Not in my back yard! Sports stadia location and the property market

In recent years sports stadia have been built in the UK, not only for their intended sporting purpose but with the twin aim of stimulating economic and physical regeneration. However, proposals to locate stadia in urban areas often prompt a negative reaction from local communities, fearing a decline in property prices. This paper will use a case study of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff and the City of Manchester Stadium to illustrate that in contrast to this widely held belief, sports stadia can actually enhance the value of residential property. Furthermore, it will argue that stadia also contribute indirectly to property value through the creation of pride, confidence and enhanced image of an area.</p

Conceptualising sustainability in UK urban Regeneration: a discursive Formation

Despite the wide usage and popular appeal of the concept of sustainability in UK policy, it does not appear to have challenged the status quo in urban regeneration because policy is not leading in its conceptualisation and therefore implementation. This paper investigates how sustainability has been conceptualised in a case-based research study of the regeneration of Eastside in Birmingham, UK, through policy and other documents, and finds that conceptualisations of sustainability are fundamentally limited. The conceptualisation of sustainability operating within urban regeneration schemes should powerfully shape how they make manifest (or do not) the principles of sustainable development. Documents guide, but people implement regeneration—and the disparate conceptualisations of stakeholders demonstrate even less coherence than policy. The actions towards achieving sustainability have become a policy ‘fix’ in Eastside: a necessary feature of urban policy discourse that is limited to solutions within market-based constraints

Reimaging the city: the value of sport initiatives

A growing number of post-industrial cities are utilizing sport initiatives to present an attractive image to potential tourists. Despite insufficient evidence of, and explanations for, image effects, it is widely assumed that these initiatives have the capacity to enhance city images. The aim of this paper is to explore the value of sport as a reimaging theme for the contemporary city destination. This assessment is based primarily on evidence regarding the effects of sport reimaging initiatives adopted by three UK cities - Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield. The findings suggest that, although sport reimaging does exhibit some advantageous qualities, there are also significant problems associated with this mode of place marketing

Race at the margins: A Critical Race Theory perspective on race equality in UK planning.

Despite evidence of the growing ethnic diversity of British cities and its impact on urban governance, the issue of racial equality in UK planning remains marginal, at best, to mainstream planning activity. This paper uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) to consider the reasons why the ‘race’ and planning agenda continues to stall. CRT, it is argued, offers a compelling account of why changes in practice over time have been patchy at best, and have sometimes gone into reverse

State-dependent effects of responsive neurostimulation depend on seizure localization.

Brain-responsive neurostimulation (RNS) is firmly ensconced among treatment options for drug-resistant focal epilepsy, but over a quarter of patients treated with the RNS® System do not experience meaningful seizure reduction. Initial titration of RNS therapy is typically similar for all patients, raising the possibility that treatment response might be enhanced by consideration of patient-specific variables. Indeed, small, single-centre studies have yielded preliminary evidence that RNS System effectiveness depends on the brain state during which stimulation is applied. The generalizability of these findings remains unclear, however, and it is unknown whether state-dependent effects of responsive neurostimulation are also stratified by location of the seizure onset zone where stimulation is delivered. We aimed to determine whether state-dependent effects of the RNS System are evident in the large, diverse, multi-centre cohort of RNS System clinical trial participants and to test whether these effects differ between mesiotemporal and neocortical epilepsies. Eighty-one of 256 patients treated with the RNS System across 31 centres during clinical trials met the criteria for inclusion in this retrospective study. Risk states were defined in relation to phases of daily and multi-day cycles of interictal epileptiform activity that are thought to determine seizure likelihood. We found that the probabilities of risk state transitions depended on the stimulation parameter being changed, the starting seizure risk state and the stimulated brain region. Changes in two commonly adjusted stimulation parameters, charge density and stimulation frequency, produced opposite effects on risk state transitions depending on seizure localization. Greater variance in acute risk state transitions was explained by state-dependent responsive neurostimulation for bipolar stimulation in neocortical epilepsies and for monopolar stimulation in mesiotemporal epilepsies. Variability in the effectiveness of RNS System therapy across individuals may relate, at least partly, to the fact that current treatment paradigms do not account fully for fluctuations in brain states or locations of simulation sites. State-dependence of electrical brain stimulation may inform the development of next-generation closed-loop devices that can detect changes in brain state and deliver adaptive, localization-specific patterns of stimulation to maximize therapeutic effects

Sport and the local economy: the role of stadia in regenerating commercial property

The use of sports stadia for economic development and regeneration has gained increasingly credibility in recent years, both academically and in terms of UK urban policy. However, evidence to support the effectiveness of stadia for these purposes is highly variable. This paper uses a comparative case study of the Millennium Stadium and the City of Manchester Stadium to examine the effects of stadia development on the commercial property market, an area of research that has received little attention in the literature. It uses the expert opinion of professionals working in real estate, together with the experience of key stakeholders in Manchester and Cardiff to provide empirical evidence that stadia can create tangible and intangible impacts on the commercial property market, but that these are variable between different sectors. It concludes by arguing the need for further research on the role of stadia in the regeneration process if the impacts of these developments are to be maximised in the future.</p

Is the ‘New Deal for Communities’ a New Deal for Equality? Getting Women on Board in Neighbourhood Governance

Across the EU, neighbourhoods have been the focus for achieving social cohesion and reducing social exclusion. Neighbourhood renewal and community involvement were central themes in the UK Labour government's urban policy. This article focuses on the challenge of community engagement given the heterogeneity of individuals and neighbourhoods. It uses the case study of a New Deal for Communities (NDC) partnership to explore the experiences of different women on an NDC board, including those from minority ethnic groups. The NDC in the case study provides optimism about the possibility of including diverse groups and people in neighbourhood governance, yet too little attention is still given at both national policy and neighbourhood levels to working politically and productively with concepts of ethnicity and gender

Kritisk undersökning af den Masoretiska texten till profeten Hoseas bok /

"Akademisk afhandling, som med tillstand af vidtberömda filosofiska fakultetens i Upsala humanistiska sektion för vinnande af Filosofie Doktorsgrad till offentlig granskning framställes."Includes bibliographical references.Mode of access: Internet