Rapid growth in the production of new homes in the United Kingdom (UK) is putting build quality under pressure as evidenced by the increase in the number of defects. Housing associations (HAs) contribute 21% to the UK’s annual supply of new homes. HAs are experiencing the challenge of government funding cuts and rental revenue reductions. Maximising the benefit of learning from defects is recognised as being a key opportunity for HAs to help address these challenges. Learning from defects is argued as a means of reducing the persistent defect problem within UK house building, yet how HAs learn from defects is under-researched. There is also a lack of research exploring which impacts of defects are perceived as important by the key stakeholders, which has caused confusion over which types of defect HAs should focus their learning on. The aim of this research was to better understand how UK HAs, in practice, learn from past defects to reduce the prevalence of defects in future new homes. The theoretical lens for this research was organisational learning (OL). An action research approach consisting of diagnosis, action planning, action taking, action evaluation and specifying learning was adopted. Further, the principles of soft systems methodology were incorporated in the action planning phase in order to explore an ill-structured real world problem to identify desirable and feasible changes (action interventions) within a HA. Data collection consisted of questionnaires, semistructured interviews, a focus group and organisational documents. Data analysis techniques included thematic analysis and simple statistical analysis. The key findings suggested that OL can potentially reduce defects and revealed that the health and safety implications and home occupant disruption caused by defects are the priorities. OL in HAs appeared to be viewed as a secondary task which consisted of a defects management team capturing and analysing defect data to identify improvement opportunities, with a primary focus on designing out the identified defects. Opportunities for data analysis fluctuated with workload. The use of live data analysis protected against workload spikes. The key findings further enabled the development of a specific OL from defects model for HAs. The findings revealed the importance of a dual approach to learning consisting of a codification approach of designing out defects combined with a personalisation approach of networking to tackle workmanship and other defects that can’t be designed out. The practical challenges of AR were highlighted when the interventions were abandoned due to changes in key personnel, despite the changes of a live data dashboard being shown to be beneficial after implementation.

Since Gottmann published his pioneering work on megalopolises in 1957, the significance of the concept has been recognized over the last six decades. The concept has inspired a variety of terms used to describe large-scale urbanized forms – such as ‘mega-city regions’, ‘megaregions’ and ‘polycentric urban regions’. Despite the recent resurgent interest in these terms, the two key features that Gottmann (1961, 1976) ascribed to megalopolises have been often neglected in recent literature - their being the ‘hub’ that links national to international urban systems and the ‘incubator’ within national urban systems. In this research, I reconsider the two defining but often overlooked functions of megalopolises by analyzing how megalopolises have articulated national and international urban systems in a globalizing knowledge economy. Taking the case of China’s Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region, I particularly focus upon intercity knowledge collaboration within and beyond this region during the 2000-2014 period. This is divided into two objectives: 1) what are the macro-level patterns and processes of knowledge collaboration at different geographical scales; 2) how have the patterns and processes been affected by micro-level proximity between economic entities. Here scientific knowledge collaboration and technological knowledge collaboration are distinguished with data drawn from the Web of Science and the World Intellectual Property Organization databases respectively. In general, the structure of knowledge collaboration has been functionally polycentric at the megalopolitan scale but become less so at the national and global scales. The ‘globally connected but locally disconnected’ pattern of Shanghai’s external knowledge collaboration suggests that the hinge role of the YRD megalopolis in knowledge collaboration will take time before it is fully realized. Drawing upon information obtained from email surveys of authors, identification of applicant relationships of co-patents, and interviews with identified patent applicants, the micro-level mechanism analysis reveals that mobility of academics mainly accounts for scientific knowledge collaboration whereas multinational enterprises, Chinese domestic firms, universities and research institutes, and the ‘new Argonaut’-like people contribute to technological knowledge collaboration. However, their roles differ in knowledge collaboration at different geographical scales, which also helps explain the underplayed hinge role of the YRD megalopolis.

