Harry van der Heijden

The population density in megacities in China gives rise to challenges, such as traffic congestion and soaring housing prices. A trend of leaving primate cities can be observed as well as a population increase in secondary cities. These trends might point to an urbanisation transition from the primate city stage to the secondary city stage. Research is needed to determine at which stage of urbanisation China currently resides, and who are migrating across the different levels of cities in this stage. In order to answer these questions, the current study combines the theory of differential urbanisation and migrant selectivity, and analyses city-level migration patterns and demographic characteristics of migrants across the urban hierarchy. The findings indicate that China is currently in the intermediate primate city stage, where the upward migration across the urban hierarchy is driven by younger adults with higher education and income, and a lower likelihood of marriage or parenthood. Building upon global evidence, this research further extends the theory of differential urbanisation by incorporating migrant selectivity into the interpretation of urbanisation stages. It reveals that educated migrants tend to concentrate and move up the urban hierarchy in the primate city stage but might deconcentrate during the secondary and small city stages. This study offers practical insights for policymakers at the national and city levels to develop population growth plans, adjust targeted migration policies and respond to future urbanisation processes.

In 2010, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive announced that all new buildings are to be nearly zero-energy as of January 2021. Having reached year 2022, it can be said that the transition has proven to be slower than anticipated. Transition research has long acknowledged the potential impact of the human factor in the process of change. While there is a relative wealth of literature on end-users and their perceptions as recipients of change within the demand end of the market, research on professionals and their perceptions as actors in the process of change is limited. Thus, this study looks at the human factor in the supply end of the market by bringing professionals’ perceptions to the forefront in its investigation of barriers to the implementation and uptake of nearly zero-energy housing in practice. As part of the project entitled Housing 4.0 Energy: Affordable and Sustainable Housing through Digitization, data were collected through a focus group and semi-structured interviews with housing professionals in Kilkenny, Ireland. Descriptive coding, inferential coding, and fact tracing revealed several identified barriers to be perceptions and not actual barriers to nearly zero-energy housing. Additionally, information dissemination and assimilation between policy and industry was identified as an overarching barrier. Therefore, the paper ends with recommendations to reduce delay factors at the supply end of the market, thus contributing to closing the gap between the development of policies and their implementation.

After more than ten years since the introduction of Near Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEBs), the transition towards a zero-energy new built environment can still be considered slow despite European Member States’ various efforts to facilitate, promote and accelerate their implementation and uptake. The barriers to sustainability measures in general and NZEBs in particular have been extensively explored by academic literature and despite different research scopes, perspectives, locations and times, previous studies have reached similar outcomes. Similar barriers were perceived by different housing professionals in different geographic contexts and these same barriers also persisted through time. This study argues that while this could be interpreted as a validation of outcomes, it also underlines a limitation resulting from a general level of analysis. Thus, this study contributes to the discussion by adopting a context-specific approach in its investigation of barriers to near zero-energy housing in small towns in Flanders, Ireland and the Netherlands. The data was collected from a series of focus groups with housing professionals in Leuven, Kilkenny and Almere. Through descriptive coding, this study’s outcomes echoed previous research findings. However, a closer look through inferential coding resulted in the identification of 21 new contextual barriers leading to the formulation of more specific policy suggestions with a different allocation of precedence that depends on every context.

In 2015 the Housing Act was revised in order to further regulate the social housing sector in the Netherlands and thereby improve the steering possibilities for the central government to coordinate housing associations. This included local performance agreements for social housing policy obtaining a legal status. By introducing this policy instrument central government seeks to facilitate and ensure the tri-partite cooperation between municipalities, housing associations and tenants’ organisations in order to release funds by housing associations for social benefit. This should improve the position of municipalities and tenants’ organisations in social housing, and improve legitimate policy making. In this paper the main research question is: How are local performance agreements implemented targeting increased societal legitimacy in local social housing policy making, and what are its strengths and weaknesses in three selected cases in the Netherlands? A case study research design was used involving three local embedded case studies. As a theoretical framework the Contextual Interaction Theory was used. Data collection involved expert interviews and review of policy documents. Results reveal several weaknesses that impede the implementation of performance agreements, including issues in the broader governance regime and context, as well as issues with the inter-organisational structure and stakeholder interaction regarding the tri-partite cooperation between the key actors. This has to do with the precarious role of the tenants’ organisations in the process, and the local housing policy as the basis of local performance agreements. Results also show that implementation of performance agreements is more difficult in cities with dense urban areas.

The management of the public rental sector has undergone tremendous change worldwide. Especially in China, given the large supply of public rental housing (PRH) in the short term, the management of PRH (PRHM) has been faced with a series of problems. The existing PRHM is unsustainable and a new scheme has been proposed. In this study we analyze whether this new scheme can solve the former management problems and achieve the reform objectives, so as to explore whether the new scheme can really improve the PRHM. We analyzed the new policy, contracts and bidding documents of 19 pilot projects and interviewed some implementation staffs. We found that the well-intended policy mainly proposed three measures: government procurement, new financial arrangement and guided service contents; but that these measures lack specific financial support. Furthermore, there are very few projects that involve full implementation; most of the projects employed a compromise strategy. In general, the new scheme made progress towards solving some of the existing problems, so even if it is selectively implemented, it is still likely to achieve the reform objectives.

The Netherlands is not known for the occurrence of earthquakes. This is, however, a hot topic in the province of Groningen. Because of gas extraction, this area suffered from more than 1000 earthquakes. Most of them are not very intensive, but also bigger earthquakes of between 2 and 3 on the scale of Richter have been measured. In the last few years, thousands of houses are damaged, house prices have dropped, and the liveability is at stake. This paper pays attention to the effects of these earthquakes on the functioning of the housing market and the quality of life in the region. An extensive survey was conducted, focus groups were organized, housing market statistics were analyzed, and several econometric models were evaluated to give an answer to the question in which way the earthquakes influence the local housing market and the liveability.