REP Research Roundup: January 2025
Research Awards - Internal
Ziyou Wang
Project Title “Land inequality and local governance: Evidence from China”
Award amount: £2172
Land development has significantly shaped urban China, increasing urbanization from 36.1% in 2000 to 65.9% in 2020, and stimulating economic growth and private investment, while causing environmental issues. As crucial land suppliers, Chinese local governments use two strategies - infrastructure investment and land subsidies - to foster urban development. This project examines the impacts of these strategies on private land use, providing insights into local governance and urban growth dynamics in China. The research focuses on the industrial and commercial sectors, highlighting government strategies of subsidized leases for industrial growth and premium leases for commercial expansion and revenue.
Yi Wu and Co Applicant - Kwan Ok Lee ( National University of Singapore)
Project Title “Emerging Trends in Mobility and Socio-Spatial Sorting: Insights from Big Data Analysis”
Award amount: £2472
This project explores the heterogeneous effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the return to office (RTO) on residential turnover, commuting patterns, and neighbourhood inequality, leveraging mobile phone data from 2019 (pre-pandemic) to 2024 (the era of flexible working). By addressing the often-overlooked impact of RTO on housing markets and urban planning, it seeks to uncover actionable insights for the public sector to adapt city development strategies and for industry leaders to respond to changing demands for office space, shaped by employees' evolving residential and commuting behaviours.
Ren Ren
Project Title “Climate Risk and Housing Supply Elasticity”
Award amount: £2835
Housing supply elasticity has received extensive attention because of its critical role in shaping not only the housing market but also labour supply, public finance, and urban development. This proposed project aims to test whether climate risk can be another determinant of housing supply elasticity. Intuitively, locations are exposed to different levels of climate risk, such as floods, hurricanes and extreme weather, and locations with higher climate risk are expected to have lower housing supply elasticity.
Research Applications – External
Yi Wu – British Academy Pump Priming Collaboration between UK and UK Partners 2024-5
- Title: Exploring UK-EU Collaborative Pathways to Address Social Inequalities Caused by Climate Change Hazards
- Total bid: £7,833
Publications
Parker, G. and Dobson, M. (2025) Examining the discourse of ‘delay’ in urban governance: Project speed and the politicisation of time in the English Planning System. Cities, 158. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2025.105709
Abstract
While a growing body of work has been produced on the temporalities of urban governance and planning, limited attention has been paid to questioning how time is deployed through the application of chrono-technologies (Nowotny, 1994). Drawing on governmental and industry grey literature and empirical data, this paper examines the discourse of delay and ‘project speed’ surrounding planning policy and practice in England. Prompted by sustained accusations of planning ‘delay’, we chart how the use of political time (Howlett & Goetz, 2014) and ‘time talk’ (Lazar, 2019) features heavily in shaping urban discourse, and becomes subject to storytelling (Sandercock, 2003a, 2003b) and prevailing chronotopes (Mulíček et al., 2015). It is demonstrated how long-run temporal narratives focussing on speed and delay in planning are signifiers for securing a governmentality that asserts certainty and growth as overriding priorities. This politicisation of time and practice holds significant implications for democratic governance more widely.
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