The taxing problems of land value capture, planning obligations and viability tests: some reasonable models?

Given their increasing importance in the formation and implementation of planning policies in the UK, this paper focuses on the use of development viability tests to determine how land value uplifts actuated by planning consent could be distributed between developers, landowners and the community. Following a discussion of way in which planning obligations act as a quasi-betterment tax that can both capture and create land values, alternative approaches to operationalising Benchmark Land Value (BLV) are evaluated. The effects of different approaches to BLV on potential land value capture are simulated for a number of hypothetical development sites in order to identify and compare implied betterment tax rates and to estimate viable affordable housing proportions. It is concluded that large geographical variations in property prices produce large variations in the potential for land value capture. Different approaches to BLV have a range of strengths and weaknesses. In addition, given that viability models are susceptible to significant levels of error and potential bias, using such models to make and implement planning policies renders such processes vulnerable to opportunistic behaviour and prone to miscalculation

Bringing the Kingdom to the city:mission and the place-making practices among Kenyan Pentecostals in London

Kenyan Pentecostals in London (re)frame their migration as a “mission” to bring the United Kingdom back into the Kingdom of God. Focusing on the case of one church founded in the diaspora, this article examines how the pastor and church members try to realize this mission by exploring the kind of place they imagine God’s Kingdom to be and their efforts to create it in London. The “spatial turn” in studies of religion has followed two general trajectories, broadly referred to as the politics and the poetics of space. Studies of Pentecostal placemaking in particular have examined how Pentecostals use church‐planting as a strategy of territorialization, by which they make their presence seen and felt in specific localities, as well as how they phenomenologically “do” space. This article contributes to these discussions by elucidating a particular form of sociality as an important aspect of religious placemaking. In doing so, I argue that Pentecostal projects of self‐making and placemaking converge in what I refer to as “socializing space.” At the same time, through its focus on an independent church, the article extends our understanding of African diasporic churches beyond the well‐studied and ‐resourced transnational African Pentecostal networks and megachurches. [Pentecostalism; Placemaking; London; Kenya; African Diaspora

Cyclists in shared bus lanes: could there be unrecognised impacts on bus journey times?

This paper contributes to debates around improving the modelling of cycles, through an exploratory case study of bus–cycle interactions in London. This case study examines undocumented delays to buses caused by high volumes of cyclists in bus lanes. It has generally been assumed that cyclists do not noticeably delay buses in shared lanes. However, in many contexts where cyclists routinely share bus lanes, cyclist numbers have historically been low. In some such places, bus lanes are now seeing very high volumes of cyclists, far above those previously studied. This may have implications for bus – and cycle – journey times, but traditionally traffic modelling has not represented the effects of such interactions well. With some manipulation of parameters taken from models of other cities, the model described here demonstrates that cycles can cause significant delays to buses in shared lanes, at high cycling volumes. These delays are likely to become substantially larger if London's cycling demographic becomes more diverse, because cyclist speeds will decline. Hence bus journey time benefits may derive from separating cycles from buses, where cycle flows are high. The project also suggests that microsimulation modelling software, as typically used, remains problematic for representing cyclists

Markets, large projects and sustainable development: traditional and new planning in the Thames Gateway

The transition from traditional hierarchical government to new forms of governance and planning can be overstated. The regionalisation of planning and new ambitions for spatial planning in the UK are commonly understood to have created an overcomplex system concerned with co-ordination and integration across jurisdictional spheres. However, this new governance of planning sits alongside traditional planning processes such as the public inquiry and ministerial decision. This case study of a large port development near London suggests that the emphasis upon the move to new, collaborative practices understimates the influence of traditional governmental structures. This provides cause for questioning the capacity of the current planning system to address the challenge of sustainable development, a central concern for the new planning

Global networks, cities and economic performance: Observations from an analysis of cities in Europe and the USA

The network paradigm has been highly influential in spatial analysis in the globalisation era. As economies across the world have become increasingly integrated, so-called global cities have come to play a growing role as central nodes in the networked global economy. The idea that a city’s position in global networks benefits its economic performance has resulted in a competitive policy focus on promoting the economic growth of cities by improving their network connectivity. However, in spite of the attention being given to boosting city connectivity little is known about whether this directly translates to improved city economic performance and, if so, how well connected a city needs to be in order to benefit from this. In this paper we test the relationship between network connectivity and economic performance between 2000 and 2008 for cities with over 500,000 inhabitants in Europe and the USA to inform European policy

The Journey Experience of Visually Impaired People on Public Transport in London

The use of public transport is critical for Visually Impaired People (VIP) to be independent and have access to out-of-home activities. Despite government policies promoting accessible transport for everyone, the needs of VIP are not well addressed, and journeys can be very difficult to negotiate. Journey requirements can often differ from those of other categories of people on the disability spectrum. Therefore, the aim of this research is to evaluate the journey experience of VIP using public transport. Semi-structured interviews conducted in London are used. The results show that limited access to information, inconsistencies in infrastructure and poor availability of staff assistance are the major concerns. Concessionary travel, on the other hand, encourages VIP to make more trips and hence has a positive effect on well-being. The findings suggest that more specific policies should be introduced to cater to the special needs of particular disabilities rather than generalising the types of aids available. It is also concluded that the journey experience of VIP is closely related to an individual’s independence and hence inclusion in society

London 2012: missed out on Olympics contracts? A case study of ethnic minority organisations in East London

Although London’s golden summer of sport is now over, the question arises, what has been the legacy of the 2012 Games for ethnic minority organisations? The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games were seen as an opportunity; a potential catalyst for the regeneration of East London, creating valuable jobs and business opportunities for the local community. One of the proposed benefits of the 2012 Games was the chance for local ethnic minority groups to participate in the preparation and delivery of the Games; however, little is known about the extent to which such groups were involved. This paper addresses the knowledge gap in the literature through the analysis of secondary sources. The sources shed light on the availability of Games-related contract opportunities to ethnic minority businesses and social enterprises. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of the ethnic minority third sector based upon a telephone survey and semi-structured interviews with leaders of ethnic minority social enterprises. Findings show that very few ethnic minority organisations in the East London Olympic boroughs won 2012 Games contracts; furthermore, the paper identifies a number of important issues relating to their participation in the Games

Quality of life and spatial inequality in London

In contrast to London’s image as a global city and its position as the most affluent region in Europe, the formally established empirical evidence assembled in this paper suggests that spatial inequality in the capital is a key economic and social problem that is unlikely to be resolved by the prevailing localism doctrine of the ‘big society’. Isolated from an initial and non-discriminate England-wide clustering analysis of 73 Audit Commission-defined quality of life indicators, the results of our study reveal that pivotal to London’s prevailing quality of life distribution is the influence of deprivation, health and educational inequalities, all of which are masked at a pure ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ London comparison, capable only of distinguishing the city’s borough-level transport and community safety diversity. The policy implications of our study are duly considered and several methodological insights are advanced for future research