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Between 2007 and 2017, Lima experienced an unprecedented growth of the construction sector and an increase in high-rise condominiums. Urban land as a strategic resource has altered the spatial configuration of Lima’s central districts. This paper presents the results of a case study of Barranco, a central and emblematic district of Lima that underwent an intense real estate boom. In our assessment, we connect the recent touristification and gentrification debates to develop a new pattern of Latin American gentrification. We argue that Barranco’s consolidation as a tourist destination, along with the relaxation of local construction policies, has led to the development of one-bedroom apartments in high-rise condominiums destined mainly to be rented out to tourists and other types of floating population. This urban restructuring model has created new business opportunities for what we call a rent-seeking middle class, keen to invest in real estate as an alternative means to increase their income. By way of discussion, we argue that the case of Barranco exemplifies a new trend in Latin American gentrification which is not characterised by an influx of the urban middle class into central areas, nor by a massive physical displacement of lower-income residents, but by the growing purchasing power of a wealthier middle-class group investing in the short-term rental business in combination with other enabling factors.

One of the most enduring legacies of apartheid is the racialised in-access to property for the (black) majority of South Africans. The large unmet demand for accessible and affordable residential property close to work opportunities has resulted in widespread unlawful occupation of inner city buildings, which in the post-apartheid legal order has been shielded by a constitutional prohibition against arbitrary and unjust eviction. Yet, notwithstanding significant protection against eviction, in what remains a largely private property-dominated paradigm, unlawful occupation is an inherently disruptive act that pits ownership against the use/occupation of the same piece of property. Seeking to better understand the under-scrutinised social reality of such unlawful occupation of privately-owned property, we undertook qualitative research to examine how unlawful occupiers view, traverse and (re)define property-related arrangements. Coming from legal and built environment backgrounds respectively, we were particularly interested to understand the extent to which the legal limbo of unlawful occupation has given rise to a rejection of the hegemony of private property ownership and the construction of an alternative urban property rights consciousness among unlawful occupiers. Our research indicates that, although residents in Johannesburg’s inner city have found ways to deal with their state of unlawful occupation, the occupied spaces currently more accurately reflect a survivalist struggle in a mainstream property ownership-dominated reality than the assertion of a new urban property regime, with occupiers yearning for greater, rather than less, formality and legal authority.

Taking a production-side approach, the article discusses how property restitution and privatisation have created rent and value gaps, and influenced social change in the inner city of Warsaw (Poland). Specifically, a rent gap (resulting from restitution) and a value gap (created by low-cost privatisation) are hypothesised to have produced different ownership structures in pre-war residential buildings, with different implications for social change. These effects are assumed to be modulated by three factors: legal constraints, availability of private capital and changing residential preferences. The main findings show that the national legislation and municipal regulations with respect to low cost privatisation created the value gap and favoured intergenerational property transfer and lower residential mobility. The value gap has been eliminated by the changes in municipal regulations. Second, a lack of private capital was a key element in disinvestment in the 1990s, and private developers have since become key actors in shaping the housing offer and have triggered intensive gentrification. Third, residential choices often follow family reasons (inheritance of a unit), and are loosely coupled with a ‘back to the city’ movement. The contemporary choices of many newcomers are still embedded in opportunities created by earlier privatisation. Finally, former municipal tenants in restituted buildings come under pressure from new, private owners to leave their homes. Paradoxically, restitution, seen as a mechanism for social justice, has led to social injustice. Overall, it appears that both privatisation and restitution have fuelled problems of affordability, and led to the exclusion of lower-income households from the housing market.

Gentrification has often been linked to the spatial displacement of the marginalised, including prostitutes. However, in Germany, the legal spaces of prostitution are to a certain extent defensible, and gentrification processes often cover larger parts of inner cities, leaving little room for displacement. Using the example of prostitution in Frankfurt, this paper analyses how police make sense of and shape the shifting geographies of gentrification. It shows how spatial displacement is partially subsumed by two additional police strategies: intensifying attempts to discursively appease protesting citizens, and flexibilising the containment of prostitution in the inner city (e.g. by keeping street scenes on the move and lobbying for temporary brothel licenses).

