REP Research Roundup: February 2025
Bids awarded – External Funding
Gianluca Marcato, Lukas Makovsky and team
- Funder: Investment Property Forum
- Title: Revisiting depreciation of commercial investment property in the UK
- Total project costs: £53,700
Bids awarded - Internal Funding
Angelique Chettiparamb, Kaio Nogueira and Yiquan Gu
· Name of award: David Robins Fund
· Project Title: “The added value of Section 106 Agreements and CIL in England”
· Award amount: £4970.70
The project will analyse the spatial and social equity impacts of Section 106 Agreements and Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) in England. It will explore to what extent the benefits raised with the contributions present a fair and equitable distribution in space both at a national (England) scale and within a local authority area. Fraser’s (2008) framework based on redistribution, recognition, and participation will be used to evaluate what benefits have accrued to whom and why. To this end, the project employs approaches involving both quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Bids submitted (External)
Ren Ren
- Funder: Independent Social Research Foundation
- Title: Institutions, Supply Constraints and Housing Market Cycles
- Total project costs: £67,391
Award nomination (Internal)
· The Research Committee has nominated Xiaolun Yu’s single authored paper titled “Low-rise buildings in big cities: Theory and evidence from China” published in Real Estate Economics for the ECR Research Output Prize for 2025.
Abstract
Different land use regulations are implemented around the world (e.g., zoning policy in the US and greenbelt policy in the UK) and have a wide range of social and economic impacts. This article explores the determinants of floor area ratio (FAR) limit, a major form of construction density regulation, in China. Theoretically, I develop a spatial equilibrium framework and explore how local governments trade off between the benefits (more housing supply and fiscal revenue) and costs (more negative externalities) of higher construction density to set the optimal FAR design. I then investigate over 400,000 residential land transactions between 2007 and 2019 to perform the empirical analysis. Exploiting the exogenous variations generated by administrative adjustment policies, I find that a one standard deviation increase in local budgetary revenue decreases FAR limits by 0.29. Further counterfactual analysis suggests that local fiscal conditions contribute to housing affordability issues and spatial inequality in China.
Publications
Ren, R. Wong, S. K. and Chau, K. W. (2025) Housing supply elasticity and government-owned land: evidence from Hong Kong. Journal of Economic Geography. ISSN 1468-2702 (In Press)
Abstract
Housing supply elasticity is known to be related to three types of development constraints: topography, regulations, and scarcity of undeveloped land. This paper shows that land ownership can also explain the spatial heterogeneity in supply elasticity if development costs differ between private and public land. Using data from Hong Kong (2003–2018), where government-owned land is common and has development advantages, this paper confirms that the availability of government land contributes significantly to housing supply elasticity, in addition to the three constraints. This paper sheds light on the potential of utilizing public land to increase housing supply.
Scott, M. , Sturzaker, J. , Gallent, N. , Parker, G. Burnett, A. and Mell, I. , eds. (2025) Rural planning futures: principles, policy and practice in the UK and Ireland. Routledge. ISBN 9781032721545 (In Press).
PhD News
On Feb 1st Adele Wylie PhD Student in Real Estate & Planning, organised an event in Manchester. Local MP's, academics, religious leaders, volunteers and staff from the third sector, activists, and their friends and family attended. The BBC radio four food programme also attended and interviewed Adele and her guests for their upcoming show on social dining.
Title: The Manc Kitchen: A Social Dining Pilot
Name of Event: The Manc Kitchen
Place of Event: 422 Community Café, Longsight, Manchester
Date: 1st February 2024
The Manc Kitchen was a social dining event inspired by the Scouse Kitchen in Liverpool and organized as part of the Right to Food campaign. This initiative was a collaboration between Adele Wylie, Natalija Atas (Liverpool Hope University and PRAN), with the support of MP Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby). Here is a link to the event - https://www.pran.org.uk/events/the-manc-kitchen-a-social-dining-pilot-in-manchester
40 members of the local community were invited to experience a shared meal, prepared by Chef Kala Mandviwala, while engaging in informal discussions about food equity, accessibility, and the reintroduction of government-subsidised community food spaces. The event was fully funded through Adele’s ESRC PhD scholarship, ensuring that all attendees could participate free of charge. The aim was to show how this form of community dining could help combat food poverty and social isolation.
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