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This paper aims to explore the relationship between the financialisation dynamics of listed property companies (LPCs) and their participation in the metropolisation dynamics, in ten European countries between 2000 and 2017. The study takes place in a context of globalised real estate markets and modification of traditional urban economics.

The measure of financialisation corresponds to a beta increase, in the sense of the capital asset pricing model, and is corroborated by an informativeness index. LPC-owned properties are classified along two spatial segmentations. Panel models are used to analyse the relation between financial and urban hierarchies (through building arbitrages).

Financialisation is generally associated with a decrease in the number of assets owned, especially in the Netherlands and the UK, whereas non-financialised companies tend to increase their number of assets, especially in “flight-to-quality” countries such as Germany and Switzerland. In the first case, non-urban spaces and small and medium urban areas are arbitraged in favour of urban cores and metropoles. In the second, investments are reallocated towards hinterlands and the lower segments of the urban hierarchy. Over the study period, the parallelism between the financial hierarchy and the urban hierarchy was reinforced. Spain illustrates the risks of this evolution, whereas Sweden and Belgium present specificities.

This paper illustrates how LPCs function as transmitting channels in the new spatial and urban organisation.

The study reveals how the role of the largest cities – regional capitals in the urban settlement system – and the economy of the country changed during the period of social and economic transformations at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The object of the study is the largest cities with a population of over 1 million people, the administrative centers of the regions. Unlike Moscow and St. Petersburg, these are administrative centers or “capitals” of large territories that have the status of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation. The authors emphasize the special role of cities – regional capitals in post-socialist and developing countries – where there are significant and rapid changes in the distribution of functions between the center and the regions. At the same time, cities – regional capitals – are not considered as isolated objects, but as elements of a national settlement system, the leaders among Russian second-tier cities. The common features of the evolution of the largest regional capitals, the continuity of the factors of city formation, are revealed. Considerable attention is paid to assessing the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union for the development of the urban settlement system. It was concluded that the “compensatory” nature of the accelerated growth of the largest regional capitals in post-Soviet Russia. “Compensatory” growth is considered as a form of adaptation of the urban settlement system to the weakening of links between its essential links. A methodical approach is proposed that allows a comparative analysis of the role of the largest regional capitals and the capital of the state in the economy of the country. In the process of testing it, an assessment was made of population dynamics, as well as key economic indicators, such as the volume of products shipped, retail turnover, investments, the volume of work in the construction of major regional pages, as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg. The evaluation results allowed the classification of the largest regional capitals in terms of their role in the economic development of the country, as well as in terms of the extent of the gap between the indicators; on the one hand, the largest regional capitals, and on the other, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The purpose of this paper is to present a rare example of the roots of (comparative) urban failure. This acts as counterpoint to the more common preoccupation with investigating how and why some cities become successful.

The main methodology used is a series of in‐depth qualitative interviews with a representative sample of the urban elite of the city being studied. The initial main source of key contacts was the City Centre Management Committee.

Analysis of the in‐depth qualitative interviews showed that most respondents, whether from the public or private sectors, genuinely believed in, and spontaneously expressed the view, that negative parochialism was a pervasive drag on the future plans and aspirations of city leaders. The findings are triangulated with other evidence that this parochialism has endured for generations.

Though the sample of respondents is small, it does represent a high percentage of the local urban elite. Other forms of data triangulation may be possible and could be helpful in corroborating the findings. Future research should seek to identify other instances of the problem.

Not all cities are highly publicised success stories nor deliver the environment that their residents deserve: but good intentions can be thwarted by negative parochialism. Urbanists need to be aware of the existence of negative parochialism and its implications for urban policy and practice.

By examining a rare‐documented example of the roots of (comparative) urban failure, the findings are of value to all who seek to understand the functioning of policymaking in the urban arena.

Models of the commercial property market have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. However, the retail sector and, more specifically, analysis of retail markets at the local level, have been comparatively neglected. This paper makes inroads into this gap in property research. Retail rental change at the local level is explored, focusing on consumer expenditure as the key determinant of change. The appropriateness of proxy variables is investigated and the mechanisms of rental change are examined. This highlights issues and difficulties unique to local level analysis. Following this, the relationship between rental change and underlying changes in consumer expenditure is investigated. The stability of a panel model of rental change is examined, with differences in market functioning identified across diverse groups of key local retail investment markets. These differences highlight the re‐emergence of northern markets during both the economic decline and recovery phases of the last decade of the 20th century. Rental levels in larger and smaller markets are also seen to respond to changes in consumer expenditure to significantly different degrees, in periods of both decline and recovery.