In the past decades, when São Paulo became the national manufacturing centre, it has experienced great population growth. Since then, many housing problems have emerged. In addition, the difficulties that inner cities face in attracting jobs and maintaining economic activities are particularly challenging. Indeed, even if many cities have successfully regenerated their central areas, the so-called inner city problem is still very much alive in the case of São Paulo. As a result although the city centre has abundant urban infrastructure it still has plenty of vacant spaces, including residential buildings. One could say that São Paulo’s city centre is characterised by a large number of empty spaces in an area that is simultaneously crowded with buildings and urban facilities. This paper intends to contribute to the empirical analysis of the determinants of vacancy rates, with a particular focus on historical city centres, using São Paulo Metropolitan Area as our case study. Our empirical analysis relies on district-level data for the years 2000 and 2010, and combines standard spatial econometric methods with hedonic modelling. Our results suggest that there are three main groups of determinants: individual buildings characteristics, mobility of households and neighbourhood quality. We find evidence that the historic central city is a distinctive submarket, needing special urban policies. Its determinants work differently when compared with the housing markets of other areas across the city.

This paper considers the importance of age in delineating urban space, the latter operationalised as high-density living. Many cities have experienced an increase in inner city living contributing to gentrification. Today, inner cities contain more amenities, public transit and housing options than in the past but there are also growing affordability concerns owing to rising prices. Especially young adults, sometimes dubbed Millennials, are making location decisions in a context of lower employment security, higher costs and continuing high-density re-development that now extends into suburban areas in some cases. The analysis in this paper shows evidence of a youthification process that results in an increasing association of high-density living with the young adult lifecycle stage. The higher density areas remain young over time as new young adults move into neighbourhoods where there are already young people living, and they move out if their household size increases. Youthified spaces have become characterised by small housing units that are not generally occupied by households with children. Additionally, some areas are exhibiting generational bifurcation as both older and younger adults live in some higher density areas. Youthification is driven by a combination of lifestyle, demographic, macro-economic and housing market changes that require further investigation. The youthification process is not replacing, but occurring alongside, gentrification and points to young age as a delineator of high-density living becoming more important over time. However, immigration, measures of social class and household size still remain the most important explanatory variables of high-density living.

Since the 1990s the inner city residential areas of CEE post-socialist cities have experienced substantial physical and social transformation. Previous studies have recorded a gradual rehabilitation of inner city housing stock and the displacement of lower status groups by middle and higher social status residents, but they have also shown that diverse social groups continue to live in the inner city. The scholarly emphasis on identifying the macro-scale factors that influence inner city change has resulted in a lack of studies considering micro-scale processes. We therefore herein attempt to address this gap in the literature by providing qualitative insight into the drivers of inner city dynamics at the level of the individual actors concerned. Our study is based on an investigation of two second-tier cities: Tartu in Estonia and České Budějovice in the Czech Republic. We found that, besides supply side factors which emphasise the conditions of urban spatial fabric, relocations to inner cities can best be explained by a combination of household socio-economic, life course and lifestyle factors. We also provide a typology of relocators to post-socialist inner cities, based on our findings.

This paper will examine the views and experiences of Black youths living in socially deprived areas of London in order to examine the way in which they recognise the term ‘Black neighbourhood’ as a resource for ethnic identity formation and collective mobilisation. Despite the apparent problems that are typically associated with ‘Black neighbourhoods’ for many Black youths, these neighbourhoods also represent urban spaces through which a range of bonding social capital resources are generated including ties of reciprocal trust, solidarity and civic participation. These spaces hold intrinsic value for these young people providing them with a sense of wellbeing and belonging. However, the analysis will also show that the young people’s experiences of the neighbourhood are not always positive ones, and such spaces create negative outcomes for Black youths residing there. In particular, the data will highlight the restrictive capacity of ‘Black neighbourhoods’ and the various ways in which they limit Black youths’ opportunities to ‘get on’ in terms of social mobility and their ability to move beyond neighbourhood boundaries.

After the political and economic changes of 1989–90, the concept of gentrification inspired many urban researchers in central and eastern Europe (CEE). Despite the growing number of papers, there is still a substantial empirical gap concerning the transformation of inner-city neighbourhoods in the CEE. This paper is based on empirical data regarding the physical and social upgrading of neighbourhoods in inner Budapest. The paper argues that gentrification in its traditional sense affects only smaller areas of the inner city, mostly those where demolition and new housing construction took place as an outcome of regeneration programmes. At the same time, the old housing stock has been less affected by gentrification. This is mainly due to the high share of owner-occupation and the social responsibility of local governments. Thanks to renovation and new housing construction, a healthy social mix will probably persist in the inner city of Budapest in the future.

