Dr. Yael Shmaryahu-Yeshurun (p)

While traditional literature on commercial gentrification typically focuses on the influx of external corporations and boutique chains that displace local minority-owned firms, this study introduces a more complex concept known as “Gentefication.” Derived from the Spanish word la gente (the people), this term describes a process where entrepreneurs from within the minority community itself lead the redevelopment of historically marginalized neighborhoods.

This paper examines the political and cultural implications of Latino-led commercial gentrification in Barrio Logan, a San Diego neighborhood undergoing rapid transformation. While gentrification is commonly associated with the displacement and political erosion of ethnic and racial communities, this study advances a nuanced perspective. It analyzes how middle-class Latinx entrepreneurs actively engage in urban politics and planning to assert community influence.

Drawing on qualitative research, the paper introduces "political gentefiers"—actors who leverage their economic positions to promote collective empowerment. Their involvement was instrumental in reshaping Barrio Logan’s community plan, resulting in stronger recognition of cultural identity and the promotion of affordable housing. These findings challenge dominant narratives by showing that such processes can function as grassroots activism, increasing the political voice of ethnic and racial communities in urban governance.

However, the study also highlights the contested nature of this shift. While providing political inclusion, these activities generate intra-ethnic class tensions and do not eliminate physical displacement pressures for lower-income residents. Ultimately, the paper reframes these neighborhoods not only as sites of loss, but as arenas of political struggle and collective agency, urging policymakers to develop inclusive mechanisms that address inequalities within the community itself.

Mr João Pedro Saldanha Corrêa (p), Dr Carlos Roberto Azzoni, Dr Eduardo Amaral Haddad

In recent years, the literature on quantitative urban models has experienced significant growth, with contributions such as Ahlfeldt et al. (2015), Heblich et al. (2020), Tsivanidis (2023), and Redding and Sturm (2024), among others. This literature develops general equilibrium models whose equations closely match administrative data from national and local governments and incorporates real geographies rather than stylized ones, such as those used in earlier works (e.g., Lucas and Rossi-Hansberg, 2002).
Much of this literature focuses on cities in the developed world, with relatively fewer studies examining cities of developing countries. This gap represents an avenue for research, given the relevance of this modeling approach for analyzing public policies and urban challenges that are characteristic of developing economies. One such challenge is informal housing.
Alongside this strand of research, the literature on informal housing has also advanced significantly over the past two decades – Cavalcanti, Da Mata and Santos (2019), and Ferreira, Monge-Naranjo and Pereira (2025) are examples centered on Brazil. This literature analyses the causes, persistence, and consequences of informal housing and slums in urban areas, employing a variety of modelling approaches, ranging from causal inference to general equilibrium and simulation. Some studies investigate the spatial location of slums, typically assuming stylized urban structures.
This study develops a quantitative urban model centered on the São Paulo Metropolitan Region, the largest urban area in Brazil and one of the most populous metropolises in the world. The model explicitly incorporates informal housing and its spatial distribution within the metropolis, a key feature of the Brazilian urban environment – nationwide, 7.99% of the urban households were informal as of 2010 (Cavalcanti, Da Mata, Santos; 2019). Since income inequality is one of the main drivers of informal housing and slum formation, it is also explicitly modelled. The framework is designed to allow for counterfactual analysis of public policies and local interventions. Census and administrative data are readily available for the 39 municipalities that compose the metropolis.
This study contributes to the literature on quantitative urban models by focusing on an urban area in Brazil, a country for which no published studies currently exist in this field. A further contribution is to explicitly model informal housing within a real geographic setting in the context of a developing country.

Dr. Masatomo Suzuki (p)

Condominiums are a form of multi-owned housing governed by a mix of communal and individual property rights. While condominiums play a significant role in urban housing worldwide, their multi-owned nature poses a challenge to their long-term sustainability. Specifically, although repair reserve funds collected from each owner are intended for major condominium renovations, reaching a consensus on the level of reserve collection is difficult because owners have different intentions regarding whether to continue living in or sell the property.

This problem is becoming more prominent in Japan, where the number of condominiums over 40 years old is rapidly increasing. This study uses individual data from a nationwide survey targeting condominium management associations—the Comprehensive Condominium Survey in 2018 (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism)—to investigate the characteristics of condominiums in which repair reserve funds cannot be appropriately collected. While the collective action problems of condominium management have been documented in general, this paper focuses on the long-term outcome of failure to conduct major renovations due to a shortage of reserve funds several decades after construction.

First, we document that, after around 20 years, more than 25% of condominiums face a shortage in accumulated repair reserve funds to conduct major repairs. Second, regression analyses reveal that variations in residents’ intentions to remain living in the condominiums, as reflected by the rentalization of previously owner-occupied units, high vacancy rates, and the emergence of unknown ownership, often result in insufficient repair reserve funds. Third, variations in residents’ intentions often lead to delinquent reserve payments and situations in which reserve amounts cannot be increased using the step-increase method. Even under the equal-installment method, reserve amounts tend to fall short of the required amount unless they are initially set at the level required by the maintenance plan.

The results show that current practices require an increase in repair reserve funds as major repairs approach, but some owners oppose this. Thus, the results suggest the need for preventive measures to avoid future management failures, specifically a dynamic plan at the construction stage for collecting the required amount of repair reserve funds over time.

Ms Monika Kot (p)

The decarbonisation of the building sector constitutes a central pillar of the European energy transition. Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), introduced to enhance market transparency and promote energy-efficient investments, are increasingly embedded in housing transactions. While their environmental rationale is well established, less is known about their spatial economic consequences. This paper investigates whether the energy transition contributes to urban housing market stratification. The analysis draws on a unique geolocated dataset of more than 300,000 Energy Performance Certificates issued between 2015 and 2025 in the Warsaw Metropolitan Area, merged with transaction-level data from the Polish Real Estate Price Register. The EPC database provides detailed indicators of estimated primary and final energy demand, carbon emissions and renewable energy shares. Transaction records contain notarized sale prices, property characteristics and precise spatial coordinates, allowing for micro-level spatial analysis.

Three research questions are addressed. First, is energy efficiency capitalised into housing prices? Second, are high-performance buildings spatially concentrated in already high-value neighbourhoods? Third, does the price premium associated with energy efficiency vary across the metropolitan structure? To answer these questions, spatial hedonic modelling is combined with clustering techniques and grid-level demographic data to examine the socio-spatial patterns of energy modernisation.

Preliminary expectations suggest that energy efficiency is positively associated with transaction prices, but that improvements are unevenly distributed across the metropolitan area. High-efficiency buildings are likely to cluster in central and dynamically developing districts, potentially reinforcing existing price gradients. The findings may indicate that, although environmentally beneficial, the energy transition can interact with housing markets in ways that intensify affordability pressures and socio-spatial inequality.

The paper contributes to the literature on housing and urban transformation by demonstrating how environmental policy instruments may reshape metropolitan spatial structures.