Pub Date : 2024-10-04DOI: 10.1177/00420980241270993
Sanjay I Raja, Johan P Larsson
The issue of what constitutes effective regional growth policy has remained elusive, particularly for ‘broad-spectrum’ policy aimed at a large part of a country. We undertake one of the first quantitative studies looking at the City Deals in England, analysing effects on productivity. We employ a difference-in-differences model, an event study, and a synthetic control method to evaluate effects on productivity. The results are mixed and usually not statistically different from zero. While the difference-in-differences framework indicates some positive effects, possibly driven by places that were the most productive before the intervention, the event study and synthetic control methods point to, at best, small effects that diminish over time. Our findings, therefore, question the efficacy of such deals in terms of narrowing the UK’s longstanding regional inequalities, while opening up several avenues for further research to understand what worked and what did not within a ‘broad-spectrum’ local growth strategy.
{"title":"Have City Deals delivered higher productivity in England? An empirical assessment of a broad-spectrum local growth policy","authors":"Sanjay I Raja, Johan P Larsson","doi":"10.1177/00420980241270993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241270993","url":null,"abstract":"The issue of what constitutes effective regional growth policy has remained elusive, particularly for ‘broad-spectrum’ policy aimed at a large part of a country. We undertake one of the first quantitative studies looking at the City Deals in England, analysing effects on productivity. We employ a difference-in-differences model, an event study, and a synthetic control method to evaluate effects on productivity. The results are mixed and usually not statistically different from zero. While the difference-in-differences framework indicates some positive effects, possibly driven by places that were the most productive before the intervention, the event study and synthetic control methods point to, at best, small effects that diminish over time. Our findings, therefore, question the efficacy of such deals in terms of narrowing the UK’s longstanding regional inequalities, while opening up several avenues for further research to understand what worked and what did not within a ‘broad-spectrum’ local growth strategy.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142383853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-03DOI: 10.1177/00420980241270928
Nihad El-Kayed
Neighbourhood effects are commonly understood as an effect of a characteristic of the residential location on social outcomes – although people are also linked to other places in their everyday lives. Based on a mixed-methods study on the significance of neighbourhoods for political recruitment of first- and second-generation Turkish immigrants in Berlin, this article shows that neighbourhoods with a strong migrant civic infrastructure are important places for political recruitment – not only for their residents, but also for visitors and people linked to them through social networks. The article identifies three mechanisms by which people can be linked to neighbourhoods and the resources embedded in them. The first is residency. Second, neighbourhoods can work as a hub when people visit them to shop, meet friends, or engage in other activities. Visitors can then profit from a neighbourhood’s infrastructure, such as civic organisations. Third, neighbourhoods work as a node when social networks transmit information and resources originating in one neighbourhood context – for example, political information – to others located outside of it. The article contributes to an understanding of neighbourhoods not as closed-off containers but as being interconnected to other places, non-residents, and resources, an understanding that comprehends the spatial production of social inequalities in terms of residency, everyday mobility, and social network connections.
{"title":"Neighbourhoods as resource hubs and resource nodes: Civic organisations and political recruitment of first- and second-generation immigrants in Berlin, Germany","authors":"Nihad El-Kayed","doi":"10.1177/00420980241270928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241270928","url":null,"abstract":"Neighbourhood effects are commonly understood as an effect of a characteristic of the residential location on social outcomes – although people are also linked to other places in their everyday lives. Based on a mixed-methods study on the significance of neighbourhoods for political recruitment of first- and second-generation Turkish immigrants in Berlin, this article shows that neighbourhoods with a strong migrant civic infrastructure are important places for political recruitment – not only for their residents, but also for visitors and people linked to them through social networks. The article identifies three mechanisms by which people can be linked to neighbourhoods and the resources embedded in them. The first is residency. Second, neighbourhoods can work as a hub when people visit them to shop, meet friends, or engage in other activities. Visitors can then profit from a neighbourhood’s infrastructure, such as civic organisations. Third, neighbourhoods work as a node when social networks transmit information and resources originating in one neighbourhood context – for example, political information – to others located outside of it. The article contributes to an understanding of neighbourhoods not as closed-off containers but as being interconnected to other places, non-residents, and resources, an understanding that comprehends the spatial production of social inequalities in terms of residency, everyday mobility, and social network connections.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142383897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-30DOI: 10.1177/00420980241277684
Boyana Buyuklieva, Ivana Bevilacqua, Adam Dennett, Jonathan Reades, Phil Hubbard
Build-to-Rent (BTR) developments have expanded rapidly in the UK since 2013, often advertised as providing better quality rented accommodation for university-educated Millennials than available elsewhere in the private rental sector. However, the implications of this type of housing development, and especially its affordability, are poorly understood at the city scale, partly due to a lack of evidence of where these developments cluster and what they add to the housing stock in terms of property type, amenities and cost. This article draws on data relating to 373 BTR developments in London (representing over 40,000 housing units) to show that developments are clustered where transport-related infrastructural investments have opened ‘rent gaps’ that can be exploited by developers. Exploring how these BTR schemes are marketed, the article shows that this accommodation is typically provided through new short-term ‘subscription services’ which allow developers to rent property at a premium. Questioning whether BTRs really add affordable ‘local’ homes to the city, the article concludes that BTR provides ‘quick-fix’ rental accommodation which is doing little to solve London’s housing crisis. We focus on the London BTR market and how the expansion of this housing type is reshaping the sociospatial geographies of the city.
