Ramin Keivani | Oxford Brookes University (original) (raw)

Papers by Ramin Keivani

The Healthy Urban Mobility (HUM) project was a study to understand the impact of everyday (im)mob... more The Healthy Urban Mobility (HUM) project was a study to understand the impact of everyday (im)mobility on health and wellbeing with a variety of social groups living in different neighbourhoods in Brazil and the UK, and also to explore the potential for participatory mobilities planning with local communities to support and develop solutions for healthy urban mobility.

markets – Scope for pro-poor

The journal of real estate portfolio management, 2002

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Ali Parsa is director of research at the Centre for Surveying and Property Stud... more ABOUT THE AUTHORS Ali Parsa is director of research at the Centre for Surveying and Property Studies at South Bank University, in London. (E-mail: parsaaa@sbu.ac.uk) Ramin Keivani is an urban devel-opment specialist at South Bank University, London. Loo Lee Sim is an ...

Rapid housing price inflation has been continuing in China for the last 9 years with the conseque... more Rapid housing price inflation has been continuing in China for the last 9 years with the consequences of aggravating affordability and social discontent in major cities. Blaming a failing market, the government and the housing industry have been focusing efforts on the market to restrain demand and encourage supply to tame housing price inflation in the last two years. However, demand remains strong and supply keeps short. This paper, based on a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)/Shui On funded study on the Chinese property market, argues that the problems of housing price inflation and market housing affordability are deeply routed in the institutional arrangements, instead of simply caused by a failing market. It uses a three-level analytical framework to provide explanations to how the institutional arrangements impact on the housing market and recommendations to how the problems can be addressed. The paper conceptualises a property-led urban economic model which com...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the sustainability performance of an individual highway P... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the sustainability performance of an individual highway Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme in the UK, mainly to scrutinize its economic benefits at three levels: project, local and national. The fieldwork was undertaken through a detailed and specific set of semi-structured interviews in the case study of Newport Southern Distributor Road (SDR). Five main drivers for the sustainability approach are identified and the transferability is analysed. Research finds that the Newport PFI case demonstrates whole life cost savings for both the client and the contractor. The social-economic contribution of the PFI project is critical to the local urban regeneration programs and sustainable community development. Furthermore, effectively applying the government`s financial incentives and advanced technology could efficiently reduce the capital cost without negative impact on the project`s quality and time. The sustainability aspects of this project ...

Brazil has been preparing furiously for the upcoming World Cup and 2016 Olympics. While these dev... more Brazil has been preparing furiously for the upcoming World Cup and 2016 Olympics. While these developments are thought to represent the country’s growing economy and rising middle class, such “progress” has come at the expense of Brazil’s poorest citizens. Sue Brownill, Ramin Keivani, and Erick Omena de Melo look at the forced evictions in Vila Autodromo to make way for Olympic venues, in spite of the residents’ legal title to their site, arguing that it is representative of global trends of market and state forces eroding people’s right to the city.

Introduction Corporate Social Responsibility Urban Development Citywide Interventions Constructio... more Introduction Corporate Social Responsibility Urban Development Citywide Interventions Construction Utilities Social Development Conclusion Bibliography

World Bank policy plays a significant role in shaping international housing and urban policy incl... more World Bank policy plays a significant role in shaping international housing and urban policy including that of UNCHS, development arms of western governments and international consultants (Keivani and Werna, 2001a and Baken and van der Lindern, 1993). In addition while the degree to which national governments actually adopt the Bankis policy recommendations may be open to question (Harris and Giles, 2003) they have for the past three decades set the agenda for the international housing debate and influenced national policies of many countries in at least a partial form if not in their entirety. The Bankis influence can be seen in the international propagation and national adoption of supported self help and sites and services schemes, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, and has continued to the current emphasis on market efficiency and enabling housing markets (Keivani and Werna, 2001a). The latest example of this is the post apartheid housing policy in South Africa selectively but...

Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access th... more Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/pol i cies.html

Sustainability

This article revisits social sustainability of compact urban neighbourhoods based on first-hand e... more This article revisits social sustainability of compact urban neighbourhoods based on first-hand evidence from four case studies in London and Berlin. It suggests a working definition for socially sustainable neighbourhoods, develops a tripartite integrative evaluation framework for measuring social sustainability of urban neighbourhoods, and applies it to four case studies in London and Berlin. Findings of this research are in line with some dominant arguments made in favour of social sustainability of compact urban form, but challenges some others. Research findings suggest that compact urban form is not an urban orthodoxy, but has multiple and contrasting social meanings and perceptions in different contexts and places.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

City

Cities are today undergoing major economic and spatial transformations in line with the requireme... more Cities are today undergoing major economic and spatial transformations in line with the requirements of global capital and neoliberalism. The main question to address in this scenario is: what is the scope for actions aiming to advance a more pro-poor agenda and curb the acute inequality found in the metropolises of the so-called developing countries? With that concern in mind, this paper examines the potentials and limitations of recent redevelopments in Rio de Janeiro to counteract durable inequality, as conceptualised by Charles Tilly. To do so we analysed secondary evidence and recent primary fieldwork drawing on 48 interviews with a range of stakeholders involved in the city’s preparations for recent mega events, urban development and resistance to evictions, particularly in Vila Autódromo and Providência communities. Results show that there is room for progressive intervention and change at the local level if the underlying drivers of structural inequality are appropriately identified and systematically targeted by combined state and social movements’ political actions.

City analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 2020

Cities are today undergoing major economic and spatial transforma-tions in line with the requirem... more Cities are today undergoing major economic and spatial transforma-tions in line with the requirements of global capital and neoliberalism. The main question to address in this scenario is: what is the scope for actions aiming to advance a more pro-poor agenda and curb the acute inequality found in the metropolises of the so-called developing coun-tries? With that concern in mind, this paper examines the potentials and limitations of recent redevelopments in Rio de Janeiro to counter-act durable inequality, as conceptualised by Charles Tilly. To do so we analysed secondary evidence and recent primary fieldwork drawing on 48 interviews with a range of stakeholders involved in the city’s prepa-rations for recent mega events, urban development and resistance to evictions, particularly in Vila Autódromo and Providência communities. Results show that there is room for progressive intervention and change at the local level if the underlying drivers of structural inequality are appropriatel...

Deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML) methods have recently contributed to the advancement... more Deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML) methods have recently contributed to the advancement of models in the various aspects of prediction, planning, and uncertainty analysis of smart cities and urban development. This paper presents the state of the art of DL and ML methods used in this realm. Through a novel taxonomy, the advances in model development and new application domains in urban sustainability and smart cities are presented. Findings reveal that five DL and ML methods have been most applied to address the different aspects of smart cities. These are artificial neural networks; support vector machines; decision trees; ensembles, Bayesians, hybrids, and neuro-fuzzy; and deep learning. It is also disclosed that energy, health, and urban transport are the main domains of smart cities that DL and ML methods contributed in to address their problems.

Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal

This paper proposes a bespoke urban sustainability indicator framework in the context of China's ... more This paper proposes a bespoke urban sustainability indicator framework in the context of China's prevalent property-led urban development. Emphasising local characteristics and incorporating underlying institutions, it advocates a more nuanced, holistic and dynamic approach when addressing sustainability issues. Selection of indicators were based on extensive literature reviews and tested through an international expert survey comprising both China-based and overseas-based experts. The two groups of experts have shown divergent views, with the former prioritizing economic and institutional aspects over environmental and social factors. It also provides transferable policy insights to developing countries more generally, given many similarities in broader development challenges. Discussion on recent literature and urban development reinforces the applicability of these tailor-made indicators to not only monitoring but also explaining and predicting urban changes. We argue it is necessary to recognize the centrality of property-led urban development in urban sustainable development, and the need for examining the complex relations between the property sector and urban sustainability via inclusion of institutional analysis and a multi-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative evaluations.

Urban Social Sustainability

Although cities are increasingly required to respond to the challenges of sustainable development... more Although cities are increasingly required to respond to the challenges of sustainable development, there is a sufficient body of literature to suggest that the strategies available to address these challenges remain vague and complex to operationalise (Dalmas et al., 2015; Klopp and Petretta, 2017; van Oers and Periera Roders, 2017). This is particularly so in relation to the social dimension of sustainability, with its reliance on hybrid sets of hard-to-measure “soft” indicators and emphasis on ambiguous concepts such as governance, community and culture (Colantonio and Dixon, 2011; Shirazi and Keivani, 2017). As this chapter argues, the challenge becomes even more complex when applying strategies for social sustainability to historic urban cultural landscapes.