Post-COVID mobilities and the housing crisis in European urban and rural destinations. Policy challenges and research agenda

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on working, travel and residential location patterns have attracted much commentary from scholars and practitioners interested in the future of cities and regions. Focusing on Europe, we discuss how pandemic-fuelled remote working and tourism practices have increased the demand for short-term rentals and second homes in rural/coastal areas as well as a number of desirable cities. The pandemic has accelerated pre-existing counter-urbanisation trends, with implications for housing availability and affordability in various parts of Europe. The policy challenges of regulating the use of privately-owned housing are discussed, followed by proposals for future research avenues

Des bilans de phosphore majoritairement négatifs pour les systèmes de grandes cultures biologiques sans élevage en Midi-Pyrénées. Quels impacts sur le phosphore biodisponible des sols et l’état de nutrition des cultures ?

Soil phosphorus (P) fertility management in organic cropping systems is a debated issue in the general context of decreasing resources in a near future. A survey showed that in Midi-Pyrenees a majority of stockless organic cropping systems present overdrawn P balances. We investigated the impacts of P balances on the soil plant available P and nutrition status on the long-term field experiment of La Hourre (CREAB, Auch, France), which is representative of rainfed systems set on clayey calcareous soils. The changes in soil plant available P were monitored between 2002 and 2012 using P Olsen soil test. The results specified the declining rate of P availability in time and according to the amplitude of the negative balance. The levels of soil available P did not still lead to degradation of the crop P nutrition status; in this context, N inputs are low, so consequently crop P needs remain limited. However the problems associated with long term management of soil P fertility remain. Beyond the desirable scientific perspectives, we propose a first analysis of the factors on which it would be relevant to act in order to allow the farmers to improve their practices

Regulating short-term rentals: Platform-based property rentals in European cities: The policy debates

The short-term renting of a property to visitors is not new. However, the rise of internet-based platforms — digital marketplaces that match supply and demand — has fuelled the diversification and expansion of this practice in an unprecedented way. The market leader in the short-term accommodation sector is Airbnb, created in 2008 to allow landlords and tenants to advertise their homes for short-term rental. There now exists a variety of short-term rental platforms that differ in terms of their business models (peer-to-peer, business-to-consumer or both), their links with giants of the online travel industry, their geographical coverage and the types of accommodation they offer. Their offer has grown rapidly over the past decade, although interrupted in 2020 by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The likelihood is that as recovery from the pandemic comes about, the short-term rental market will rebound. This project analyses and compares how public actors in large European cities have attempted to regulate platform-mediated short-term rentals, and outlines which implementation and enforcement challenges they have faced in doing so. The objectives of the research were to: * Identify the different types, and arguments, of interest groups and stakeholders who have been advocating or opposing the regulation of platform-mediated short-term rentals; Identify the regulations put in place in large European cities to manage or control the phenomenon, and compare their instruments, modalities and degrees of stringency; * Assess how public authorities perceive the effectiveness of the regulations to date and identify the challenges they face in terms of implementation and enforcement

Planning for Diversity in an Era of Social Change

This chapter discusses how the UK planning system and local planning practice have responded to the ethnic, cultural, religious and demographic diversification of British society generated by 20th- and 21st-century waves of migration. Planning theorists and practitioners have advocated new forms of ‘planning for diversity’ since the 1980s, driven by a politics of recognition of difference. Such concerns have first been addressed through national legislative anti-discrimination and equality provisions. Local planning authorities have encouraged the participation of ethnic minority groups in planning processes and sought to address their specific needs, through both minority-targeted policies and area-based urban policies. Planners have also played a role in creating spaces of (multicultural) encounter. The chapter concludes by contrasting normative calls for ‘planning for diversity’ with the ambiguities, contradictory outcomes, dilemmas and challenges of doing so in practice. Document type: Part of book or chapter of boo

Struggling for the right to the (creative) city in Berlin and Hamburg: new urban social movements, new 'spaces of hope'?

In cities across the globe there is mounting evidence of growing mobilization by members of the so-called ‘creative class’ in urban social movements, defending particular urban spaces and influencing urban development. This essay discusses the meaning of such developments with reference to the hypothesis made by David Harvey in Spaces of Capital about the increasing mobilization of cultural producers in oppositional movements in an era of wholesale instrumentalization of culture and ‘creativity’ in contemporary processes of capitalist urbanization. After briefly reviewing recent scholarly contributions on the transformations of urban social movements, as well as Harvey's hypothesis about the potential role of cultural producers in mobilizations for the construction of ‘spaces of hope’, the essay describes two specific urban protests that have occurred in Berlin and Hamburg in recent years: the fight for Berlin's waterfront in the Media Spree area, and the conflict centred on the Gängeviertel in Hamburg. In both protests artists, cultural producers and creative milieux have played a prominent role. The essay analyses the composition, agenda, contribution and contradictions of the coalitions behind the protests, discussing whether such movements represent the seeds of new types of coalitions with a wide-ranging agenda for urban change. The essay finally proposes a future research agenda on the role of artists, cultural producers and the ‘creative class’ in urban social movements across the globe

Long-term effects of potassium fertilization on yields and fertility status of calcareous soils of south-west France

A long-term field experiment was conducted near Toulouse (south-west France) to verify to what extent increasing fertilizer dressings would increase yields on calcareous soils in a cereals-oilseeds-legumes rotation. Over a 2%year period, withholding K significantly depressed yield once; K inputs affected the total amount of K absorbed at flowering, without subsequent effects on yields. Exchangeable K content on non-fertilized plots declined slightly over the experimental period, but without reaching levels expected from nutrient balance estimates. Annual applications of K equal to average offtake in grain were adequate to maintain available soil K content at its initial value. Potassium release kinetics for the exchangeable fraction, evaluated from Ca-resin extraction, clearly discriminated between fertilized and non-fertilized treatments. Both soils exhibited similar patterns for diffusion-controlled K release. These results highlight the role of K reserves readily available in illite-rich calcareous soils and demonstrate the importance of cultural residues in K fertility management

Explaining the diversity of policy responses to platform-mediated short-term rentals in European cities: A comparison of Barcelona, Paris and Milan

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