Economic and social change and inequality in global cities: the case of London

No abstract (available).

Economic and social change and inequality in global cities: the case of London

No abstract (available).

Spatial Divisions of Welfare: The Geography of Welfare Benefit Expenditure and Housing Benefit in Britain

This paper examines the structure of state welfare expenditure in Britain. It argues that the geography of state welfare expenditure and its impacts have been relatively neglected given their importance in terms of state expenditure, regional distribution and spatial equality. It shows that welfare spending is a key component of government expenditure and that it has a distinct regional and local geography. It shows that there are distinct differences in the geographical incidence of different welfare benefits some of which function to redistribute income from the South to the North of Britain and it focuses on the geography of housing benefit as an example of what has been termed ‘spatial divisions of Welfare’

Aspiration, Attainment and Success:An agent-based model of distance-based school allocation

In recent years, UK governments have implemented policies that emphasise the ability of parents to choose which school they wish their child to attend. Inherently spatial school-place allocation rules in many areas have produced a geography of inequality between parents that succeed and fail to get their child into preferred schools based upon where they live. We present an agent-based simulation model developed to investigate the implications of distance-based school-place allocation policies. We show how a simple, abstract model can generate patterns of school popularity, performance and spatial distribution of pupils which are similar to those observed in local education authorities in London, UK. The model represents 'school' and 'parent' agents. Parental 'aspiration' to send their child to the best performing school (as opposed to other criteria) is a primary parent agent attribute in the model. This aspiration attribute is used as a means to constrain the location and movement of parent agents within the modelled environment. Results indicate that these location and movement constraints are needed to generate empirical patterns, and that patterns are generated most closely and consistently when schools agents differ in their ability to increase pupil attainment. Analysis of model output for simulations using these mechanisms shows how parent agents with above-average – but not very high – aspiration fail to get their child a place at their preferred school more frequently than other parent agents. We highlight the kinds of alternative school-place allocation rules and education system policies the model can be used to investigate

Les aveugles et l'éléphant : l'explication de la gentrification

Dans ce texte sont présentées les principales théories sur la gentrification proposées au cours de la dernière décennie, ainsi que le débat qui s'est développé autour d'elles. La gentrification a fait l'objet de nombreuses polémiques, parce qu'il s'agit d'un des champs de bataille théoriques les plus importants en géographie humaine, qui met en lumière les oppositions entre structure et action, production et consommation, capital et culture, offre et demande. Mais chacune des deux grandes explications qui ont été avancées pour rendre compte du processus de gentrification est une explication partielle, nécessaire mais non suffisante. Une explication complète de la gentrification doit à la fois tenir compte de la production des quartiers dévalorisés et de logements dégradés, et de la production de gentrifieurs et de leurs modes spécifiques de consommation et de reproduction.The blind men and the elephants : the explanation of gentrification This paper critically reviews the major theories of gentrification which have emerged over the last 10 years and the debate which has surrounded them. It argues the reason why the gentrification debate has attracted so much interest, and has been so hard fought, is that is one of key theoretical battlegrounds of contemporary human geography which highlights the arguments between structure and agency, production and consumption, capital and culture, and supply and demand. It also argues that each of the two major explanations which have been advanced to account for gentrifrication (the rent gap and the production of gentrifiers) is a partial explanation necessary but not sufficient. Finally, it argues that an integrated explanation for gentrification must involve both explanation of the production of devalued areas and housing and the production of gentrifiers and their specific consumption and reproduction patterns

The Regeneration Games: Commodities, Gifts and the Economics of London 2012

This paper considers contradictions between two concurrent and tacit conceptions of the Olympic ‘legacy’, setting out one conception that understands the games and their legacies as gifts alongside and as counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, which conceives Olympic assets as commodities. The paper critically examines press and governmental discussion of legacy, in order to locate these in the context of a wider perspective contrasting ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’ Olympics – setting anthropological conceptions of gift-based sociality as a necessary supplement to contractual and dis-embedded socioeconomic organizational assumptions underpinning the commodity Olympics. Costbenefit planning is central to modern city building and mega-event delivery. The paper considers the insufficiency of this approach as the exclusive paradigm within which to frame and manage a dynamic socio-economic and cultural legacy arising from the 2012 games

Reconstruction of primary vertices at the ATLAS experiment in Run 1 proton–proton collisions at the LHC

This paper presents the method and performance of primary vertex reconstruction in proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment during Run 1 of the LHC. The studies presented focus on data taken during 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of √s=8 TeV. The performance has been measured as a function of the number of interactions per bunch crossing over a wide range, from one to seventy. The measurement of the position and size of the luminous region and its use as a constraint to improve the primary vertex resolution are discussed. A longitudinal vertex position resolution of about 30μm is achieved for events with high multiplicity of reconstructed tracks. The transverse position resolution is better than 20μm and is dominated by the precision on the size of the luminous region. An analytical model is proposed to describe the primary vertex reconstruction efficiency as a function of the number of interactions per bunch crossing and of the longitudinal size of the luminous region. Agreement between the data and the predictions of this model is better than 3% up to seventy interactions per bunch crossing

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Deindustrialization and the Polarization of Household Incomes: The Example of Urban Agglomerations in Germany

The tertiarization, or perhaps more accurately, the deindustrialization of the economy has left deep scars on cities. It is evident not only in the industrial wastelands and empty factory buildings scattered throughout the urban landscape, but also in the income and social structures of cities. Industrialization, collective wage setting and the welfare state led to a stark reduction in income differences over the course of the twentieth century. Conversely, deindustrialization and the shift to tertiary sectors could result in increasing wage differentiation. Moreover, numerous studies on global cities, the dual city, and divided cities have also identified income polarization as a central phenomenon in the development of major cities. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we find an increasing polarization of household income structures since the mid-1990. In agglomerations, this income polarization is even more pronounced than in the more rural regions. The income polarization in Germany is likely to have multiple causes, some of which are directly linked to policies such as the deregulation of the labor market. But extensive deindustrialization is probably also one of the drivers, that has led directly to the weakening of middle income groups