Transnational corporation (TNC)-led oil investments have been widely encouraged as a mechanism for the development of the Global South. Even though the sector is characterized by major accidents, oil-based developmentalist narratives claim that such accidents are merely isolated incidents that can be administratively addressed, redressed behaviorally through education of certain individuals, or corrected through individually targeted post-event legislation. Adapting Harvey Molotch’s (1970) political economy methodology of “accident research”, this paper argues that such “accidents” are, in fact, routine in the entire value chain of the oil system dominated by, among others, military-backed TNCs which increasingly collaborate with national and local oil companies similarly wedded to the ideology of growth. Based on this analysis, existing policy focus on improving technology, instituting and enforcing more environmental regulations, and the pursuit of economic nationalism in the form of withdrawing from globalization are ineffective. In such a red-hot system, built on rapidly spinning wheels of accumulation, the pursuit of slow growth characterized by breaking the chains of monopoly and oligopoly, putting commonly generated rent to common uses, and freeing labor from regulations that rob it of its produce has more potency to address the enigma of petroleum accidents in the global south.

This paper is intended to assess the developments conducted on the master plan of Old Najaf, mainly in three areas: the Imam Ali Holy Shrine and its surroundings, the Great Market Area and the location of the Town of Visitors.

In order to analyse the implementation of the transformation phases in Old Najaf, the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) technique was used to identify and organise the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to the examined case study of the city's historic centre. At the first stage, all available data (photographs, maps, documents and reports) were collected from different sources, including previous studies by governmental institutions, departments and agencies. Ultimately, the SWOT analysis was used for each identified phase in the morphological evolution of the historic centre. This can offer an opportunity to observe the implications of urban planning practices in Old Najaf from the mid-20th century to the present day. In order to identify the well-organised urban design practices and appropriate strategies, the implemented studies and projects were examined by the four factors of the SWOT analysis.

The current results have revealed important urban transformations, already made and/or ongoing, of those aforementioned three main areas, which imply a great loss of the city's traditional character and urban heritage. Further, the environmental and socio-economic issues should be involved in the analysis to evaluate how they have influenced the current outcomes of Old Najaf in relation to the urban configuration and orientation.

The rich cultural and architectural heritage of Al-Najaf historic centre is dramatically neglected and seriously threatened to be lost. Hence, conservation on both tangible and intangible levels is urgently needed. It is the first paper which focussed on this problem and tries to learn from the British Conservation Experiences in this field.

This chapter explores the question – where is the economy? In taking up this question, I explore the action of economists in making the economy, framed in the place of ‘place’ in the economy and how the politics of economic data and calculation and boundaries make economies. In this way, I argue for a performative understanding of regional economics where the economy can be said to be made, often out of real things such as hospitals, factories, shops and schools, and infrastructure, but also out of social practices that echo out of the field of economics into institutions and ways of thinking calculatedly.

To make this case of this approach, and to grasp the slippery fish of where the economy is, I introduce autoethnographic materials from my experience of being a regional economic commentator, holding forth on the Waterford economy. These empirics relay the everyday methods of economic analysis as a material and political practice, alighting on the data, calculations and boundaries that go into making the economy. Here the curious relationship between the economist and their economy, the dancer and the dance come into view and how people, including myself, call an economy into being.

This paper aims to propose that a Neave-Worthington Match Test for Ordered Alternatives is a simple, non-parametric test that can be used to consider Gibrat’s law. Whether the law, that states that the proportional rate of growth is independent of absolute size, is supported by regional house price growth rates is considered. The Match Test is further used to test the applicability of beta-convergence and dual economy models to a house price context.

The Match Test relates an actual rank order with an expected one. Gibrat’s law implies house price growth rates are independent of the absolute price levels. Beta-convergence posits that growth rates are inversely related to the initial price level. With a divergent system, there is a direct relationship between size-order and growth rates. As such, the Match Test is used to test alternative models of size-growth relationship.

Rather than convergence, there is a tendency to diverge across the UK, but not in Eire. That said, the size of growth shocks is related to price level on the upswing of a price cycle, but not in the down. Assigning the high-priced regions of the two islands into core and the rest into a periphery, total matching is dominated by the capital cities’ growth. The sigma-convergence observed in British house prices is likely to be associated with slower beta-divergence, not a convergent system. The law of Gibrat is not found to apply in a regional house price context.

This work only covers two countries and nineteen regions. Gibrat’s law in regional house prices may be better examined using a multi-country analysis.

As the law of Gibrat is not found to apply in a regional house price context and core-regions appearing to dislocated, this has interesting implications for growth trend analysis and the claim of cointegration, which should be explored further. In particular, the level-growth relationship in the cyclical price upswing points to a ratcheting of differentials between high and low house price regions. The common trends in the long run may result from corrective periodic crashes. Not an ideal mechanism for policymakers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper makes a novel use of the Neave-Worthington test in the realm of regional convergence-divergence and in the first consideration of the law of Gibrat in a house price context across two countries.