In England, the traditional method of central government redistribution and equalization between locations has been replaced with a greater emphasis on self-sufficiency and entrepreneurism. English local government now faces existential funding questions – a situation that is repeated around the world as the public sector manages the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. Financialization has figured large in the study of entrepreneurial behaviour. However, in England, legal and procedural constraints have driven authorities to seek revenue funding from other sources, principally seeking additional property-related revenues. In response, this article presents a novel typology of local government funding sources and offers an original analysis of their implications for local authorities’ role. The empirical findings show that the buoyancy and quantum of many funding sources are constrained by prior evolution of location and central–local relations: they are not automatic routes to financialization. Conceptually, these findings reveal that methods of financialization, and the local government funding system within which they typically sit, are as likely to be constrained by the evolution and techniques of governance as they are accelerated by it. International debates around financialization, and wider concerns of how locations develop, would benefit from this account of the often-hidden nature and agency of local government funding systems.

The retail property market is constantly adopting to the continuous demand of retailers and their consumers. This paper aims to investigate retail property market dynamics through spatial accessibility measures of the City of York street network. It explores how spatial accessibility metrics (SAM) explain retail market dynamics (RMD) through changes in the city’s retail rental values and stock. Valuation office agency (VOA) data sets (aspatial) and ordnance survey map (spatial) data form the empirical foundation for this investigation. Changes in rental value and retail stock between 2010 and 2017 VOA data sets represent the RMD variables. While, the configured street network measures of Space Syntax, namely, global integration, local integration, global choice and normalised angular choice form the SAM variables. The relationship between these variables is analysed through geo-visualisation and statistical testing using GIS and SPSS tools. The study reveals that there has been an overall negative changes of 15 and 22% in rental value and retail stock, respectively, even though some locations within the sampled city (York, North Yorkshire, England) indicated positive changes. The study further indicated that changes in retail rental value and stock have occurred within locations with good accessibility index. It also verifies that there are spatial and statistical relationship between variables and 22% of RMD variability was jointly accounted for by SAM. This research is first to investigates changes in retail property market variables through spatial accessibility measures of space syntax. It contributes to the burgeoning research field of real estate and Space Syntax.

This paper explores the challenges involved in planning the adaptation of the urban built environment. It approaches this subject by appraising a recently introduced national planning policy (the permission to convert office buildings into residential use without planning permission) in England. Drawing on interviews conducted with planning practitioners, it is possible to unravel the impact of this policy instrument at the coal face of the discipline. The office-to-residential conversion policy has removed the long-established process of local planning discretion in England in favour of a developer led planning policy. Consequently, there has been a tactical manipulation of additional planning tools, originally designed for other use, to re-exert influence at the local level by local planning authorities. Rather than greasing the wheels of office-to-residential conversion, the new policy has thrown a spanner in the works of a unique local planning process that was originally developed to manage urban change. The paper concludes by calling for local planners to reformulate their role in planning urban adaptation by reasserting their role as “market actors” through the development of city information models, the exploitation of professional communication networks and the transference of their own tacit knowledge.

This study explored retail location performance of cities by investigating relationships between changes in retail property stock (supply), changes in retail rental value (demand), and spatial accessibility (retail consumer movement) across three UK cities, namely, Leeds, Newcastle, and York. This is to understand how retail locations and assets can be managed sustainably. In this sense, sustainability was considered through a dual focus in this paper: (1) the efficient use of retail property assets for economic purposes and (2) the impact of these physical retail assets on the local environment in terms of carbon footprint. The study relied on space syntax ideology in computing spatial accessibility index and adopted business rate datasets in computing changes in retail rental value and stock. Findings showed that spatial accessibility across retail locations could predict the performance of retail rental value (but not stock) across the sampled cities. The study further showed that extent of city analysis (scale) is significant in estimating retail location performance and understanding the influence of accessibility. This evidence has the potential to facilitate better decision-making concerning the planning, design, and management of retail locations and spaces. The study is significant because it can serve as a reference for promoting an urban sustainability agenda, especially in ensuring that urban land and properties are used optimally to maximise their social, economic, and environmental values.

This study explores the potential of GIS to map and analyse the distribution, stock and value of commercial and industrial property using rating data compiled for the purposes of charging business rates taxation on all non-residential property in the UK. Rating data from 2010, 2017 and 2019, comprising over 6000 property units in the City of York, were filtered and classified by retail, office and industrial use, before geocoding by post code. Nominal rateable values and floor areas for all premises were aggregated in 100 m diameter hexagonal grid and average rateable value calculated to reveal changes in the distribution and value of all employment floorspace in the City over the last decade. Temporospatial analysis revealed polarisation of York’s retail property market between the historic city centre and out-of-town locations. Segmenting traditional retail from food and drink premises revealed growth in the latter has mitigated the hollowing out of the city core. This study is significant in developing a replicable and efficient method of using GIS, using a nationally available rating dataset, to represent changes in the quantum, spatial distribution and relative value of employment floorspace over time to inform local and national land administration, spatial planning and economic development policy making.

Obsolescence and vacancy are part of the traditional building life cycle, as tenants leave properties and move to new ones. Flux, a period of uncertainty before the establishment of new direction, can be considered part of building DNA. What is new, due to structural disruptions in the way we work, is the rate and regularity of flux, reflected in obsolescence, vacancy, and impermanent use. Covid-19 has instantly accelerated this disruption. Retail failure has increased with even more consumers moving online. While employees have been working from home, rendering the traditional office building in the central business district, at least temporarily, obsolete. This article reflects on the situation by reporting findings from an 18-month research project into the practice of planning adaptation in the English built environment. Original findings based on interviews with a national sample of local authority planners, combined with an institutional analysis of planning practice since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, suggest that the discipline of planning in England is struggling with the reality of flux. There is a demand for planning to act faster, due to the speed of change in the built environment, and liberal political concerns with planning regulation. This is reflected in relaxations to permitted development rules and building use categories. However, participants also indicate that there is a concurrent need for the planning system to operate in a more measured way, to plan the nuanced complexity of a built environment no longer striated by singular use categories at the local level. This notion of flux suggests a process of perpetual change, turbulence, and volatility. However, our findings suggest that within this process, there is a temporal dialectic between an accelerating rate of change in the built environment and a concomitant need to plan in a careful way to accommodate adaptation. We situate these findings in a novel reading of the complex adaptive systems literature, arguing that planning practice needs to embrace uncertainty, rather than eradicate it, in order to enable built environment adaptation. These findings are significant because they offer a framework for understanding how successful building adaptation can be enabled in England, moving beyond the negativity associated with the adaptation of buildings in recent years. This is achieved by recognizing the complex interactions involved in the adaptation process between respective stakeholders and offering an insight into how respective scales of planning governance can coexist successfully.