Scholars and policy-makers have increasingly sought to understand the relationship between poverty and place in the inner city. This paper examines the spatiality of an anti-poverty strategy called ‘gentrification with justice’ and implemented by an urban ministry collective in three neighbourhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. This place-based approach centres on the movement of middle-class ‘strategic neighbours’ into impoverished neighbourhoods as a way to transform the local socio-spatial dialectic of poverty. The urban ministry collective draws upon notions of diverse community, social justice, the ‘where’ of faithful practice and a faith-governed market in seeking to redevelop neighbourhoods. Based on archival analysis and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with leaders and members of the urban ministry collective, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the place-making role that faith-motivated actors play in local contexts of poverty.

During the 1990s, urban planning in Melbourne changed from prescriptive regulation to a place-based performance framework with a focus on existing or desired ‘urban character’. This paper is a case study of a contentious urban project in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy: a highly valued place characterised as an irregular and transgressive mix of differences: between building types, functions, forms, heights and people. Contrasting conceptions, experiences and constructions of ‘character’ are explored from the viewpoints of residents, architect/developer and the state. To what degree does the regulation of ‘character’ open or close the city to creative innovation? Can it become camouflage for creative destruction? How to regulate for irregularity? The paper concludes with a discussion of theories of place (Massey vs Heidegger) and the prospects of concepts such as habitus (Bourdieu) and assemblage (Deleuze) for the interpretation of a progressive sense of place.

This paper examines the changing ethnic composition of housing tenures in London (inner and outer) from 1991 to 2001. The question that it addresses is the extent to which ethnic minorities have become increasingly concentrated in social and privately rented housing in the inner city, as much of the literature on other European and American cities suggests, and the extent to which some of them have been able to move outwards and upwards into suburban ownership. The period 1991—2001 is particularly important in London because it witnessed a major increase in the size and importance of its ethnic minority population and important changes in its tenure structure. The introduction of an ethnicity question in the 1991 census permits analysis over time. The paper shows both an increase in suburban ethnic minority ownership and a growing concentration of ethnic minority groups in social and privately rented housing.

A growing literature has made the case for preserving rural open space and redeveloping inner cities. Together, these polices can contribute to the inside—outside strategy of `new regionalism'. However, it is unclear whether citizens are willing to pay for these two polices. Using data from a survey of Michigan's citizens, statistical analyses were employed to ascertain who would pay for both policies. Of the respondents, 37 per cent would pay for both policies. The coalition of support is centred on younger people, liberals and Whites, and people who are generally satisfied with their communities but are concerned about sprawl. When compared with the results for those who would pay only for one policy, the findings suggest that policy-makers may be able to broaden the coalition of support for policies that can contribute to regional land use governance if measures are taken to ensure that benefits are widely spread.

Nearly 30 years ago now, Holcomb and Beauregard were critical of the way that it was assumed that the benefits of gentrification would 'trickle down' to the lower classes in a manner similar to that hypothesised in the housing market. Nevertheless, despite fierce academic debate about whether or not gentrification leads to displacement, segregation and social polarisation, it is increasingly promoted in policy circles both in Europe and North America on the assumption that it will lead to less segregated and more sustainable communities. Yet there is a poor evidence base for this policy of 'positive gentrification'-for, as the gentrification literature tells us, despite the new middle classes' desire for diversity and difference they tend to self-segregate and, far from being tolerant, gentrification is part of an aggressive, revanchist ideology designed to retake the inner city for the middle classes. In light of this, it is argued that these new policies of social mixing require critical attention with regard to their ability to produce an inclusive urban renaissance and the potentially detrimental gentrifying effects they may inflict on the communities they intend to help.

The White Paper on Education (2006) re-emphasises the importance of parents within education policy and, in particular, the key role of parental choice. However, this article argues that parental choice is an inequitable process in which privileged parents are far more likely to have and exercise choice than their less privileged counterparts. The consequences are geographies of schooling which are highly class differentiated. Compounding these inequitable geographies of schooling are invidious representations of inner-city comprehensives as unruly places, characterised by poor performance and bad behaviour. Drawing on Rob Shield's conceptualisation of 'places on the margin' and the voices of working-class students, this paper attempts to present a different perspective on inner-city comprehensives from those represented in dominant middle-class imaginaries.

This paper suggests that including urban renewal as a factor in analysis contributes to more nuanced understandings of educational policy change in inner Sydney. The educational policy change investigated is Building the future, with a focus on a newly created school. Urban renewal is positioned as a component of convergent processes and practices that aim to 'revitalise' the inner city and inner-city education. This paper illustrates how educational policy draws, in part, on geographical aspects to argue for the restructuring of state schooling in inner Sydney. The paper also explores how policy practices conflate discourses of urban renewal with the constitution of 'middle class' and 'non-Aboriginal' subjects, a practice that consequently repositions the new school in an education market.