For the last two decades, urban regeneration projects in many countries in the Global North have been characterised by physical restructuring, especially in deprived areas where social housing is the predominant tenure. Such interventions promote tenure and housing typology mix with a view that these can create income and ethnic mix and foster more socioeconomically and ethnically diverse local social networks. Drawing from participant observation, semi-structured interviews and self-completion questionnaires, this research explores social interaction in North Peckham — in southeast London (UK) — and the Zuidwest Kwadrant — in Amsterdam Nieuw-West (the Netherlands) —, two areas that have undergone extensive physical restructuring. It seeks to answer whether residents on different housing tenures establish social relations, establish their nature and significance, and investigate to what extent local public spaces facilitate cross-tenure social interaction. The analysis combines the literature on neighbouring (Mann, 1954; Abrams and Bulmer, 1986), social networks and communities (Wellman, 1979), and partially borrows Chaskin and Joseph’s (2011) framework for analysing social interaction in mixed income developments. The findings show that social interaction between neighbours is largely casual, benefits from geographic propinquity, and that a great extent of residents’ local social ties appears to comprise individuals on similar housing tenures. Regarding public spaces and facilities, respondents appear to value and share open green spaces and the main local shopping areas; however, marked differences across tenures were found, especially when local state schools and doctor facilities were examined in the Dutch case study. Such a difference appears to be largely related to practices of cultural and class distinction by middle class residents and as a result of policies that sit outside the remit of planning. As a result, the findings challenge the effectiveness of urban restructuring in promoting cross-tenure interaction, especially of the type which can benefit households on lower incomes.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, a growing number of European countries have been developing national policies on Architecture. Reflecting the wide diversity of cultures across the EU, some member states have adopted comprehensive policies setting up a wide range of initiatives while others have approved national legislation addressed to clients and stakeholders or created cultural institutions. Despite their differences, all the approaches share the will to promote well-designed living environments. Hosting these concerns, the EU Council adopted a Resolution on Architectural Quality in 2001, encouraging the member states to promote architecture and urban design as a way to achieve high-quality environments. However, some member states remain sceptical and even suspicious about the effectiveness of a formal policy on Architecture and prefer not to follow this trend without further evidence. In the face of this phenomenon, it is relevant to clarify the role of a national Architectural policy and if it really enhances the role of the state in promoting better places. Following an inductive research strategy, the main objective of this research is to improve the understanding of the role and effectiveness of national Architecture policies in processes of design governance. The research will start by examining to what extent the adoption of formal Architecture policies by the member states has been influenced by an Europeanization process. Then it will explore the comprehensive Architecture policies discourse to uncover the main values and ideas that underlie a formal policy in this domain. Finally, this research will seek to evaluate the effectiveness of a formal Architecture policy through a comparative analysis of current practices among three EU member states: Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands. In sum, this research is a theorization of Architecture as public policy, a methodology for the study of this phenomenon and a comparative study of national Architecture policies.

Ten years after the Global Financial Crisis, this thesis explores the unfolding consequences of this event for local government and politics in London. Far from signalling a ‘ruptural’ end of neoliberal modes of urban governance, the analysis presented here shows how local authorities in London are actively articulating with, mediating, and assembling central government’s radical programme of austerity. More than engendering a simple consolidation or intensification of ‘business as usual’ in a leaner register however, it is suggested that the current moment of austerity urbanism augurs a new operational matrix for local government with path changing consequences. Combining insights from post-foundational theory with in-depth qualitative empirical research, this thesis presents an in-depth ground-up analysis of how austerity urbanism has been ‘policed’ and ‘politicised’. It argues that a post-politicising ‘common sense’ over how austerity should be rolled-out is legible across London’s local authorities, based on logics of responsibilisation, contractualisation and entrepreneurialism. On the one hand, local authorities are managing demand for and divesting of services by responsibilising staff, community groups, and residents under the auspices of participatory governance whilst extending and deepening contractual arrangements with non-governmental and private providers. On the other hand, under pressure to generate new forms of revenue, local authorities are forming new real-estate special purpose vehicles to create and capture urban land and property value as rents. Whilst seeming to reproduce a condition of ‘post-political’ closure, as austerity deepens and contradictions sharpen these modes of local governance face mounting dissent from a growing part with no part. In this context, the political horizon of local government is an ambivalent one. At a moment of closure, austerity urbanism is producing opportunities for radical democratic openings even if they do not yet suggest a tipping point that could change how and for whom local government works.

