Projects / Programmes
Location and urban land use in aging regions: toward a general theory of land rent in postindustrial age
January 1, 2015
- December 31, 2018
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 5.08.00 |
Social sciences |
Urbanism |
|
| 2.19.00 |
Engineering sciences and technologies |
Traffic systems |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| S240 |
Social sciences |
Town and country planning |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 5.07 |
Social Sciences |
Social and economic geography |
housing market, urban land rent, financing housing, attractiveness of location, supply networks, transportation networks, urban facility management, crises, risk management
Researchers (13)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
The pressing challenge of Slovenia and other EU states is to embark on the path of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, to develop age-friendly urban environment and invest in the infrastructure and supply networks that will transform European cities to smart cities, creating jobs and enhancing competitiveness. In responding to this task, Europe faces large-scale, long-term investment needs, where housing and infrastructure investments represent a major part of the gross fixed capital formation. To support required policies and for evaluation of potential investments the general theory of land rent as a regulator of urban growth should be reconsidered. Recent experience in several European countries has clearly and painfully shown that the housing market volatility has a substantial impact on financial flows, supply chains and migration in the society, on wealth of households, and national and international financial systems as collateral for mortgage financing. This volatility influences the investments in the development, maintenance and redevelopment of urban areas, in public utilities, transport and ICT infrastructure, and makes institutional investors reluctant to invest in city infrastructures due to the low predictability of long-term cash flows, needed for asset liability matching.
Housing expenditure constitutes nearly one third of the household's income, and housing wealth makes more than a half of the median household's net worth in Europe. The macro implications of housing dynamics are important, following one of the largest residential real estate boom-and-busts and the subsequent recession which additionally disclosed the specific problems of the aging European societies and their dependence on the stable housing market. As reported by the Guardian (February, 2014, see Figure 3) there is more than 11 million of empty housing units in European towns many of them in bankruptcy procedures. There are 170,000 empty units in Slovenia, 3.4 million housing units in Spain, 2.4 million in France and a similar number in Italy. Therefore the crucial question in today’s European economy is: ”How to leverage the European wealth and facilitate the flows to achieve well-being for all generations (job opportunities for the young and proper care for seniors)”. The answer is in the development of a firm understanding of the space of flows and the space of places (Castells, 1989, Arrighi, 2010) by developing a general theory of land rent in the postindustrial age, as proposed here. The indicator of other models, connected with land rent model will be compared through their impact on the bid rent manifold and its stability.
The decision support systems developed in the program will provide to the institutional investors and other stakeholders transparent information and first-quality risk management tools that will enable the allocation of capital of institutional investors to housing and infrastructural projects in the best possible way and enable a better protection and return to the investors.
Significance for science
The program will add to the scientific knowledge required in the list of “Priority Areas” defined in the “Strategic Implementation plan” and “Operational Implementation plan” developed by The European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities. The program will improve the way scientific knowledge can help inform and evaluate policy and societal responses to population aging, financial crises and growth of cities –i.e. urbanization and migration patterns. It follows the needs which originate from the basic definition and goals of smart cities and communities: “Smart cities should be regarded as systems of people interacting with and using flows of energy, materials, services and financing to catalyze sustainable economic development, resilience, and high quality of life; these flows and interactions become smart through making strategic use of information and communication infrastructure and services in a process of transparent urban planning and management that is responsive to the social and economic needs of society. (European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities –EIP on SCC, Strategic Implementation Plan). The way how to consider the impact of flows on life in a city requires an improved approach to the urban land rent, in which all sub-problems and their solutions listed in our program are reflected, but not yet considered in the contemporary scientific literature. All indicators in the sub-models of (a) migrations, (b)aging, (c) facility management activities, (d) supply chains investments, management and control, (e) fiscal and financial schemes, proposed here, influence urban land rent and its capitalization on the housing market which should be subject of our investigation. In all these models Net Present Value under the risk will be the main criterion function to be optimize.
