This article considers cultural hybridity as a concept that helps interpret complex social phenomena found in various intercultural contexts in missions. The concept of cultural hybridity is better used as an analytic tool rather than an object of analysis in order for it to have an interpretive power. Adopting cultural hybridity in missiological research requires focusing on its active, dynamic, and processual nature found in the verb form, “hybridization,” rather than a stationary concept depicted by the noun form, “hybridity.” When using cultural hybridity in empirical studies, the mission researcher needs to develop a framework using the concept by immersing in the prior and current scholarly discussions, analyze social processes at multiple levels, utilize the hybridity theory in conjunction with other relevant social theories, and close the gap between the theory and data by focusing on how things work rather than forcing meanings out of the data. These practices may aid missiologists in their empirical research and increase their understanding of challenging intercultural issues.

Housing affordability in the 21st-century requires a new way of understanding the concept.The concept is currently framed around household spending on housing costs.In the 21 st century, households' aspirations and housing outcomes of local residential environments are increasingly influenced by external labour and capital drivers at a range of scales (regional, national, global).Under such context, this paper suggests the concept of housing affordability should be advanced to understood with a relational view of the world.The relational view, underpinned by Giddens's Theory of Structuration, has the scope to capture how households' housing costs, linked to aspirations and housing outcomes across scales, making this more relevant to the 21 st century.Empirical evidence to demonstrate this has been drawn from a large-scale housing development project in the West Midlands of England.Increasing understanding of the concept helps formulate policies and planning practices for improving mechanisms to deliver better housing outcomes in an affordable and sustainable manner.

In The Just City, Fainstein (2010) proposes principles for directing and evaluating urban planning with regard to the ‘just city’. Equity and a fair distribution of costs and benefits from public policy are central to her concept of social justice, while expanding it with considerations on diversity and democracy. The just city, in her view, may comprise of relatively homogeneous neighbourhoods, as long as their boundaries remain porous and further segregation and large-scale displacement are contained. Although Fainstein mentions the problem of involuntary concentrations of disadvantaged population groups and unequal spatial access to opportunities, her planning principles seem to be more concerned about securing social benefits from given projects and general policies, rather than devising pro-active spatial strategies directed towards equal access to opportunities on a citywide scale. In this paper, we propose an alternative, spatialized approach to the just city and just planning policies. Following Soja (2010), we assert that space and spatial processes have a central role in producing and reproducing social injustices in terms of access to opportunities. Accordingly, we consider trends of ‘ghettoization’ as a major source of social injustice, where we understand ghettos as areas with high concentrations of disadvantaged people, potentially leading to social marginalization, overburdened schools and a general lack of life chances. ‘Gentrification’ marks another source of injustice, where previously neglected areas become areas of privilege, depriving displaced residents and others from newly created opportunities. Based on the cases of Birmingham and Zurich, cities with contrasting planning traditions, we offer a discussion of housing and urban renewal policies against the background of city-specific patterns of ghettoization and gentrification. Focusing on the 1990s onwards, we find that the continued marketization of housing and urban renewal efforts in Birmingham have done little to counteract ghettoization, while the public reliance on housing associations and neighbourhood upgrading in Zurich have allowed for exclusionary practices and displacement. For both cities, however, the framework can serve for devising spatially just planning policies. Social justice in cities, we believe, is aided by a spatial understanding of social injustice and corresponding, spatially informed, citywide planning strategies.

Engagingly written and well researched, this volume is an important contribution to the literature on church planting in the West. What makes it stand apart from most texts on church planting is its solid grounding in empirical research. Christopher James analyzes the results of a survey he conducted of just over half of the roughly 100 new churches planted in Seattle since 2001. His analysis leads him to describe four “practical ecclesiological models” that represent most of this largely post-Christian city’s new churches. The author’s in-depth qualitative research into half of the churches he surveyed, which took the form of interviews with pastors, focus groups, and participant-observation of worship gatherings, adds invaluable color and detail to his descriptions of the four church models. These descriptions in themselves would make the book worth reading, but James goes on to evaluate each model using the lens of missional theology. Why he chose this particular evaluative framework is not made sufficiently clear. His main justification— that “missional” rhetoric is popular among church planters—seems insufficient. Given the lens he uses, though, his assessments are even-handed and convincingly argued for. Refreshingly, the book proceeds to make practical recommendations for practitioners of each of the four models, describing “concrete steps that practitioners in each of the four models can take to minimize the characteristic weaknesses of their models and amplify their unique strengths” (184). James does a good job of showing how each proposal builds on his earlier evaluation and delivers on his promise to provide steps that are practical and doable. One weakness is the lack of discussion of how to communicate the gospel using words in the post-Christian context. Church planters serving in the Global North, as well as those involved in their preparation, training, and oversight, should carefully study this book. It would make an excellent resource for a church-planting community of practice or for an advanced class on church planting in the West. The author’s weaving together of sociological and ecclesiological insights to describe and evaluate current models and offer proposals for church planting in a post-Christian context is exemplary. Hopefully it will stimulate others to do this kind of research and writing, something that the author facilitates by including his methodology and survey questions.

