Financing urban development, three business models: Johannesburg, Shanghai and London.

There has been growing interest in the expansion of global investment in urban areas, and the financialisation of urban development, both of which bring new business logics into the production of the built environment and shape urban outcomes. At the same time, mega urban projects have continued and spread as a significant format of urban expansion and renewal, often strongly linked to transnational investors and developers. Nonetheless, the distinctive regulatory and political contexts within which transnational actors must bring such projects to fruition matter greatly to outcomes, with territorialised governance arrangements both shaping and being shaped by transnational dynamics. However, there has been little systematic comparative consideration of these diverse regulatory contexts in their own right, rather than as contributors to wider circulating processes such as neoliberalisation. As a result, the implications of different regulatory regimes for urban outcomes have not been effectively assessed. In this paper we therefore broaden the discussion from globalised processes of "financialisation" to consider three large-scale urban development projects from the perspective of their distinctive "business models", including their place in achieving wider strategic objectives at national and metropolitan scales, their agile and often bespoke institutional configurations, and their different forms of financing, taxation and land value capture. Our cases are Lingang, Shanghai (one of nine planned satellite cities), the Corridors of Freedom project in Johannesburg (a linear transport oriented development seeking to integrate the racially divided city), and Old Oak and Park Royal in north-west London (under a mayoral development corporation, associated with significant new metropolitan and national transport investments). We observe that the business models adopted, notably in relation to financial calculations and income streams associated with the developments, are a result of strongly path dependent formats of governance and income generation in each case. However we want to move beyond seeing these as residual, as contingent and contextual to wider accounts of urban development focussed on globalised financial flows and calculations. Using a comparative approach we initiate a systematic analytical conversation about the implications of different business models for the form and socio-economic potential of mega-urban development projects.

Efficient and facile synthesis of novel stable monodeuterium labeled ractopamine.

A novel synthetic route to stable deuterium labeled ractopamine was disclosed with 6.49% total yield and 97.7% isotopic abundance. Its structure and the isotope-abundance were confirmed according to (1)H-NMR and high-resolution mass spectrometry.

A Geographical Approach to China's Local Government Debt.

Since the 2010s local government debt has boomed in China because the government relies on debt financing for infrastructure investment. The debt mainly consists of the issuance of Chengtou bonds and later local government bonds. Using data from more than 300 cities from 2009 to 2020, this article maps its spatial dynamics to further the understanding of intergovernmental relations in the studies on local government debt. We find that, from 2009 to 2014, most cities had large bond-issuing amounts. The dynamics were affected by the economic stimulus target set by the central government and the interjurisdictional competition in borrowing among local governments. After 2015 the cities with better economies issued more bonds because the central government tried to match local government debt with local fiscal capacity to maintain financial security. The spatial dynamics show the increasing intervention by the central government in local fiscal income and expenditure, reflecting fiscal centralization. Fiscal centralization did not effectively contain the financial risk in the less-developed cities. Motivated by the competition, the less-developed cities did not use bonds efficiently and had higher ratios of bond issuance to fiscal income, experiencing higher financial risk.

Desde el 2010, la deuda de los gobiernos locales en China se ha disparado debido a que las administraciones recurren a la financiación por medio de deuda para inversión en infraestructura. La deuda consiste primordialmente en la emisión de bonos Chengtou y, más tarde, bonos del gobierno local. Usando datos de más de 300 ciudades, entre 2009 y 2020, este artículo mapea la dinámica espacial para lograr un mayor entendimiento de las relaciones intergubernamentales en los estudios sobre deuda de los gobiernos locales. Encontramos que, de 2009 a 2014, la mayoría de las ciudades emitieron grandes volúmenes de bonos. Las dinámicas se afectaron por el objetivo del estímulo económico establecido por el gobierno central y por la competencia interjurisdiccional en el endeudamiento entre los gobiernos locales. Después de 2015, las ciudades con mejores economías emitieron más bonos debido a que el gobierno central trató de equiparar la deuda del gobierno local con la capacidad fiscal local para conservar la seguridad financiera. La dinámica espacial deja ver la creciente intervención del gobierno central en los ingresos y gastos fiscales locales, lo cual refleja la centralización fiscal. La centralización fiscal no contuvo eficazmente el riesgo financiero en las ciudades menos desarrolladas. Motivadas por la competencia, las ciudades menos desarrolladas no utilizaron eficientemente los bonos y tuvieron ratios más altas de emisión de bonos respecto a los ingresos fiscales, experimentando un riesgo financiero más alto.

Poverty concentration and determinants in China's urban low-income neighbourhoods and social groups.

Based on a large-scale household survey conducted in 2007, this article reports on poverty concentration and determinants in China's low-income neighbourhoods and social groups. Three types of neighbourhood are recognized: dilapidated inner-city neighbourhoods, declining workers' villages and urban villages. Respondents are grouped into four categories: working, laid-off/unemployed and retired urban residents, together with rural migrants. We first measure poverty concentration across different types of neighbourhood and different groups. The highest concentrations are found in dilapidated inner-city neighbourhoods and among the laid-off/unemployed. Mismatches are found between actual hardships, sense of deprivation and distribution of social welfare provision. Second, we examine poverty determinants. Variations in institutional protection and market remuneration are becoming equally important in predicting poverty generation, but are differently associated with it in the different neighbourhoods and groups. As China's urban economy is increasingly shaped by markets, the mechanism of market remuneration is becoming a more important determinant of poverty patterns, especially for people who are excluded from state institutions, notably laid-off workers and rural migrants.