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Abstract Implementing energy saving measures (ESMs) in buildings is a critical part of the global de-carbonization process. To private building owners, the cost-effectiveness of ESMs is a major concern. To public policy makers, maximizing carbon reduction within budgets is a common goal. As such, a plethora of studies have been pursued to evaluate the economic or environmental effectiveness of ESMs; however, the reliability of their results are often uncertain due to the dearth of real data. This paper reports a case study on evaluating the retrofit adopted for the air-conditioning (AC) system of a commercial building in Hong Kong. Using longitudinal energy and cost data of the AC system, the economic performance of the retrofit was evaluated by analyzing its net present value and return on investment, and an indicator known as 'carbon reduction efficiency' was introduced to assess the environmental-cum-economic performance of the retrofit. Besides the development of a scaling factor that accounts for the climatic influence on AC energy use, the effect of equipment degradation on the long-term environmental performance of the retrofit was revealed. Providing empirical evidence of economic or environmental effectiveness of ESMs, this study illustrates a rigorous, pragmatic approach to evaluating retrofit projects in real-world buildings. Highlights • Used real data to evaluate the economic performance of building energy retrofits. • Assessed environmental-cum-economic performance by carbon reduction efficiency. • Developed a scaling factor that accounts for climatic influence on energy use. • Revealed the effect of equipment degradation on the energy performance of retrofits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Harvey's assertion on class monopoly rent, this paper investigates developers' monopolist pricing decisions in urban China, with an additional focus on the heterogeneity between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private developers. By contextualizing Harvey to China's urban political economy, we find that when developers maximize profits and local governments maximize land revenues, their individual activities forge a collective to create "island-like" markets that lead to class monopoly rents, and that local governments seek to realize social goals primarily through the operation of SOEs, making SOE developers act differently. We specify a set of hypotheses on the relationship between private developers' monopolist pricing and their power in local secondary land markets and SOEs' imparity. We organize a city-level, national-scale dataset and use a fixed effects model and the instrumental variable approach to test our hypotheses. This research has implications for China's land and housing policies, and suggests that a deeper examination of the concept of class monopoly rent would facilitate a better understanding of contemporary neoliberal cities. • Harvey's class monopoly rent theory is contextualized to the political economy of China's land and housing markets. • Positive relation between land market concentration and housing prices was identified using a national-scale panel dataset. • Developers in the eastern region and in large cities are more likely to adopt monopolist pricing decisions. • SOE developers price housing significantly lower than private developers across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The delineation of the land occupied by Public Rental Housing (PRH) is a contentious issue in worldwide debates over PRH privatization. Heated arguments hold that governments should retain the occupied land for mitigating inequalities that privatization might provoke. Dual-role policies arise concerning both efficiency and equality. This research seeks to decode actual consequences of such policies based on their implementation in Hong Kong, with a specific focus on the Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS). Intended to enliven PRH within needy families, the TPS policy instead resulted in dormant resale of privatized PRH with adverse effects on target groups. Hypotheses on how the TPS policy has affected housing resale are developed based on property rights and searching theories and tested against empirical data. This research offers a theoretical basis for exploring solutions to the unanticipated aftermath of Hong Kong’s PRH privatization and provides information for other governments on implications of privatization strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Inconsistences between demographic, economic and technical (DET) factors and policies affect how compactness affects QoP. • Compact growth driven by DET changes are more effective in fostering better QoP. • In economically backward cities, policy shocks toward compactness could improve QoP. • In relatively developed cities, policy shocks could have attenuated positive impacts of compactness on QoP. The conventional wisdom that compact city fosters quality of place (QoP) has been contested in the literature, leaving the nexus between urban expansion and QoP something of a black-box. This paper investigates the magnitude of additional QoP achievements derived from increasing compactness for 362 Chinese cities. We propose that an expansion consists of a fundamental part (FLE) in consistency with fundamental factors such as demographic, economic and technical changes and a transitory part (TLE) mainly driven by policy shocks, while these two parts would affect QoP heterogeneously. We find that compact FLE has positive effects on QoP, which, however, may be attenuated by TLE. We also discern that positive effects of compactness on QoP are most pronounced in cities located in economically backward areas of the west; and only cities in this region have QoP positively related to compact TLE, indicating that even policy shocks could improve QoP here as long as they are promoting compactness. This research has theoretical contributions and implications for China's urban polies that a move from sweeping directives on urban expansion to connecting with fundamental changes is more effective in fostering QoP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]