Turbine Square in Newtown, Johannesburg, stands as a metaphor for the changing fortunes of the inner city during the 20th century. Four buildings occupy this site, flanking a small open space. One is the Johannesburg branch of the new South African Reserve Bank (1996); the others are the Boiler Houses (1928) and (1936) and Turbine Hall (1929) that generated electricity for Johannesburg until 1960. The former, completed in 1996, represents one of the first public works of the new democratic South Africa. The latter, icons of Johannesburg in its colonial phase, stand derelict and, until recently, were occupied by squatters. In this examination of Newtown, some social, political and cultural histories of Johannesburg are traced in relation to the city's transition from colonialism to a post-apartheid city. How the spatial layout and symbolism of the built environment form a component of that transition is a theme of this paper.

The West Quay shopping centre in Southampton is a prime example of a new wave of inner-city regional shopping centres in the UK-at the time of its opening being the largest centre of that type. This paper argues that West Quay has had a fundamental impact on the built form and urban identity of Southampton. Using detailed local research in order to reconstruct the story of the scheme, the paper demonstrates that the development which has taken place has been viewed by a Labour-controlled city council as strategically vital to the survival of the city as the south coast's leading regional centre. As such West Quay represents a prominent example of the shift in orientation in UK retail development and planning in the late 1990s towards a strongly urban regeneration-led focus, with cities like Southampton pioneering the link between retail and urban regeneration as a central component of a strategy focused on the development and promotion of successful places. In turn, the notion of such 'place building'-which has been at the heart of New Labour's urban policy agenda-has become entwined in current revisions of retail planning policy.

This paper documents the fact that the concentration of poverty in the inner city of Chicago declined appreciably during the 1990s. Exploratory data analysis suggests that the decline in family poverty is strongly associated with an increase in the employment of females who reside in those areas. The decade of the 1990s is notable for its strong economy, the large expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and dramatic change in the public assistance programme.

Redlining occurs when institutions decline to make mortgage loans in specific areas. The practice originated in the 1930s, when federal agencies encouraged lenders to rate neighbourhoods for mortgage risk. Since the 1960s, especially in the US, it has been associated with disinvestment, racial discrimination and neighbourhood decline. It has always been viewed as a feature of the inner city. Historical evidence indicates that across Canada the first areas to be redlined were the less-desirable suburbs. Land registry and property assessment data establish the emergent patterns in Hamilton, Ontario. Between 1931 and 1951, institutional lending became a social norm first on new dwellings in suburbs. Individual lenders, previously dominant, were relegated to older inner-city properties or cheaper dwellings in less-desirable suburbs. In 1931, there were only minor geographical variations in the incidence of mortgage finance, and specifically of institutional financing, across the urban area. By 1951, lending institutions, led by insurance companies, were discriminating sharply in favour of the West End, the Mountain and Bartonville, and against those parts of the East End that were unserviced or close to lakefront industry. The evidence for Hamilton confirms that in Canada redlining originated in the suburbs. The same may also be true for US metropolitan areas, although the institutional context was different and relevant data are lacking.

This paper makes use of a unique data set to explore the issue of whether inner-city residents are more likely to be hired by a new inner-city development than non-residents. A selection model with partial observability is specified and estimated. This partial observability model allows us to control for self-selection at the application stage and to obtain unconditional estimates at the hiring stage. We determine, holding individual and neighbourhood characteristics constant, that while inner-city residents are less likely to be considered 'hireable', their greater propensity to apply for jobs at this development means that they were at least as likely as non-residents to both apply and be hired. We also tentatively conclude that distance between an applicant's residence and the location of the development does not appear to have been an issue in the application decision.

This paper examines the role of tenant-landlord relations in the physical decline of apartment blocks in an inner-city neighbourhood in Johannesburg that had undergone a racial transition during the height of the anti- apartheid struggle. It is argued that apartment blocks owned in their entirety by small landlords were most likely to be characterised by inadequate maintenance, decline and tenant resistance. Tenant resistance, however, rather than stabilising apartment blocks, often had the effect of intensifying the spiral of decline in the apartment blocks affected. The strategies adopted by tenants to resist landlords perceived as exploitative were influenced by the anti-apartheid struggle during the period.

