Housing’s economic context

Author(s):  
Nick Gallent

Housing has long been implicated in the productive economy, providing a focus for manufacturing, construction and material consumption. The privatisation, assetisation and financialisation of housing in the twentieth century has broadened and deepened its economic function. This chapter examines the changing profile of the UK economy and the greater centrality today of services related to real estate and debt securitisation. It explores the idea of a ‘credit switch’ in the latter half of the twentieth century into the financialised built environment and the implications of that switch for both the wider economy and public revenues. The chapter explores the broadening role of housing in the UK economy and implications for productivity, workplace earnings and housing affordability (relative to those earnings). The tax treatment of housing – and various instruments of financialisation - are presented as critical scaffolding for this economic shift, which is theorised/explained using a range of key literature.

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-113
Author(s):  
Diann Hanson

This article explores the relationship between capital and education through the experiences of a British secondary school following a grading by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills that placed the school into special measures, considering the underlying assumptions and inequalities highlighted and obfuscated by the special measures label. The formulaic and ritualistic manner in which operational and ideological methods of reconstruction were presented as the logical (and only) pathway towards improvement is examined in an effort to disentangle the purpose of the ‘means-to-an-end’ approach within prevailing hegemonic structures, requiring a revisit to contemporary positioning of Gramscian concepts of ideology through the work of Gandin. The decontextualisation of schools from their socio-economic environments is probed in order to expose the paradoxes and fluidity of resistant discourse. The ambiguities between a Catholic ethos, neo-liberal restructuring and the socio-economic context of the school and the greater demands to acquiesce to externally prescribed notions of normativity are considered as a process that conversely created apertures, newly formed sublayers and corrugations where transformation could take root. Unforeseen epiphanies and structures of dissent are identified and will enrich the narrative of existence and survival in a special measures school in an economically deprived northern town in the UK.


1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
R F Imrie ◽  
P E Wells

In the last decade access for disabled people to public buildings has become an important part of the political agenda. Yet, one of the main forms of discrimination which still persists against disabled people is an inaccessible built environment. In particular, statutory authorities have been slow to acknowledge the mobility and access needs of disabled people, and the legislative base to back up local authority policies remains largely ineffectual and weak. In this paper, the interrelationships between disability and the built environment are considered by focusing on the role of the UK land-use planning system in securing access provision for disabled people.


Studia BAS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (65) ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Joanna Śmiechowicz

The article focuses on the fiscal efficiency of local taxes which in Poland are levies on wealth, i.e., real estate tax, means of transport tax, agricultural tax and forestry tax. The author discusses the determinants of fiscal efficiency of local taxes. Special attention is given to the analysis and assessment of fiscal importance of these taxes for municipalities and cities with powiat status, and to the role of public revenues for local government budgets. The author also compares fiscal efficiency of local taxes from the point of view of various types of their recipients and different levels of local government in Poland.


Author(s):  
M. J. Kelly

Just under half of all energy consumption in the UK today takes place indoors, and over a quarter within our homes. The challenges associated with energy security, climate change and sustainable consumption will be overcome or lost in our existing buildings. A background analysis, and the scale of the engineering challenge for the next three to four decades, is described in this paper.


2019 ◽  
pp. 148-163
Author(s):  
Tim Strangleman

After the brewery at Park Royal closed, the old buildings were demolished and the real estate on which they stood was sold. This chapter looks at the attempts to fight the destruction of the buildings by the heritage lobby and the response from the company. Guinness workers share what they thought of the attempts to preserve the brewery buildings and their feelings over the ultimate demolition. The chapter looks at the wider debate about industrial preservation, heritage, and the role of urban explorers who photograph abandoned former workplaces. The chapter shows how images of destruction help to reveal attitudes to the built environment, work, and industrial loss. It considers the ideas of smokestack nostalgia and industrial romanticization.


Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Ann-Marie Foster

Abstract The early twentieth century witnessed some of the worst mining disasters the UK has ever seen. Towns and cities leapt to the aid of bereaved families, raising tens of thousands of pounds in aid. Yet, while the effects of disaster funds on the locality in which they were administered have been the focus of scholarly work, little attention has been given to how these funds were created in constituencies outside of the disaster zone. The Barry Urban District Council (UDC) responded to the call for help after the Senghenydd (1913) and Gresford (1934) disasters, opening relief funds to aid the affected. The funds blurred the line between charity and local government, with the Barry UDC reliant on functions of civic society to aid its philanthropic turn. Their reaction offers insights into the charitable role of UDCs, reflecting on how they used these opportunities to further civic activity.


Author(s):  
Grace Blakeley

Abstract In the UK, financialization has transformed many areas of the economy, including the housing market. The deregulation of financial markets that took place from the 1980s onwards, combined with the privatization of social housing, has transformed UK real estate from an ordinary good, insulated to some extent from consumer and financial markets, into a valuable financial asset. The financialization of real estate has had a largely negative impact on the UK’s housing market, the wider economy and individual communities; wealth inequality, financial instability, gentrification and homelessness have all increased as the role of the financial sector in UK property has increased. The financial crisis only accelerated many of these trends as distressed real estate was bought up by investors in its wake, and as loose monetary policy pushed up house prices in the period after the crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic is only likely to exacerbate these issues; the UK is sleepwalking into a potential evictions crisis, and ongoing loose monetary policy is likely to prevent a significant and necessary correction in house prices over the long term.


Author(s):  
Bob Colenutt

This chapter looks at the overburdening presence of property and housing finance in the UK economy. It focuses on the economic instability created by mortgage dependency. This is a critical context for understanding the role of Government in creating barriers to resolving the housing crisis though its programme of Quantitative Easing, encouragement of Real Estate Investment Trusts, and by offering tax and residence advantages for overseas investors in UK property. It also explores the rise of investor interest in Build to Rent.


Author(s):  
Steven McKevitt

Chapter 1 looks at consumption, consumerism, and the emergence of the consumer society in Britain at the end of the twentieth century. It draws out the main academic debates concerning consumption and its evolving role in society and explores changes in work, leisure, gender roles, family life, and living standards in the UK in the twentieth century. There follows an examination of the impact of the New Right and its ideology in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s and also the renaissance in popular culture from the 1970s, which not only helped to drive the expansion of the mass media but was also fueled by it. It concludes with an analysis of arguments presented by critics of affluence from the post-war period to the early twenty-first century. There is particular emphasis on the role of persuasion within market economies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2096941
Author(s):  
Frances Brill ◽  
Daniel Durrant

This paper analyses ‘Build to Rent’ (BTR), a new form of tenure in London’s housing market. We examine the ways in which private and public sector actors have shaped the context of BTR’s emergence, and developed a model for delivery in London. We argue they relied on and constructed narratives of negativity about the private rental sector, which were juxtaposed with their product to position BTR as a solution to part of London’s housing crisis. Building on this, and leveraging an emerging but supportive institutional context, real estate professionals have adapted a US model to the UK. We argue that both the narrative-generating activities and the model development reveal tensions, which help theorise the ways new models of financing housing emerge.


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