Housing renewal policies, house prices and urban competitiveness

Abstract

There has been a growing emphasis in housing policy and its impacts on sub-regional economies. Yet the arguments linking housing and economic competitiveness are typically described in very general terms. First of all, this paper is based on research providing a spatial picture of house prices utilising housing data from the UK government's Land Registry and presenting key findings from analysis of 1996–2006 house price trends at three spatial scales: within the policy area (Transform South Yorkshire (TSY) Pathfinder, within the South Yorkshire sub-region (SY) and within the wider region of Yorkshire and the Humber (YH)). Secondly, a quantitative analysis is applied in this paper to examine the relationship between economic competitiveness and housing in four sub-regional local authority districts (LADs) of South Yorkshire, UK. It demonstrates that housing prices in local authority districts affect some form of economic competitiveness. Overall, although evidences suggest that the UK government's housing market renewal program has resulted in some success in reinvigorating the local housing market, the objective of reducing or eradicating spatial differentiation in house prices will require a long-term commitment and a radical reappraisal of sustainable housing and planning policy.