{"title":"Life for rent: Evolving residential infrastructure in London and the rise of Build-to-Rent","authors":"Boyana Buyuklieva, Ivana Bevilacqua, Adam Dennett, Jonathan Reades, Phil Hubbard","doi":"10.1177/00420980241277684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241277684","url":null,"abstract":"Build-to-Rent (BTR) developments have expanded rapidly in the UK since 2013, often advertised as providing better quality rented accommodation for university-educated Millennials than available elsewhere in the private rental sector. However, the implications of this type of housing development, and especially its affordability, are poorly understood at the city scale, partly due to a lack of evidence of where these developments cluster and what they add to the housing stock in terms of property type, amenities and cost. This article draws on data relating to 373 BTR developments in London (representing over 40,000 housing units) to show that developments are clustered where transport-related infrastructural investments have opened ‘rent gaps’ that can be exploited by developers. Exploring how these BTR schemes are marketed, the article shows that this accommodation is typically provided through new short-term ‘subscription services’ which allow developers to rent property at a premium. Questioning whether BTRs really add affordable ‘local’ homes to the city, the article concludes that BTR provides ‘quick-fix’ rental accommodation which is doing little to solve London’s housing crisis. We focus on the London BTR market and how the expansion of this housing type is reshaping the sociospatial geographies of the city.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142360529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-29DOI: 10.1177/00420980241272047
Federica Sulas, Christian Isendahl
African urban populations are growing predominantly through types of settlement commonly referred to as ‘informal’– settlements constructed outside the control of city or state governments. For the UN New Urban Agenda, informal settlement presents a challenge to developing sustainable cities. Settlement qualification in urban development discourse often relies on prescriptive formal models and considers anything not complying to these as ‘informal’ and unsustainable. This paper advances informal settlement as an adaptive response to Western planning models that builds on regional histories of organising urban space. Examining archaeological and historical urban records from northern Ethiopia, we define spatial patterns and social processes of urban transition over millennia. In the analysis, settlements that in current urban debates fall under the ‘informal’ rubric contribute to building urban resilience. A century-scale resolution reveals contingent conditions for cities enduring climatic and socio-political shifts during the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (c. 800 BCE–CE 900) and afterwards. Past urban transitions were marked by inverse settlement dynamics: as urban cores shrank, peri-urban settlement grew and new centres were established. Although spatial reconfigurations followed political shifts, urban settlement remained largely consistent: urban landscapes of food production, material processing, resource trading and ritual making. In the Aksumite record, informal processes convey flexibility and diversity of settlement forms to undergo sustainability transitions. The durability of urban morphologies in the archaeological record warrants against stereotyping informal settlement as a challenge to sustainability transitions. A long-term perspective supports emerging approaches to informal settlement today as a locally adaptive property of urban systems.
