Asian Retailers in Glasgow: A Glimpse of Commercial and Property Relations in the Early Eighties

As noted in the paper published in the last issue of this journal, shopkeeping and retail have been one of the important ways of entry into the host economy in the case of some prewar migrating communities such as the Jews and the Italians and the post-war migrants such as the Asians (mostly Panjabis from India and Pakistan) to Glasgow in Scotland. We explore how the two major sets of theories the ethnic customer niche and middlemen minority theory apply to this group and explore the unchartered area of the nature of ‘property relations’ of retailers, i.e.in terms of the acquired commercial and housing property. Specifically, we explore the similarities and differences between the commercial and residential markets and their relationship and possible interdependence for entrepreneurial and asset building and the phenomenon of segregated property markets. We begin by exploring the background of retailers and their possible influence on entry into the business. We also compare some key aspects of Glasgow’s retail economy with other Asian retail localized economies using the studies of the period for comparative perspective purposes. The paper adds to the very sparse literature on asset ownership or on ethnic commercial property markets and explores if the high ownership of housing and the presence of ethnic origin national banks helped with both ethnic enterprise and asset creation. It also explores the extent to which the ‘ethnic niche’ model and the ‘middle minorities’ model applies to the Asians in Glasgow in addition to the hypothesis if the agricultural background which requires some sense of business and related skills, and the notion of success and the status of property may be the crucial cultural and experiential drivers of asset acquisition and enterprise.

Future Shift for ‘Big Things’: From Starchitecture via Agritecture to Parkitecture

This article analyses three recent shifts in what called the geography of ‘Big Things’, meaning the contemporary functions and adaptability of modern city centre architecture. We periodise the three styles conventionally into the fashionable ‘Starchitecture’ of the 1990s, the repurposed ‘Agritecture’ of the 2000s and the parodising ‘Parkitecture’ of the 2010s. Starchitecture was the form of new architecture coinciding with the rise of neo-liberalism in its brief era of global urban competitiveness prevalent in the 1990s. After the Great Financial Crash of 2007–2008, the market for high-rise emblems of iconic, thrusting, skyscrapers and giant downtown and suburban shopping malls waned and online shopping and working from home destroyed the main rental values of the CBD. In some illustrious cases, ‘Agritecture’ caused re-purposed office blocks and other CBD accompaniments to be re-purposed as settings for high-rise urban farming, especially aquaponics and hydroponic horticulture. Now, COVID-19 has further undermined traditional CBD property markets, causing some administrations to decide to bulldoze their ‘deadmalls’ and replace them with urban prairie landscapes, inviting the designation ‘Parkitecture’ for the bucolic results. This paper presents an account of these transitions with reference to questions raised by urban cultural scholars such as Jane M. Jacobs and Jean Gottmann to figure out answers in time and space to questions their work poses.

SIGNIFICANCE AND PERFORMANCE OF PROPERTY MARKETS IN MALAYSIA

The importance of the global real estate market has been widely debated over the last decade. Prior discussion has focused on various aspects of analysis used to evaluate the performance of the property market, such as statistical analysis, surveys, academic or industrial literature. As a result, it is also necessary to examine the global and Asian property markets while also evaluating the significance and performance of the Malaysian property market in comparison to other Asian markets to determine Malaysia's international contribution to the global property market. The performance of Malaysia's property market from 2015 to 2018 was examined in this study. Data was gathered using Thomson Router Data Stream from Real Capital Analytic, Asia Pacific Real Estate Association (APREA), World Economic Forum, and Transparency International, among others. The study's findings will extend knowledge not only of the performance and significance of the Malaysian property market, but also of GDP growth, inflation rate, market ranking global, competitiveness business environment index, corruption perception, and risk and transparency index in Malaysia and across Asian countries. The overall results indicate that the performance and signs of the Malaysian real estate market were better compared to other Asian and developing markets.

Assessing Employee Engagement in a Post-COVID-19 Workplace Ecosystem

This article has aimed to better understand employee engagement in a post-COVID-19 workplace ecosystem. We identified a knowledge gap in the relationship between employee engagement and the physical workplace environment through an interdisciplinary literature review. We subsequently tested this gap by comparing employee engagement metrics proposed by leading academics in the field of organisational psychology with a sample of commonly used real estate industry approaches to monitoring workplace design/management. We focused specifically on industry-projected post-COVID-19 workplace ecosystem scenarios, and the results suggest that traditional employee engagement metrics and industry approaches to monitoring workplace design and management do not fully reflect the recent shift to hybrid work patterns. We shed light on the implications that this can have on our existing knowledge of “sustainable” property markets in a wider city context.

