Special Issue "Future Urban Transport and Urban Real Estate"

A special issue of Urban Science (ISSN 2413-8851).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2023 | Viewed by 7882

Special Issue Editors

Department of Property, The University of Auckland Business School, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Interests: real estate economics; urban studies
Department of Real Estate and Construction, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Interests: informal housing; institutional analysis; housing price/rental analysis; housing affordability; poor housing; gentrification and displacement
Department of Property, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Interests: residential mobility; housing subsidies; housing wealth effects; affordability; touristification; land governance; policies and administration

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Cities, which are home to over half of the population in the world, are at the frontline of the pandemic crisis and global response efforts. While the pandemic severely influences urban areas, the silver lining is that interventions in the urban transport and real estate market could have a pivotal moment in which crisis can be turned into an opportunity. By prioritising the right investments, we can have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to leverage the pandemic and build back in resilient, inclusive and sustainable cities. The key to seizing this opportunity in formulating and implementing the recovery plans requires our thorough understanding of transport and real estate in the post-pandemic world. This Special Issue calls for papers that can address any of the following questions:

  • How do the post-pandemic housing markets evolve?
  • How does the pandemic affect urban informal housing for the poor and the vulnerable?
  • How does the new trend of work-from-home and e-commerce shape the future urban transport and real estate markets?
  • How does the trend of PropTech, such as Uber, Airbnb, iBuyer, etc., reframe the future urban transport and real estate markets?

Dr. Edward Chung Yim Yiu
Dr. Ka Man Leung
Dr. William Ka Shing Cheung
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Urban Science is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • urban housing
  • informal housing
  • pandemic
  • work-from-home
  • e-commerce
  • PropTech

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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Article
Financialisation of Housing in London: Empirical Evidence on Housing Prices
Urban Sci. 2023, 7(2), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci7020045 - 25 Apr 2023
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Abstract
This paper aims to empirically review the process of housing financialisation in London, exploring a time series causal relationship between house prices and financial instruments, using the Granger method and a VAR test. In order to carry out this analysis, we use a [...] Read more.
This paper aims to empirically review the process of housing financialisation in London, exploring a time series causal relationship between house prices and financial instruments, using the Granger method and a VAR test. In order to carry out this analysis, we use a vector autoregressive model with a monthly data series that seeks to contribute to exploring this relationship. The results are relevant to the important role that the theory of housing financialisation plays in explaining the crisis of access to secure tenure that can be seen in developed nations. The results also provide an empirical background to pursue this theory more specifically in the context of the vectors that are effectively causal to the financialisation processes that impact everyday life through housing prices. The study is original, given that this type of modelling has not previously been carried out for a major world city such as London, and adds to the findings of similar explorations that have applied other methodologies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Urban Transport and Urban Real Estate)
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Article
Are Central Banks’ Monetary Policies the Future of Housing Affordability Solutions
Urban Sci. 2023, 7(1), 18; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci7010018 - 02 Feb 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1931
Abstract
Housing affordability is one of the major social problems in many countries, with some advocates urging governments to provide more accessible mortgages to facilitate more homeownership. However, in recent decades more and more evidence has shown that unaffordable housing is the consequence of [...] Read more.
Housing affordability is one of the major social problems in many countries, with some advocates urging governments to provide more accessible mortgages to facilitate more homeownership. However, in recent decades more and more evidence has shown that unaffordable housing is the consequence of monetary policy. Most of the previous empirical studies have been based on econometric analyses, which make it hard to eliminate potential endogeneity biases. This cross-country study exploited the two global interest rate shocks as quasi-experiments to test the impacts and causality of monetary policy (taking real interest rates as a proxy) on house prices. Global central banks’ synchronized reduction in interest rates after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and then the global synchronized increase in interest rates after the global inflation crisis in 2022 provided both a treatment and a treatment reversal to test the monetary policy hypothesis. The stylized facts vividly reveal the negative association between interest rate changes and house price changes in many countries. This study further conducted a ten-country panel regression analysis to test the hypothesis. The results confirmed that, after controlling for GDP growth and unemployment factors, the change in real interest rate imposed a negative effect on house price growth rates. The key practical implication of this study pinpoints the mal-prescription of harnessing monetary policy to solve housing affordability issues, as it can distort housing market dynamics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Urban Transport and Urban Real Estate)
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Article
Measuring the Stress of Moving Homes: Evidence from the New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure
Urban Sci. 2022, 6(4), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci6040075 - 25 Oct 2022
Viewed by 2872
Abstract
Moving homes has long been considered stressful, but how stressful is it? This study is an original attempt to utilise a micro-level individual dataset in the New Zealand Government’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to reconstruct the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) and thereby [...] Read more.
Moving homes has long been considered stressful, but how stressful is it? This study is an original attempt to utilise a micro-level individual dataset in the New Zealand Government’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to reconstruct the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) and thereby measure stress at a whole-of-population level. The effects of residential mobility on people’s mental well-being in the context of their stress-of-moving homes are examined. By using difference-in-differences analysis, this study scrutinises the stress level across movers, namely homeowners and renters (i.e., treatment groups) and non-movers (i.e., a control group). The results show that the change in residence increases people’s overall stress levels. Homeowners are more stressed than renters, with non-movers as the counterfactuals. Furthermore, the frequency of change in residences increases individual baseline stress levels. By progressing the understanding of such stresses, residential mobility researchers can contribute to broader discussions on how individuals’ interpersonal history and social mobility influence their experience. The whole-of-population-based SRRS will better advance our current ways of measuring mental stress at a population level, which is crucial to broader discussions of people’s well-being. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Urban Transport and Urban Real Estate)
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Case Report
The Roles of Microcredit in Informal Housing in the Future—A Case Study in Hong Kong
Urban Sci. 2022, 6(4), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci6040091 - 06 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1188
Abstract
Microcredit is usually used to support employment, poverty reduction, women empowerment, etc. It is rare to have studies on using microcredit to help residents in informal housing to improve their residential mobility. This study is a novel attempt to explore the roles of [...] Read more.
Microcredit is usually used to support employment, poverty reduction, women empowerment, etc. It is rare to have studies on using microcredit to help residents in informal housing to improve their residential mobility. This study is a novel attempt to explore the roles of microcredit in informal housing in the future by taking Hong Kong as a case study. This study aims to investigate whether microcredit affects the relocation decisions of low-income tenants in informal housing markets by using a quasi-experimental approach. A microcredit scheme for this purpose was first proposed, pitched for funding, and then implemented by a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Hong Kong to provide interest-free loans for households living in sub-divided units (SDUs) to pay for rental deposits. Interviews were conducted with SDU households. The results show that the microcredit scheme is conducive to the relocation decisions of low-income households, especially in emergency cases. This study shows the key role of microcredit in empowering low-income households in their relocation decisions, and it can make a difference to the future informal housing markets in the world. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Urban Transport and Urban Real Estate)
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