{"title":"(In-)formal settlement to whom? Archaeology and old urban agendas for sustainability transitions in Ethiopia","authors":"Federica Sulas, Christian Isendahl","doi":"10.1177/00420980241272047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241272047","url":null,"abstract":"African urban populations are growing predominantly through types of settlement commonly referred to as ‘informal’– settlements constructed outside the control of city or state governments. For the UN New Urban Agenda, informal settlement presents a challenge to developing sustainable cities. Settlement qualification in urban development discourse often relies on prescriptive formal models and considers anything not complying to these as ‘informal’ and unsustainable. This paper advances informal settlement as an adaptive response to Western planning models that builds on regional histories of organising urban space. Examining archaeological and historical urban records from northern Ethiopia, we define spatial patterns and social processes of urban transition over millennia. In the analysis, settlements that in current urban debates fall under the ‘informal’ rubric contribute to building urban resilience. A century-scale resolution reveals contingent conditions for cities enduring climatic and socio-political shifts during the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (c. 800 BCE–CE 900) and afterwards. Past urban transitions were marked by inverse settlement dynamics: as urban cores shrank, peri-urban settlement grew and new centres were established. Although spatial reconfigurations followed political shifts, urban settlement remained largely consistent: urban landscapes of food production, material processing, resource trading and ritual making. In the Aksumite record, informal processes convey flexibility and diversity of settlement forms to undergo sustainability transitions. The durability of urban morphologies in the archaeological record warrants against stereotyping informal settlement as a challenge to sustainability transitions. A long-term perspective supports emerging approaches to informal settlement today as a locally adaptive property of urban systems.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142329186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-28DOI: 10.1177/00420980241270997
Breandán Ó hUallacháin
The effects of individual organisations on the location of invention in the United States is underexplored. A handful of companies generate most of the inventions in most American cities and their actions do not average out in the aggregate. Temporal stability in city system properties corroborates agglomeration theories built on models of monopolistic competition that treat all firms as small and uninfluential. However, substantial churn in patenting occurs in individual cities. Churn is associated with the strategic choices made by particular firms as they expand and contract their inventive assets. The effects of idiosyncratic decisions on levels and growth of patenting are revealed. A novel inverse-size volatility hypothesis is tested that is consistent with a claim that beyond the largest most inventive cities individual organisations are highly influential and identifiable. The findings are compatible with recognition that variety in market structures is essential to understanding the location and growth of invention in the American urban system.
{"title":"Organisations and the dynamics of change in the location of American invention","authors":"Breandán Ó hUallacháin","doi":"10.1177/00420980241270997","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241270997","url":null,"abstract":"The effects of individual organisations on the location of invention in the United States is underexplored. A handful of companies generate most of the inventions in most American cities and their actions do not average out in the aggregate. Temporal stability in city system properties corroborates agglomeration theories built on models of monopolistic competition that treat all firms as small and uninfluential. However, substantial churn in patenting occurs in individual cities. Churn is associated with the strategic choices made by particular firms as they expand and contract their inventive assets. The effects of idiosyncratic decisions on levels and growth of patenting are revealed. A novel inverse-size volatility hypothesis is tested that is consistent with a claim that beyond the largest most inventive cities individual organisations are highly influential and identifiable. The findings are compatible with recognition that variety in market structures is essential to understanding the location and growth of invention in the American urban system.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142329053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-27DOI: 10.1177/00420980241270948
Sugie Lee, Donghwan Ki, John R Hipp, Jae Hong Kim
Despite the substantial number of studies on the relationships between crime patterns and built environments, the impacts of street-level built environments on crime patterns have not been definitively determined due to the limitations of obtaining detailed streetscape data and conventional analysis models. To fill these gaps, this study focuses on the non-linear relationships and threshold effects between built environments and local crime patterns at the level of a street segment in the City of Santa Ana, California. Using Google Street View (GSV) and semantic segmentation techniques, we quantify the features of the built environment in GSV images. Then, we examine the non-linear relationships and threshold effects between built environment factors and crime by applying interpretable machine learning (IML) methods. While the machine learning models, especially Deep Neural Network (DNN), outperformed negative binomial regression in predicting future crime events, particularly advantageous was that they allowed us to obtain a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between crime patterns and environmental factors. The results of interpreting the DNN model through IML indicate that most streetscape elements showed non-linear relationships and threshold effects with crime patterns that cannot be easily captured by conventional regression model specifications. The non-linearities and threshold effects revealed in this study can shed light on the factors associated with crime patterns and contribute to policy development for public safety from crime.
