2039 office buildings shows that TAs build 14 stories taller, thereby increasing a representative site value by 152% and capturing potential economic rents of £148m. However, we argue that this apparent premium is merely compensation for the extra costs, risks and delays of using a TA to game the planning system; it is therefore an indirect measure of the deadweight costs of this form of rent‐seeking.