The topic of ‘how mega transport projects should be assessed’ continues to generate disputes amongst academics, infrastructure specialists, investors and governments alike. This Ph.D. research sought to explore the applicability and effectiveness of participatory MCA methodologies to the (economic, environmental and social) appraisal of such projects. Although very popular amongst academics, participatory MCA methodologies seem to have enjoyed limited practical application and there are no studies assessing their effectiveness. This research entailed several steps, where different methods of investigation and multiple sources of information, both primary and secondary, were combined together in an effort to increase the reliability of the results. Firstly, a comprehensive review of the literature, whose findings were validated and integrated by means of an expert focus group interview, was undertaken in the attempt to determine the key features of mega transport projects. An investigation into transport appraisal practice and traditional appraisal methodologies was then carried out through a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature, complemented with unstructured interviews and informal discussions with some international experts. Successively, an examination of over 60 publications on participatory MCA methodologies was performed with the objective of determining the main attributes and critical aspects of such methods. An analysis of the current trends in mega transport infrastructure planning and decision-making practice was also undertaken based on a series of interviews with several infrastructure practitioners and the analysis of three large-scale port and port-related projects, namely the Alameda freight rail corridor (US), the expansion of the Port of Rotterdam (Holland) and the London Gateway port complex (UK). The London Gateway port complex was also adopted as case study for a practical application of participatory MCA methodologies. Overall, the outcomes of this multi-actor multi-criteria appraisal exercise, together with the findings from the previous steps of research, led to the identification of several (methodological and non-methodological) issues potentially surrounding the practical application of such methods. These issues were ultimately explored through a survey questionnaire carried out amongst specialists and proponents of participatory techniques. The overall conclusion of the thesis is that participatory MCA methodologies represent an under researched area, where some critical themes have received limited consideration; contrasting views still exist on many fundamental aspects; and where, in many cases, the disconnection between theory and practice is apparent. In particular, the key principles, steps and structure of such methods are (directly or indirectly) based on the rational-comprehensive planning model, which hardly reflects the way projects are developed. Therefore, while, in principle, multi-actor multi-criteria procedures might be carried out to complement and integrate the information derived from conventional ex-ante analyses, it is difficult to see how such methods could significantly improve the decision-making process of major transport infrastructure projects.

Recent years has seen a surge of interest in what makes a good life for people. Although internal migrants’ socioeconomic disadvantages in Chinese cities have drawn extensive attention from scholars and policymakers in China, insufficient scholarly effort has so far been devoted to understanding the determinants of migrants’ subjective evaluation of wellbeing. This thesis aims to examine the mechanism by which migrants’ socioeconomic disadvantages influence their subjective wellbeing in Chinese cities, with a particular focus on the roles of social comparison, neighbourhood deprivation, and neighbourhood social and built environment. The empirical study is carried out at both nationwide and city levels. At the national level, the data were derived from the 2014 wave of China Labour-force Dynamics Survey. At the city level, the data were drawn from a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews conducted in Guangzhou in 2015. Five research findings can be derived from the results. First, migrants’ socioeconomic disadvantages in the host city are negatively associated with their subjective wellbeing. Second, there is a mediation effect of social comparison on the relationship between migrants’ actual socioeconomic status and subjective wellbeing. Thrid, neighbourhood built environments have significant impacts on migrants’ subjective wellbeing. Neighbourhood amenities and proximity to public green spaces exert a positive influence on migrants’ subjective wellbeing. Fourth, neighbourhood ties enhance migrants’ subjective wellbeing in a direct manner, but no evidence shows that neighbourhood ties buffer the negative impacts of neighbourhood deprivation. Fifth, the relationship between migrants’ socioeconomic disadvantages and subjective wellbeing in Guangzhou is significantly mediated by neighbourhood deprivation. Specifically, economically disadvantaged migrants are more likely than other migrants to live in impoverished neighbourhoods and thereby tend to have a lower level of subjective wellbeing than other migrants.

This research seeks to explain the unevenness in development across Indonesian provinces. Existing studies are mostly framed by mainstream growth theory in an attempt to explain the divergence and/or convergence of regional rates of economic growth. Those studies, however, pay insufficient attention to geographically specific socio-political relations in shaping the capacity of regions to grow toward different, and usually diverging, paths of development. In investigating why and how regions differ in their capacity to carry out development, an evolutionary approach is adopted to reveal the place-specific aspects influencing regional growth. This research particularly looks at an important aspect of regional development, i.e., its industry structure. Regional industry structures arguably mirror regions' capabilities in developing new industries, which, in turn, shape its future development paths. Regional change is understood as an industrial branching process, with regions diversifying into industries related to the existing industry structure. While new industries are important for regions seeking to diversify their economic bases, the direction of regional evolution is often assumed to be moving toward more sophisticated industries. In fact, industries that are highly motivated by lower domestic factor costs may cause regions to pursue low-end economic activities. Moreover, while the endogenous process of industrial branching is observed in regions of the countries in the Global North, work on regional development in the countries of the Global South highlights the role of exogenous relations, often in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) in initiating development processes. This thesis thus improves evolutionary work on industrial branching by taking into account the direction of branching, the role of FDI, and the influence of factor costs in the evolution of regional industry in Indonesia. Most importantly, the interaction of those endogenous forces and other factors of production is shaped by specific regional institutions, which are part of the analysis as well.