{"title":"Analysing non-linearities and threshold effects between street-level built environments and local crime patterns: An interpretable machine learning approach","authors":"Sugie Lee, Donghwan Ki, John R Hipp, Jae Hong Kim","doi":"10.1177/00420980241270948","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241270948","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the substantial number of studies on the relationships between crime patterns and built environments, the impacts of street-level built environments on crime patterns have not been definitively determined due to the limitations of obtaining detailed streetscape data and conventional analysis models. To fill these gaps, this study focuses on the non-linear relationships and threshold effects between built environments and local crime patterns at the level of a street segment in the City of Santa Ana, California. Using Google Street View (GSV) and semantic segmentation techniques, we quantify the features of the built environment in GSV images. Then, we examine the non-linear relationships and threshold effects between built environment factors and crime by applying interpretable machine learning (IML) methods. While the machine learning models, especially Deep Neural Network (DNN), outperformed negative binomial regression in predicting future crime events, particularly advantageous was that they allowed us to obtain a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between crime patterns and environmental factors. The results of interpreting the DNN model through IML indicate that most streetscape elements showed non-linear relationships and threshold effects with crime patterns that cannot be easily captured by conventional regression model specifications. The non-linearities and threshold effects revealed in this study can shed light on the factors associated with crime patterns and contribute to policy development for public safety from crime.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142328999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-27DOI: 10.1177/00420980241270990
Amanda McBride
Pleasure is at the heart of ‘nights out’, yet research on the UK’s night-time economy has consistently focussed instead on the risks and harms experienced by particular groups. Where this body of work has met research on young women, the emphasis on the problems of the night-time economy has been especially evident. This paper extends understandings of this subject by making an analysis of young women’s pleasure central. It uses qualitative data to argue that young women’s pleasure in the night-time economy is related to a deep sense of mutuality and, going further, introduces the term ‘opened-out subjectivity’ to characterise this sense of connection. Finally, it shows how this subjectivity helps constitute the appeal of nights out, a new direction in night-time economy research.
{"title":"“This is what I like, this is why I need to be here”: Young women’s pleasure in the urban night time economy","authors":"Amanda McBride","doi":"10.1177/00420980241270990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241270990","url":null,"abstract":"Pleasure is at the heart of ‘nights out’, yet research on the UK’s night-time economy has consistently focussed instead on the risks and harms experienced by particular groups. Where this body of work has met research on young women, the emphasis on the problems of the night-time economy has been especially evident. This paper extends understandings of this subject by making an analysis of young women’s pleasure central. It uses qualitative data to argue that young women’s pleasure in the night-time economy is related to a deep sense of mutuality and, going further, introduces the term ‘opened-out subjectivity’ to characterise this sense of connection. Finally, it shows how this subjectivity helps constitute the appeal of nights out, a new direction in night-time economy research.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142329037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-23DOI: 10.1177/00420980241269659
Joshua Lew McDermott
This work pursues a new explanatory framework for understanding some of the variance and homogeneity of informal work between cities in the Global South. Rooted in a materialist approach to informality, it seeks to explain the dynamics of informal work in different urban contexts via a novel application of the global division of labour, termed the global division of urban informal labour. Through a comparative analysis of the urban labour regimes of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Mexico City, Mexico, the work argues that each city’s respective location within the global capitalist system largely determines the nature of their informal economies. It posits that a city’s informal labour regime is shaped by whether a city’s economy is predominantly defined by financial, industrial or extractive capital, and explores the ramifications of the financialised economy of Mexico City and the extractivist economy of Freetown for shaping informal work in each city. Such an approach attempts not only to explain urban and labour regime variance but also to highlight the essential and foundational nature of informal work in global capitalism today. It also seeks to aid in the task of recentring capitalism and class considerations into understandings of the internal and external dynamics of Global South cities in general.
{"title":"Difference between Global South cities: Mexico City, Freetown and the global division of urban informal labour","authors":"Joshua Lew McDermott","doi":"10.1177/00420980241269659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241269659","url":null,"abstract":"This work pursues a new explanatory framework for understanding some of the variance and homogeneity of informal work between cities in the Global South. Rooted in a materialist approach to informality, it seeks to explain the dynamics of informal work in different urban contexts via a novel application of the global division of labour, termed the global division of urban informal labour. Through a comparative analysis of the urban labour regimes of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Mexico City, Mexico, the work argues that each city’s respective location within the global capitalist system largely determines the nature of their informal economies. It posits that a city’s informal labour regime is shaped by whether a city’s economy is predominantly defined by financial, industrial or extractive capital, and explores the ramifications of the financialised economy of Mexico City and the extractivist economy of Freetown for shaping informal work in each city. Such an approach attempts not only to explain urban and labour regime variance but also to highlight the essential and foundational nature of informal work in global capitalism today. It also seeks to aid in the task of recentring capitalism and class considerations into understandings of the internal and external dynamics of Global South cities in general.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142313735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-14DOI: 10.1177/00420980241270987
Amir Forouhar, Karen Chapple, Jeff Allen, Byeonghwa Jeong, Julia Greenberg
North American downtowns are struggling to recover from the global COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to investigate the varying rates of recovery experienced by downtown areas in the 66 largest cities of the United States and Canada. Leveraging Location-Based Services data extracted from mobile phone location trajectories, we assess the recovery rates in the 2023 post-pandemic period, juxtaposed against pre-pandemic 2019 levels. We find significant disparities in downtown recovery rates. Economic factors emerge as crucial determinants, where downtowns hosting a concentration of sectors with remote/hybrid work options – such as information, finance, professional services and management – displayed sluggish recovery. Conversely, downtowns with a focus on industries like accommodation, manufacturing, education, retail, construction, entertainment and healthcare exhibited greater resilience post pandemic. Furthermore, higher density, crime rates and education levels were correlated with slower recovery rates, as were harsher weather conditions and longer commuting times. Lower-density and auto-orientated downtowns demonstrated a swift rebound, even surpassing pre-pandemic activity levels. These findings underscore the necessity for tailored policies to bolster the revival of North American downtown areas.
