Christian Düben (p), Melanie Krause

José Cadima Ribeiro

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Davide Ponzini , Mina Akhavan (p)

José Cadima Ribeiro

In recent history, architectural practice has been subject to accelerated globalization and other transnational trends such as spectacularization and commodification of the urban environment. In particular, Europe has witnessed a great number of projects designed by firms that work internationally. This contribution is the first attempt at systematically studying the spread of projects designed by major transnational firms (by our definition, with 25% share of their projects completed abroad or more). It introduces a database covering design firms and the details of their completed projects (e.g. localization, year of completion, building type and functions, etc.) within the period 1990-2015. More specifically, this paper will make an attempt to map and describe the trajectories of such projects in the European region and over time, with reference to global cities as well as cities of lower rank. More precisely we will see the spread of projects having urban characteristics that are similar to the ones of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (branded cultural facility as part of a larger master plan for waterfront redevelopment) in Europe, before and after its opening in 1997. We will derive further considerations from our database, as well as focusing on particular examples. In this way, this paper will provide a first quantitative and qualitative insight regarding the use of star architecture in waterfront culture-led regeneration projects.

Zhengguang Tang (p), Catherine Kavanagh , Eleanor Doyle

José Cadima Ribeiro

This paper examines the relationship between population quality, captured by education and health indicators, and economic growth in three cities in China: Beijing, Lanzhou and Guiyang. The aim is to explore the impact, if any, of various educational and public health policies which were introduced by the Chinese government from 2000 onwards. City level data from 1995 to 2015 is used to investigate the relationship. The theoretical model draws on the Solow Growth model. We hypothesize that improvements in educational levels and health levels of the population in all three target cities has a positive impact on real GDP per capita growth. This is in keeping with the views of Romer (1986, 1990) and others. Factor analysis is used to choose from the many education and health variables. The method then involves the construction of two separate indexes: one for education quality and one for health quality. The empirical results support the hypothesis. Further, as expected, fixed asset investment per capita has a strong and positive effect on economic growth. The real R&D expenditure has a weak but positive effect on economic growth. The effectiveness of education and public health policies in the different cities is evaluated. The paper concludes with some insights on Chinese educational and public health policies to further improve economic growth.