National, regional and sectoral innovation systems are considered key concepts in economic and industrial analysis for understanding the (re)combination of existing knowledge and physical systems to produce innovation in goods and services. Therefore, the framework of innovation systems is widely analysed in both academic and policy circles given that it provides both theoretical and empirical insights. Yet, the extant literature has paid less attention to a number of important matters – 1) the centralised top-down model, 2) low-tech industry and SMEs innovation, 3) the role of intermediaries, 4) the evolutionary process of innovation systems, and 5) a lack of consideration of policy leverage, which is part and parcel of innovation (systems). Furthermore, there is a paucity of empirical applications regarding how to connect three types of innovation systems within one single research framework. To fill these gaps above, this research examines the restructuring process of an old textile region in Daegu, South Korea. Daegu’s textile industry was the subject of policy during the past developmental state period (from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s) and it has been the focus of the first government-led regional attempt at industrial upgrading in the post-developmental state (since the end of the 1990s) period. This suggests that the study of the contribution of the South Korean innovation system to industrial upgrading in Daegu requires an evolutionary approach involving in-depth longitudinal observation covering ample historical events to compensate for the typical methodological weaknesses of the static snapshots found in many innovation studies. With an evolutionary perspective of the Daegu textile industry as a case study, this research unearths the following questions: 1) how Korea’s innovation systems have contributed to the revitalisation of the old industrial region; 2) how local textile intermediaries themselves have evolved and stimulated knowledge dissemination; 3) how the local textile SMEs have transformed their businesses toward a high value-added one, and; 4) how the post-developmental state model has affected the regional upgrade, compared to the previous governance.

Many urban rail transit systems are being built or upgraded, especially in rapidly-developing Chinese cities, with the aim of redeveloping and regenerating particular neighbourhoods. There are direct impacts (such as improved travel accessibility) and also indirect impacts (land use changes, as well as economic, environmental and social changes) typically associated with transport investment. However, transport investment is only one of the factors affecting the success of a particular development initiative. Previous research studies into other factors have varied in their methodology, and it has been difficult to isolate the most important factors, clearly establish causality, and draw general conclusions that can be used in practice. There is an emerging body of evidence suggesting that regeneration effects, triggered by urban transit systems, exert different types of impact, not only on geographic locations, but also on different income groups. Hence there are different 'winners' and 'losers' from investments, and a social equity dimension exists. The social impacts of transport investment are quite poorly understood in the literature. Evidence is derived from Chongqing (重庆, simplified Chinese), a large, newly-emerging and rapidly-developing city in the Southwest region of the People's Republic of China (hereafter referred to as, simply, 'China'). This research aims to understand how investment in urban rail transit might affect urban development in China; how the impact of rail transit differs spatially and across income groups; how to assess the dimensions of (in)equity that arise; and how societies might develop an appropriate strategy for future investment that coordinates and balances the diverse motives and needs of stakeholders in the process. This research utilises both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches: using analysis of census and citywide travel survey data, and also a bespoke local residential survey. A range of statistical techniques is used to examine the socio-spatial distribution of the impacts of rail transit, including logistic regression, geographic weighted regression (GWR), multilevel modelling, MANOVA and discriminant analysis. Based on the interviews of different stakeholders in the transit development process, reflections are made on the policies and planning interventions which might be introduced to achieve greater equity in impacts. As a result, this thesis has successfully addressed the research questions and contributed to: developing a methodological framework for understanding the direct and indirect impacts of rail transit investment on development; providing a comparative study examining the spatial distribution of the indirect impacts of rail transit investment; evaluating the distribution of benefits and burdens across social groups in Chongqing; and proposing a process to help understand governments', developers' and other stakeholders' views on the impacts of rail transit investment and development.