{"title":"Assessing downtown recovery rates and determinants in North American cities after the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Amir Forouhar, Karen Chapple, Jeff Allen, Byeonghwa Jeong, Julia Greenberg","doi":"10.1177/00420980241270987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241270987","url":null,"abstract":"North American downtowns are struggling to recover from the global COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to investigate the varying rates of recovery experienced by downtown areas in the 66 largest cities of the United States and Canada. Leveraging Location-Based Services data extracted from mobile phone location trajectories, we assess the recovery rates in the 2023 post-pandemic period, juxtaposed against pre-pandemic 2019 levels. We find significant disparities in downtown recovery rates. Economic factors emerge as crucial determinants, where downtowns hosting a concentration of sectors with remote/hybrid work options – such as information, finance, professional services and management – displayed sluggish recovery. Conversely, downtowns with a focus on industries like accommodation, manufacturing, education, retail, construction, entertainment and healthcare exhibited greater resilience post pandemic. Furthermore, higher density, crime rates and education levels were correlated with slower recovery rates, as were harsher weather conditions and longer commuting times. Lower-density and auto-orientated downtowns demonstrated a swift rebound, even surpassing pre-pandemic activity levels. These findings underscore the necessity for tailored policies to bolster the revival of North American downtown areas.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"115 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142233325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-14DOI: 10.1177/00420980241269785
Alexander Wray, Godwin Arku, Jed Long, Leia Minaker, Jamie Seabrook, Sean Doherty, Jason Gilliland
The COVID-19 pandemic placed considerable stress on restaurants from restrictions placed on their operations, shifting consumer confidence, rapid expansion of remote work arrangements and aggressive uptake of third-party delivery services. Industry reports suggest that restaurants are experiencing a much higher rate of failure in comparison to other sectors of the economy. Restaurant survival was assessed in the Middlesex–London region of Ontario, Canada as of December 2020 using a novel dataset constructed from public health inspection permits, business listings and social media. Binomial logistic regression models were used to determine the association of operational, demographic and land use factors with restaurant survival during the pandemic. Operations-related factors were considerably more predictive of restaurant survival, though some demographic and land use factors suggest that urban processes continued to play a role in restaurant survival. Restaurants that offered in-house delivery and phone-based ordering methods were considerably less likely to close. Restaurants with a table-based service model, drive-through or an alcohol licence were also less likely to close. Restaurants proximal to a concentration of entertainment land uses were more likely to be closed in December 2020. Closed restaurants were not spatially clustered as compared to open restaurants. The pandemic appears to have disrupted established theoretical relationships between people, place, and restaurant success.
{"title":"Restaurant survival during the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining operational, demographic and land use predictors in London, Canada","authors":"Alexander Wray, Godwin Arku, Jed Long, Leia Minaker, Jamie Seabrook, Sean Doherty, Jason Gilliland","doi":"10.1177/00420980241269785","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241269785","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic placed considerable stress on restaurants from restrictions placed on their operations, shifting consumer confidence, rapid expansion of remote work arrangements and aggressive uptake of third-party delivery services. Industry reports suggest that restaurants are experiencing a much higher rate of failure in comparison to other sectors of the economy. Restaurant survival was assessed in the Middlesex–London region of Ontario, Canada as of December 2020 using a novel dataset constructed from public health inspection permits, business listings and social media. Binomial logistic regression models were used to determine the association of operational, demographic and land use factors with restaurant survival during the pandemic. Operations-related factors were considerably more predictive of restaurant survival, though some demographic and land use factors suggest that urban processes continued to play a role in restaurant survival. Restaurants that offered in-house delivery and phone-based ordering methods were considerably less likely to close. Restaurants with a table-based service model, drive-through or an alcohol licence were also less likely to close. Restaurants proximal to a concentration of entertainment land uses were more likely to be closed in December 2020. Closed restaurants were not spatially clustered as compared to open restaurants. The pandemic appears to have disrupted established theoretical relationships between people, place, and restaurant success.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142231597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}