Driving South: The globalization of auto consumption and its social organization of space

ABSTRACT

Don Mitchell is one of the most influential contemporary cultural geographers and has long been at the forefront of scholarship on intersections of capital, nature and labor. His work engages the geo-historical processes of landscape co-production and discusses how social, political and labor struggles that formed landscapes have been hidden or erased. Mitchell’s research and work are informed by an urgency to uncover the forces shaping the human–land dialectic. It is difficult not to sense profound urgency at the current political–ecological conjuncture, which is why we turned to Don Mitchell to reflect on his research, intellectual practice and the state of academia and activism today. The first section of the interview centers on Mitchell’s research and the tools and methods he employs in his work. In the second section of the interview, we discuss strategies and tactics in resistance struggles, campus activism and radical scholarship. Infused throughout the interview are the influences that have shaped Mitchell’s unique approach to teaching, research and a critical academic life. We conclude with a section on current academic practice.     

“I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted,but I do not know which half (J. Wannamaker)”: Semiotic answers to perennial branding troubles

Marketing maverick J. Wannamaker's famous dictum has been hovering over marketing effectiveness ever since the late nineteenth century. Providing tentative answers to such a tantalizing question does not rest solely with the media-mix of a brand campaign. As argued in this paper, even more fundamentally than budget allocation lie issues about the semiotic structure of an intended brand positioning. By drawing on structuralist semiotics and particularly by focusing on the operations of structuration, homologation, isotopy, reduction, redundancy, recurrence, it will be demonstrated that what is dominantly conceived as “waste” does not concern merely media integration, but equally importantly message integration. Furthermore, communicative waste as aberrant positioning is not only the outcome of aberrant decoding, but also aberrant destructuration, both posing considerable threats to brand coherence and communicative consistency.     

The impact of parental homeownership on children's outcomes during early adulthood

Abstract

Whether children benefit from being raised in a home owned by their parents has important policy implications and has been the topic of much scholarly debate. We match Panel Study of Income Dynamics data with census tract data to examine the impact of childhood experiences on adult outcomes for children followed over three decades. This allows us to document a wide range of characteristics.

For children born between 1968 and 1974, we analyze data on their first 18 years and also various outcomes when they are between 25 and 31 in 1999. We control for a comprehensive set of observable parental characteristics and develop a method to control for unobservable child characteristics together with an instrumental variable for the remaining selection problems. Parental homeownership status and children's college education and home‐ownership status are closely related, although the former is generated partially by the greater residential stability associated with homeownership.     

Foreclosing on the American dream? The financial consequences of low-income homeownership

Federal programs have consistently encouraged ever-lower-income households to buy homes, despite concerns about the long-term sustainability and desirability of homeownership from the perspective of wealth-building, especially since the recent housing market collapse and the epidemic of mortgage foreclosures. We ask in this paper: can very low-income households build wealth through sustainable homeownership, with the aid of an innovative public program? We answer this question by examining 122 very low-income households who purchased their homes between 1996 and 2007 after completing an extensive asset-building and homeownership education/counseling program offered by the Housing Authority of the City and County of Denver (DHA), called HOP. We analyze our own longitudinal surveys and focus groups, as well as data compiled from administrative agency sources, real estate records, and longitudinal census data from the Neighborhood Change Database and the Piton Foundation's Neighborhood Facts Database. We find that homeownership attained through HOP typically did provide very low-income households with opportunities to build home equity (both absolutely and relative to generic homeowner cohorts in Denver) and net wealth, although this was contingent on time of purchase and ethnicity. Our multivariate analyses revealed that changes in annualized home equity appreciation were associated with the ethnic composition of the neighborhood and age of property. Annualized wealth accumulation was associated with annualized home equity appreciation, being married throughout the tenure of homeownership, and year of home purchase. HOP homebuyers received exceptionally favorable initial mortgage terms and conditions, often enhanced with down-payment assistance from their own DHA escrow account or from local housing and neighborhood development organizations, resulting in a dramatically low rate of default and foreclosure to date. Moreover, HOP homebuyers were not immune to financial stresses, and the continuing lack of wealth for many makes them vulnerable to future interruptions in primary wage earner's employment or health. We discuss the implications for low-income homeownership policy and argue that the goal of expanding homeownership opportunities should not be abandoned.     

Overspending in Public Organizations: Does Strategic Management Matter?

ABSTRACT

In the wake of the financial crash, many governments across the globe are seeking to curb expenditure in public sector organizations. To assess the extent to which public organizations can make strategic choices that might result in lower expenditure, we explore the relationship between strategic management and overspending in English local governments. The effects of strategic stances and actions on overspending are tested using multivariate statistical techniques. The empirical results show that an innovative strategic stance results in overspending as does a commitment to the development of new services, while a reactive strategic stance and decentralized decision making are associated with lower levels of overspending. Our analysis provides support for arguments that public organizations can make strategic choices that result in tighter control of their budgets.     

The impact of neighbors who use section 8 certificates on property values

Abstract

This article statistically examines the sale prices of single‐family homes surrounding Section 8 sites first occupied between 1991 and 1995 in Baltimore County. If only a few Section 8 sites were located within 500 feet, we found a strong positive impact on property values in higher‐valued, real‐appreciation, predominantly white census tracts. However, in low‐valued or moderately valued census tracts experiencing real declines in values since 1990, Section 8 sites and units located in high densities had a substantial adverse effect on prices within 2,000 feet, with the effect attenuated past 500 feet. Focus groups with homeowners revealed that the negative impact was based on the units’ imperfect correlation with badly managed and maintained properties.

We argue that policies should be devised to direct Section 8 households away from vulnerable neighborhoods, better regulate managers of Section 8 apartments, and more stringently screen and monitor Section 8 households.     

The challenges facing public housing authorities in a brave new world

Abstract

Public housing authorities (PHAs) are entering a brave new world. Major proposed changes to the public housing program will force PHAs to compete with private sector providers for tenants. To succeed, they will have to act more like entrepreneurial market participants: to change their management practices, the types of tenants they house, and the kinds of developments they operate, and to attract private capital for the development and operation of public‐private public housing ventures.

PHAs must confront the challenges of transformation while pursuing four mutually conflicting goals: housing the neediest, achieving diversity of tenantry, cross‐subsidizing by attracting unsubsidized tenants, and attracting private capital. Success, or even survival, may require sacrificing one or more of these goals. Whether PHAs can increase housing production to such an extent that they can provide sufficient housing for the neediest while fulfilling the other goals as well remains unclear.     

Alternative measures for the financial condition of the multifamily housing stock

Abstract

Indicators of the financial condition of the multifamily housing stock can potentially inform several policy issues, such as the loss of affordable rental units, multifamily developers’ access to capital, and the emerging secondary mortgage market for multifamily properties. Several rules of thumb exist for assessing financial condition. This article uses the Residential Finance Survey to investigate whether it matters, from a practical standpoint, which one is employed. Specifically, we ascertain how five measures—loan‐to‐value, debt coverage, rent‐to‐value, net operating income—to‐value, and vacancy loss ratios—relate to each other and rank properties.

We found that Pearsonian correlations among the measures varied dramatically. Factor analysis produced two factors, one corresponding to a rent‐flow measure and the other to a debt‐burden measure. Spearman rank‐order correlations revealed that with one exception, measures yielded noticeably dissimilar financial condition rankings. We conclude that single‐dimensional measures of financial condition should not be used in isolation.