This paper addresses a new phenomenon in New Zealand—the growing demand for residence within the central business district. The construction of inner-city apartments has seen a ready response by local authorities keen to rejuvenate a demand for downtown services, by developers facing a slow-down in suburban growth and by absentee owners as well as owner-occupiers seeking to broaden their residential portfolios. The paper argues that, although we are witness to the emergence of a new and different housing sub-market, the inner-city apartment is in fact a natural extension of an existing demand for residence close to the city; its recent appearance as inner-city apartments is simply a reflection of the competition for inner-city land rather than the revealed preference of buyers for a wholly different type of housing. Far from turning their back on the single-dwelling unit, most apartment buyers seek dwelling attributes similar to those of their single-unit, suburban counterparts. What is unique to this new sub-market therefore is its location. The inner-city apartment is primarily a geographical reaction to the marked physical separation of residence, paid work and live entertainment which characterises the suburb rather than a switch of preference for a wholly new residential form. Although these are quite distinct housing forms, there remain strong market connections between the inner-city apartment and detached, single-unit dwellings in the suburbs. Fashionable though these new apartment units are, New Zealand housing continues to be dominated by low-density, suburban, single-unit dwellings.

This paper is concerned with the post-apartheid city and the changing racial complexion of small enterprises developing in the inner city of Johannesburg, South Africa's most important urban centre. South Africa's new democratic government has identified the support and upgrading of small enterprises owned by blacks as a priority policy issue. Earlier research highlights a long tradition of negative official policy attitudes towards black business development in South Africa's central-city areas as part of urban planning under apartheid. Against this background, the paper investigates aspects of the emergent black small enterprise economy in post- apartheid Johannesburg. The results are presented from a recently completed survey of small black enterprises operating in the Johannesburg inner city and of a series of in-depth interviews undertaken with key institutional actors dealing with the city commercial property market. Overall, the findings point to the important and changing role of the inner city as incubator for developing black small enterprises in post- apartheid South Africa.

Between 1980 and 1990, urban and suburban poverty rates grew further apart within US metropolitan areas and at an accelerating rate for those cities with the greatest concentrations of metropolitan poverty. This study measures the effects of changes in social, demographic, economic and structural characteristics of metropolitan areas on the changes in metropolitan poverty rates and in the spatial concentration of that poverty in their central cities.

This paper presents a case study of Liverpool focusing on the transformation of the urban landscape associated with housing development. After examining different types of housing development with reference to housing policy initiatives and their underlying processes at various levels, the paper identifies some contrasting features of urban spatial transformation. First, this transformation is characterised by the city-wide spread of socio-economic downgrading caused by private de-investment in the production sphere, in contrast to the pockets of socio-economic upgrading resulting from private investment (on the urban fringe) and reinvestment (on the waterfront) in the consumption sphere. Secondly, the city has witnessed significant residential improvement (especially in the inner city) due to its success in securing public resource allocation, in contrast to economic devastation illustrating its increasing marginalisation in the movement of private investment.

Unemployment is one of the key characteristics of Britain's inner cities. This paper examines labour market processes and their policy implications within an inner-city and a suburban area of an economically depressed city in England, Sheffield. Five major themes are examined: markedly contrasting unemployment rates within the two areas and their policy implications; job barriers, aspirations and opportunities; skills attainment and training issues; differential unemployment rates affecting specific socio-economic groups in each locality; and questions surrounding poverty.

Studies of ethnic minority settlement in major cities usually depend upon snapshot evidence derived from periodic population censuses. The objects of such research are usually city regions, neighbourhoods or census tracts, and changes through time can not be undertaken as process studies but only as comparisons between given dates. In discussing the residential mobility experiences of ethnic minority populations it would be extremely valuable to be able to use individuals as the research units instead of geographical areas. This possibility exists for the study of ethnic minority residential mobility in the Paris region through the secondary analysis of a major survey carried out in 1986 by the French National Demographic Research Institute (INED). The results of such an analysis lead to a questioning of certain established ideas on the importance of the inner city for residence, but provide confirmation of higher-than-average mobility rates.

Several constraints and motivations in explaining migration to the inner city of Tel-Aviv are analysed. It is argued that the process was triggered off by decline in new constructions relative to the constitution of new households in Israel. However, the back-to-the-city movement was not stimulated by a manipulative elite or by decline in housing prices in the inner city. Instead, the inner city became the preferred location of several groups of lifestyles including young urbanites, Yuppies and Dinkies, and young mobile households, as well as more family-oriented households seeking high-status flats in the inner city.

