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This chapter provides a critical examination of the urban renewal process currently taking place in inner-city Johannesburg. It evaluates the effects of an approach to providing social housing which blends commercial, market-based practices with state intervention and regulation and discusses the implications these competing imperatives have for the area and academic understandings of urban renewal.

Findings are based on a qualitative research process, carried out over 9 months in inner-city Johannesburg. Research involved interviews with property developers, housing providers, government officials, and tenants living in renovated social and affordable housing developments.

The process is contradictory and overburdened, and attempts to fulfill competing goals and agendas. Some developmental ambitions are being realized as the supply of social and affordable housing is expanding. However, the benefits are limited, as poor communities are being displaced and, in many cases, commercial concerns trump social and developmental considerations.

Findings highlight the ways in which a range of political circumstances, policy decisions, and spatial conditions combine to create an approach to renewal which is neither entirely neoliberal nor developmental. The case study complicates narratives which stress the global dominance of neoliberal approaches to urban renewal and demonstrates that alternative developmental ambitions exist alongside commercial practices.

The chapter highlights the ambiguity and hybridity of localized approaches to housing provision. In doing so it adds nuance to debates about urban processes around the globe and draws attention back to the uncertainty, agency, and diversity which are continuously shaping urban societies.

The systematic risks related to credit financing has received significant attention in the academic domain during and after any financial crisis. However, the role of insurance has not been adequately studied in the context of crises. The extant literature also shows that the scale of credit financing depends upon the availability of credit insurance and on the policy orientation. Past evidence shows that demand for credit insurance was significantly high during the crisis period. Therefore, this chapter proposes to study the role of various combinations of these two aspects near the period of crisis. The findings of this chapter are based on the outcomesof previous research articles on these topics. The research articles are gathered from various online databases for the years 2000–2014 for the G7 economies. This chapter has alsoincluded facts from contextual policy documents on monetary and fiscal policies where it finds them necessary. Broadly, this chapter describes the role of policies when two mutually dependent industries interact and adversely impact market equilibrium.

This research paper explores the role of women talk (schmoozing) and the gender gap in urban sociology. In the discussions concerning the changing face of the Dutch inner cities, there is an increasing tendency for attention to be paid to ethnicity, without a concomitant analysis of the impact of gender in these neighbourhoods. Many Dutch urban theorists focus on examining both the levels and effects of segregation in urban neighbourhoods and how this impacts integration and community building in the Netherlands. This study, in seeking to redress this imbalance, firmly places women at the centre of urban theoretical enquiry. Using the results of unstructured interviews and observation I am able to offer an assessment of the many ways in which ethnically embedded gender relations have impacted on the urban and social spaces known as Afrikaanderwijk. A key line of enquiry being: what role do women play and how are they visible in/at the local neighbourhood level, specifically in the form of everyday, informal social contacts?

A statutory board is one of the three forms of public enterprise in Singapore which are involved directly or indirectly in economic development. Tan Chwee Huat has defined a statutory board as “an autonomous government agency set up by special legislation to perform specific functions (Tan, 1974, p. 102).” Similarly, Lee Boon Hiok has referred to statutory boards as “a catchall phrase for the statutory bodies which have been established by an Act of Parliament,” which specifies their rationale as well as their rights and powers (Lee, 1975, pp. 38–39).