ABSTRACT
Despite the growing attention given to the role of the built environment in urban and regional restructuring and in capital circulation, comparatively little attention has been paid by geographers and urban social scientists to the detailed mechanics of property markets. Urban development and redevelopment often seem to be portrayed as an inevitable consequence of shifting economic forces and the built form as a neutral stage on which industrial and social changes take place. For example, much of the literature on ‘new industrial spaces’ and production linkages seems to simply assume that appropriate workshop or factory space exists in the relevant location (for example Scott and Kwok 1989; Henry 1992). Even those authors who focus on real estate have tended to underplay the role of market structures on detailed local outcomes, concentrating rather on broad trends and trajectories, aggregate statistics or cultural and architectural impacts (e.g. Beauregard 1991; Knox 1991). UK-based studies have tended to emphasise planning structures and their impact on redevelopment and urban regeneration (Healey and Barrett 1990, provide a detailed review of this literature).