The “glocalisation” of Istanbul's retail property market

PurposeThe continuation of globalisation and liberalisation processes has prompted the restructuring of many national and local property markets. The research examines the evolution of Istanbul's retail property market to identify how global and local agents engage with one another to produce a unique “glocalized” outcome.Design/methodology/approachThe morphogenetic approach is adapted and applied to analyse the dynamics of market change. The focus is on the character and behaviour of national and international market actors and how they interact with the wider political economy. The research uses a combination of elite interviews, document analysis and corporate case studies to obtain empirical evidence.FindingsThe liberalisation of the Turkish economy heralded the entry of the first international companies into Istanbul's retail property market in the 1990s. International involvement expanded rapidly after 2004, accelerating the process of market re-structuring. However, while the number of global buy-outs increased, the expansion of local property companies–and the establishment of some international/national corporate partnerships–was even more marked. This resulted in a “glocalised” market with a strong and distinctive local culture.Originality/valueIstanbul has been a major centre of trade for millenia. This is the first substantive analysis of the recent restructuring of the city's retail property market. Previous research on market maturity and market evolution has paid limited attention to the dynamics of change. The paper describes the use of a process-based theoretical framework (morphogenesis) that was explicitly designed to analyse structural shifts in socio-economic conditions through an examination of the characteristics and behaviours of the actors involved.

The relevance of inter-market research to knowledge accessibility in property markets: lessons for Nigeria from the UK

PurposeThis paper explores the relevance of inter-market research to improving knowledge in property markets. It focuses on Nigeria's emergent property market which JLL (2018) suggests is information challenged. Given the country's lack of property data management, it is posited that inter-market studies can help to improve information supply and market knowledge. Inter-market research in Nigeria is compared with the UK's established market where such research is a key information source.Design/methodology/approachAn online database search was used to collate published intra-market and inter-market research on Nigeria's property market between 2009 and 2019. The inter-market research were thereafter examined as to volume and scope (geographical and thematic) and compared with the UK's.FindingsRelative to the UK, the volume as well as scope (geographical and thematic) of inter-market research in Nigeria are respectively far lower and narrower, thereby producing less information overall. Only a few Nigerian studies provide insights of two or more local markets. There is little or no research on many important market issues and other urban markets in the system. This suggests that inter-market research is relatively undeveloped in Nigeria.Research limitations/implicationsThe online search approach used to assemble extant research in the absence of a research repository may have resulted in the omission of some inter-market research undertaken between 2009 and 2019 if these were not published online.Practical implicationsThe dearth of inter-market research in Nigeria suggests an inadequately researched market. This limits market information, market knowledge, suggests a low market competitiveness with implications for development in view of the role of property in the modern economy.Originality/valueIn view of the little attention given to inter-market research in Nigeria, this study draws attention to its potential for improving market knowledge by the production of information which has a wider market relevance.

Using system dynamics modelling to understand behaviour in UK commercial property markets

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to outline the benefits of using system dynamics modelling as a research tool to understand the dynamics of commercial property markets in the UK and their long-term behaviour. It highlights areas for future work.Design/methodology/approachThis is a concept paper that outlines a simple systems model of rental change in UK commercial property markets as a way of illustrating how a systems approach can be used to describe and model the market. The model concentrates on the user market and offers a view of market operation, according to which development activity is initiated by demand (linked to economic growth) and to which supply responds by producing development.FindingsThe model demonstrates how a systems approach can be used to model the impact of a wide range of market variables on rental growth. The approach allows non-linear modelling of the complex relationships and behavioural factors that are difficult to include in existing econometric models of the market. It highlights where existing knowledge is deficient, especially with regard to price elasticity of demand, the relationship between economic activity and take up, the potential impact of redevelopment on the supply of new property and rental growth and response times of various parts of the market development process to market signals. It outlines where further research is needed to incorporate real market data.Originality/valueDespite the wide application of the systems theory to business and other related areas, its use in commercial property research has been limited and has not gained much traction as a research tool. The work represents one of a very few studies applying the systems theory to the UK commercial property market.

Outer-suburban politics and the financialisation of the logistics real estate industry: The emergence of financialised coalitions in the Paris region

Logistics real estate is a type of property rarely covered in the existing literature on the financialisation of property markets. The emergence of specialised international real estate firms, which act as developers, investors and property fund managers, means that the logistics real estate industry has taken a unique financialisation path. The present article explains the specific features of the financialisation of the logistics real estate industry and contributes to the understanding of the financialisation of outer-suburban governance. Based on a qualitative analysis of the European logistics real estate market and case studies conducted in the Greater Paris region, the article combines an analysis of the sociotechnical mediations of financial circuits in the logistics built environment with the study of emerging local public–private coalitions formed to develop logistics zones. As such, it will be seen that the domination of integrated global firms in logistics real estate depends on their capacity to form local coalitions.

Explainer: Taxing rezoning windfalls (betterment)

In its 2021 budget, the Victorian government announced a new tax on windfall land value gains from rezoning (also known as a betterment tax)This note explains the economic principles behind such a tax, the benefits of applying such a tax, implementation issues that need to be considered, and lessons from the operation of similar taxes elsewhere.Property is, conceptually, a finite bundle of rights. Rezoning grants additional property rights to owners of an existing set of property rights. Those new rights could instead be sold at a market price. A tax on the value gain from rezoning at anything less than 100% is equivalent to selling the new property rights from the community to the current property owner at a discount. Just like selling other property rights from the public to the private sector does not add to market prices in property markets, nor does selling rezoning rights.A tax on rezoning windfalls is uncommon not because it is a bad tax but because it is a good tax.