Recently, Adams and Tiesdell (2010), Tewdwr-Jones (2012) and Batty (2013) have outlined the importance of information and intelligence in relation to the mediation and management of land, property and urban consumers in the future city. Traditionally, the challenge for urban planners was the generation of meaningful and timely information. Today, the urban planners’ challenge is no longer the timely generation of urban data, rather, it is in relation to how so much information can be exploited and integrated successfully into contemporary spatial planning and governance. The paper investigates this challenge through a commentary on two City Information Modelling (CIM) case studies at Northumbria University, UK. This commentary is grouped around four key themes, Accessibility and availability of data, accuracy and consistency of data, manageability of data and integration of data. It is also designed to provoke discussion in relation to the exploitation and improvement of data modelling and visualisation in the urban planning discipline and to contribute to the literature in related fields. The paper concludes that the production of information, its use and modelling, can empower urban planners as they mediate and contest state-market relations in the city. However, its use should be circumspect as data alone does not guarantee delivery of a sustainable urban future, rather, emphasis and future research should be placed upon interpretation and use of data.

This paper explores how business occupiers decide whether and where to relocate. It captures the experience and behaviour of a range of sizes and types of business occupier and subjects their decision‐making processes to detailed scrutiny. A linear three‐stage decision model is used to sequence and structure interviews with individuals who have intimate involvement with the relocation of 28 firms and organizations in Tyne and Wear, in the north‐east of England. The ‘constant comparative’ method is used to analyse the interview data, from which emerges 18 key concepts, comprising 51 characteristic components. Using an axial approach, these are organized into 10 cross‐cutting themes that represent the main areas of consideration or influence on the thinking of the people involved in determining whether a firm or organization should relocate and, if so, where to. The resulting analysis finds that organizations adopt varying degrees of sophistication when making relocation decisions; small firms are more inclined to make decisions based on constrained information; larger organizations adopt a more complex approach. Regardless of firm size, key individuals exert considerable influence over the decision‐making process and its outcome.

In the light of the new Coalition Government's proposed ‘rescaling’ of sub-national governance away from the regional level, it is an opportune time to re-consider the strength and weaknesses of the city or sub-regional approach to economic development and to search, once more, for the ‘missing middle’ in English Governance. In this context, the article initially assesses the case for city or sub regions as tiers of economic governance, before examining the lessons to be learnt from the experiences of the existing city regions in the North East of England. It argues that while contemporary plans to develop Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) can be usefully considered within the context of the emerging city regional developments under the previous Labour Governments, a number of important challenges remain, particularly in relation to ensuring accountable structures of governance, a range of appropriate functions, adequate funding, and comprehensive coverage across a variety of sub-regional contexts. While the proposals of the new Government create the necessary ‘space’ to develop sub-regional bodies and offer genuine opportunities for both city and county LEPs, the scale of the sub-regional challenge should not be underestimated, particularly given the context of economic recession and major reductions in the public sector.

Growth in the number of university students has increased demand for accommodation beyond that which universities themselves can provide, provoking private investor supply-side responses such as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) and purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). Such developments can lead to high concentrations of students in areas proximate to university colleges and campuses. The movement of large numbers of transitory students into well-established residential areas in university cities, termed studentification, leads to socioeconomic and physical changes. We deploy a mixed-methods approach to analyze qualitative and quantitative data, exploring the role of market participants and revealing the extent and impact of studentification in Durham, a small historic university city in North East England with a high relative student population. The research confirms that studentification was driven by key actors across two distinct phases: conversion of terraced houses into HMOs by private landlords, subsequently restricted by planning regulations, followed by development of PBSA by institutional investors supported by and in collaboration with the local authority and university. Consequently, studentification in Durham has become more dispersed, resulting in increased house prices, rents and competition for investment opportunities farther afield, causing exclusionary displacement of local residents and reducing the supply of family and social housing. We present a detailed timeline of studentification in Durham and reveal a new geography of studentification that extends to peripheral areas of the city and offer some salutary lessons in respect of planning and housing management policy responses to high demand for student accommodation.

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.