This paper assesses the impact of the reformed system of local government finance in England on the ability of local authorities to finance services for their communities. It is set within the context of fiscal stress and particular attention is paid to areas of urban stress. The preliminary findings are that inner city authorities face tighter financial constraints when attempting to improve service provision not just to residents but also to local business. Fiscal stress has been increased and local urban regeneration initiatives have been made more difficult.

Using ratio analysis the financial performance of a sample of independent single-plant engineering firms in Leeds is examined with regard to structural and locational differences in establishments. A number of determinants of performance are derived and tested against the constructed data base. Inner-city engineering firms perform relatively less well on all indicators of performance compared with outer-city firms. The study illustrates the importance of using different measures of performance since this affects the magnitude and significance of the results. Financial support is necessary to sustain engineering in the inner city in the long run.

The foreign guestworker population of West Germany has declined considerably since 1981, as a result of economic recession and government-induced pressures. The paper assesses the significance of these national economic and demographic trends in a major city, Nuremberg. An analysis of the spatial outcomes of the main processes involved in population contraction suggests that, within the inner city in particular, these are far from simple. Moreover, the increasing numbers of ethnic German refugees from Eastern Europe in recent years, together with considerable numbers of Third World refugees, have created additional complications in the urban scene.

Much of the existing literature on land availability centres upon the controversial policy debates concerning land release at the urban periphery. Recently, the Government has assumed that Green Belt policies could be used to redirect development towards inner urban areas. Although inner cities may contain substantial areas of vacant land, there are very real constraints upon its immediate development. Flexible planning policies will not in themselves guarantee inner city regeneration. Complex ownership, physical and price constraints act as blockages in the development process and prolong land vacancy. Future local land policies will need to develop a concerted approach to tackling these constraints if the inner city is to compete with the urban periphery for new development.

A recent evaluation of a sample of projects which had received assistance under the Urban Development Grant (UDG) Programme demonstrates that the number of new jobs which were attributable to this assistance was far smaller than had been anticipated when funding was approved by the Department of the Environment. There is therefore a need for a more rigorous definition of 'new jobs' to be adopted, and for the procedures by which projects are appraised to be revised, in order that their potential impacts can be more accurately assessed in the future. However, it seems clear that whatever appraisal methods are adopted, programes such as the UDG and its recently announced successor, City Grant, are likely to lead to the creation of only modest numbers of new job opportunities in inner city areas, and must therefore be complemented by other, more substantial initiatives.

The paper is concerned with the problem of providing a basis for the evaluation of major changes in urban infrastructure. Recent developments in general equilibrium modelling of urban systems have tackled these interdependencies between sectors which cause problems in the use of traditional partial equilibrium approaches. However, while such models offer valuable insights into the working and dynamic development of urban systems their use in assessing the overall effects of particular projects seems limited. The argument advanced is that these questions can better be answered by moving out of the equilibrium framework and concentrating on the adapative mechanisms linking decisions in the various urban sectors. The framework of a model is outlined and discussed in terms of the current debate on Inner City Areas.

Although the inner city has traditionally been regarded as a 'nursery' for the birth and growth of new manufacturing firms, recent research has tended to refute this 'incubator' hypothesis. In this paper it is argued that such research has been based on an unsatisfactory methodology. An alternative approach is adopted in a case study of the location of new industrial companies in Greater Leicester between 1957 and 1970. The results provide considerable support for the incubator hypothesis, while indicating that pockets of nineteenth-century development within the present urban periphery also perform a nursery function.

After briefly sketching a suitable analytical framework for local labour markets the paper applies the analysis to the problems identified as peculiar to the inner city. It concludes that inner city labour market problems are not peculiar to such areas but result from the economics of urban structure compounded by general labour market deterioration.

This paper analyses intra-urban unemployment differentials among male and female workers in Sydney in 1971. Neo-classical models of the labour market and urban development provide the theoretical background. Comparisons are made with UK studies which suggest that high unemployment in inner city areas can be explained either by the fact that more 'unemployables' live in such areas (a supply oriented explanation) or by the suburbanisation of jobs (a demand-oriented explanation). In Sydney there was a clearly defined spatial pattern in unemployment rates that was the same as that found in UK studies - the nearer a location to the core of Sydney, the higher was the unemployment rate among male residents. However, no spatial pattern could be detected in female unemployment rates. Supply and demand explanations are suggested for this absence of high inner city unemployment among women. It is concluded that policies designed to cure male unemployment in inner areas could have harmful effects on women's employment opportunities.