The program is focused on the behaviour of urban land rent and presents radically novel ideas and thinking for producing, delivering, and embedding integrated decision support models into policy and societal processes especially regarding the aging in cities. The scientific knowledge developed in this program will help to get better insight to matrices and indicators that will enable cities to demonstrate performance gains in a comparable manner, help to understand how to explore the growing pools of data and provide framework for consistency, commonality and repeatability and knowledge shearing between the cities. It is the new approach to the urban land rent in the aging regions. The approach will integrate the abundance of data on social, economic, financial, technological, and ecological systems available today in spatial, health insurance, elder-care and other administrative databases. In the project we shall integrate/link data (GIS and other housing data, demographic data, elder-care and other social data, models (7 group of models: migration and aging models, multi-state transition models/competing risk models, location theory continuous and discrete models, taxation models, real estate financing models, supply chain and facility management models, healthcare models) to support development of policies and regulations across all policy sectors involved as described in Operational and implementation plan of EIP on SCC. The research will be grounded in the theoretical foundations among other mathematical models applied to the location theory (land rent appraisal) but also actuarial science (reverse mortgage and other actuarial schemes), risk theory, decision science, general location theory (gravity models) , architecture with visualization (MultiMap) and mass appraisal, statistics, demography and integration and visualization of Big Data. Implementations will be based on the standards for Infrastructure for Spatial information in the European Community (INSPIRE), on the service platform for aggregation, processing and analysis of urban and regional planning data.
Our research will further develop the mul
Significance for the country
Making cities and communities age-friendly is according to WHO one of the most effective local policy approaches for responding to demographic ageing. The physical and social environments are key determinants of whether people can remain healthy, independent and autonomous long into their old age.
CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS,OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,(2000/C 364/01) in article 25 defines the rights of the elderly as "The Union recognizes and respects the rights of the elderly to lead a life of dignity and independence and to participate in social and cultural life." To achieve this goal large investments are required. To fund these long-term investments, local governments need access to long-term financing. The capacity of the economy to make such long-term financing available depends on the ability of the financial system to channel the savings of governments, corporates and households effectively and efficiently to the right users and uses. Getting the long-term financing process right is central to supporting age friendly and smart urban growth and returning to the long-run trend of economic growth.
The financial crisis has affected the ability of the financial sector in Europe to channel savings to built environment. Therefore greater involvement of institutional investors and alternative financing is required. Public funds need to be combined with private funds for investments in built environment.
As a key instrument of Cohesion Policy, European Structural Funds support regional
competitiveness and employment, and aim to stimulate growth and employment within the
least developed regions of the European Union (EU). Under the General Regulation, the Financial Engineering Instruments (FEIs) can be established to invest in Urban Development (Article 44b), and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in Buildings (Article 44c). As the European Commission (EC/ the ‘Commission’) and Member States start to prepare for the 2014-2020 programming period, it was considered important to learn from the experience to date on FEIs and what Member State intentions are in relation to establishing Financial Instruments (FIs).
Recent experience in Slovenia, several other European countries and also globally has clearly and painfully shown that the housing market volatility has a substantial impact on financial flows, supply chain flows and migration in the society, on the wealth of households and on national and international financial systems as collateral for mortgage financing. The construction sector is still a major provider of jobs for less qualified workers which are disappearing in other sectors of the European economy. Our research presents theoretical and technical bases for abetter forecasting which can underpin the stabilization of housing market and construction industry and prevent the destruction of value. Housing spending constitutes nearly one-third of a household's income, and housing wealth makes more than half of the median household's net worth in many European countries and in other globally developed regions.
- The research of our international partner Multiconsult has shown that properly implemented facility management can save up to 5% in some cases even 10% of all health care costs of these institutions. The resources saved in the health care system in such a way can be better used for saving life and improving the well-being of members of the society.
- The research results represent technical bases for insurance products for aging in place ( in one's own home), as provided for in the proposal of the new Slovenian Act on Long-Term-Care and Personal Assistance, for which EC require to be properly solved and accepted in this semester.
- Better organization of retirement communities can increase the occupational rate of housing stock and its liquidity on housing market. It can increase the value of real estate by more than 50 %, some times even 100%, as we evaluated in our housing stock research at
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2015,
2016,
2017
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2015,
2016,
2017
