Weiming Tong , Pauline Van Den Berg (p), Harry Timmermans

Exploring influencing factors of place attachment is important to understand individuals’ sense of belonging and adaptation in a new neighborhood, which is also important to an individual's well-being. Cities in China are expanding at a phenomenal pace and undergoing a rapid suburbanization. This is mainly achieved through large-scale appropriation and circulation of rural land in suburbs, leading to displacement of landless farmers and development of alternative housing. In the process of redeveloping suburbs, the market economy in China has led to a flourishing real estate market and many real-estate developers have actively participated in the construction of suburban commercial housing. Therefore, sub-urbanization induced residential mobility can be divided into resettlement of involuntary movers to replacement housing and relocation of voluntary movers to commercial housing. The aim of this study is to determine which factors in terms of household and neighborhood characteristics, type of residential mobility (voluntary vs. involuntary), neighborhood satisfaction, neighborhood adaptation and place attachment before the resettlement influence place attachment after the resettlement. This is done by a path analysis based on survey data collected in 2015 from a survey of 786 respondents in eight neighborhoods in Changchun, a city in China that is experiencing large-scale residential mobility to suburbs. The results indicate that type of residential mobility, personal social-demographics and neighborhood characteristics have direct and indirect effects on the place attachment after the resettlement, while, surprisingly, place attachment before the resettlement has no influence on the post place attachment. The post place attachment is influenced by personal social-demographics, such as age, gender, car ownership and income level. Regarding the effects of neighborhood characteristics the results show that only neighborhood social interactions and the housing space have effects on place attachment. Neighborhood adaptation and satisfaction are not only direct predictors of post place attachment, but also mediators between exogenous variables and post place attachment.

Karina Simone Sass , Alexandre Alves Porsse (p)

Urban sprawl is a pattern of growth that can bring about negative effects over big and medium cities; these effects can be on the environment, on the quality of life and even on the public finances. Research on urban sprawl and its effects have received broad attention; however, relatively few attempts have been made to assess the effects on developing countries. This study contributes to the empirical literature on the urban sprawl and its effects on local public finance by offering a perspective of the analysis of a developing country. “Is there a positive relation between urban sprawl and the cost of providing local public services in Brazilian municipalities?” This is the main question attempted in the analysis, and its answer can be a starting point for discussing the role that the local and regional government should play in regulating the urban sprawl process in Brazil. The analysis is based on cities belonging to medium and high urban concentrations and uses spatial econometric models to evaluate the effects of urban sprawl on six itens of expenditure (administration, education, health, urban infrastructure, culture and sports, and social assistance). Four distinct measures of urban sprawl are considered in the study searching to explore which of them fit better for explaining the cost of providing public services: the coefficient of variation, the gravitational index, the percentage of urban area, and the urban population density. All the variables are measured at the municipal level – i.e. where the policy decisions concerning the spending functions are taken. The results provide evidence that the urban sprawl positively affects the per capita cost of provision of local public services of cities with high urban concentration. The empirical results also suggest that the effect of urban sprawl on the local spending is not linear and it is characterized as a threshold effect: the sprawling process is harmful to the local spending only after it achieves a high degree. This evidence is quite important to medium cities since their degrees of urban sprawl are not high nowadays, but it will be soon, as medium cities expand in terms of population size and urban area. Some of the issues emerging from the empirical findings also give some insights relate to the current limitations of the analysis of urban sprawl and its effects: to determine the acceptable limit of urban sprawl and to select the best measure to account it.

Daniela Constantin (p), Luiza Radu

The growth poles theory developed by Perroux in the 1950s and translated into spatial planning terms by Boudeville in mid-1960s represented a fertile seedbed for the growth poles policy of the EU, as an important component of the territorial dimension of the cohesion policy.
Romania has been engaged in supporting the urban development policy from the very first programme period as a EU member state, 2007-2013. Thus, the Regional Operational Programme (ROP) 2007-2013 devoted its first priority axis to the „support to sustainable development of urban growth poles”, which envisaged 7 growth poles and 13 urban development centres of regional importance. Subsequently, the ROP 2014-2020 refers to 7 growth poles and 32 urban development poles, with ERDF allocations via sustainable urban development support axis, in an integrated manner.
This paper proposes an inquiry into the continuities and discontinuities between the two programme periods with regard to this issue as well as a critical analysis of Romania’s growth poles policy results for 2007-2013, aiming to examine to what extent its lessons have been learnt for the current context.
The methodology employed in this respect encompasses the interpretation of the output, result and impact indicators provided by the evaluation reports available on the Inforegio website, a synthesis of the interviews with key experts in the ROP implementation and evaluation process as well as a discussion on independent, foreign reports with regard to various aspects of urban development in Romania (e.g. the Forbes Report 2016 on the top 40 best Romanian cities for business).
The conclusions drawn following these ’channels’ are compared and interpreted in a systematic manner, from the perspective of both theory and advanced practices in the field, so as to highlight the positive facts and figures as well as the shortcomings of the growth poles policy. A special emphasis is put on the requirements to improve the administrative-institutional and legal framework for Romania’s regional policy in general and for the integrated urban development in particular.