The equilibrium model of resilience following shock has been highly critiqued as it implies status quo and no change in underlying power structures. This article fills a gap in the resilience literature as it applies to planning for housing by discussing the role of agency in contributing to the adaptive capacity of regions in responding shock events. A central tenet of the article is how agents can be the shock in slow-burn events. A case study of the development of regional strategic housing market assessments in an English region in the run-up to and during the global financial crisis illustrates how the concept of the epistemic community applies to planning for housing across scales. As resilience will increasingly drive global investments over the next century the aim of the article is to move away from rigid and conservative expressions of resilience to a more evolutionary approach relevant to regional housing systems.

Natural Disaster gives serious impact and damage to city structure not only by disaster itself but also by reconstruction project after this. In depopulation era like in Japan, it is necessary to consider reconstruction plan in urban shrinking context with future low demand. This study clarifies reconstruction situation after eruption disaster of Mt. Unzen and recent urban shrinking in Shimabara City in order to consider urban resilience lesson. This study takes empirical method with official planning documents research, interview to key persons, questionnaire survey, and so on, and clarifies as follows. Since the residents' intention and consciousness for reconstruction needs to be intensified in reconstruction from a large-scale disaster, the reconstruction plans tend to be expansion-oriented. However, it is an illusion that temporary reconstruction projects bring the recovery of population in local cities in Japan. As the case from Shimabara, the followings can be pointed out as the concrete necessity. First, it is necessary to prepare a plan for housing developments for survivors which considers the future maturation of the development areas (especially the selection of their locations and the necessity of public transportation) and to carry out land readjustment considering demand for land after completion. In addition, as symbolically indicated by the abolishment of a Shimabara Railroad line after its reconstruction, it is necessary to prepare reconstruction plans of public transportation based on a strict demand forecast. Furthermore, reconstruction projects should be incorporated into city planning considering its sustainability.

Natural Disaster gives serious impact and damage to city structure not only by disaster itself but also by reconstruction project after this. In depopulation era like in Japan, it is necessary to consider reconstruction plan in urban shrinking context with future low demand. This study clarifies reconstruction situation after eruption disaster of Mt. Unzen and recent urban shrinking in Shimabara City in order to consider urban resilience lesson. This study takes empirical method with official planning documents research, interview to key persons, questionnaire survey, and so on, and clarifies as follows. Since the residents' intention and consciousness for reconstruction needs to be intensified in reconstruction from a large-scale disaster, the reconstruction plans tend to be expansion-oriented. However, it is an illusion that temporary reconstruction projects bring the recovery of population in local cities in Japan. As the case from Shimabara, the followings can be pointed out as the concrete necessity. First, it is necessary to prepare a plan for housing developments for survivors which considers the future maturation of the development areas (especially the selection of their locations and the necessity of public transportation) and to carry out land readjustment considering demand for land after completion. In addition, as symbolically indicated by the abolishment of a Shimabara Railroad line after its reconstruction, it is necessary to prepare reconstruction plans of public transportation based on a strict demand forecast. Furthermore, reconstruction projects should be incorporated into city planning considering its sustainability.

In England, housing market renewal (HMR) proved an urban policy cause celebre held to be representative of state-sponsored gentrification. This paper considers some critiques and explores the relocation experience of a group of residents in South Yorkshire, England during the implementation of HMR policies during 2005-2007. This paper argues that: (i) from the mid-1970s, place-based citizenship' and participation standards had been eroded and the introduction of HMR was an antidote to state neglect; (ii) state failure in addressing slow-burn' shocks such as deindustrialisation and housing market restructuring can be viewed as a form of passive revanchism' and (iii) HMR can be viewed as a means of addressing deficits in participation standards that arise from differential experiences of place: the term citizenship of place' is therefore used to signal the call for a more nuanced account of policy interventions such as HMR in order to assess how complex processes of restructuring affect citizens across spatial and temporal scales.

We describe the development of a practical tool for urban planning, using innovations in agent-based modelling to reconcile conflicts at the local/neighbourhood level and designed to improve engagement in neighbourhood spatial planning to deliver optimal planning and regeneration solutions. Neighbourhood or `place' is an important factor in deciding social and economic outcomes. Neighbourhood is also increasingly important for urban planning across Europe as communities are at the front-line in developing resilience to anthropogenic and natural shocks. The current financial crisis and public sector austerity measures across Europe represent shocks to local communities that require policymakers to maximize investments and resources delivered to local communities. Communities and citizens can therefore play a bigger role in contributing to the resilience of cities through local neighbourhood planning. However, there is a need to work differently as public and private finances are restricted and communities need to co-produce plans and delivery of services. Co-production can therefore be one contribution to solutions designed to foster resilience and deliver efficient neighbourhood planning and associated services. Coproduction in this context requires an open source approach in which producers and consumers can observe viewpoints and react to the implications of simulated outcomes. Whilst there are numerous examples of Planning Support Systems (PSS) designed to assist urban planners there has been no significant progress made in developing a `grounded' approach incorporating `real-time' inputs from users and stakeholders at the neighbourhood level. This paper sets out the principles and objectives of a simulation-based OpenPlan system in which producers and consumers swap roles. This leads to a greater coproduction of planning inputs designed to deliver optimal outcomes and more resilient cities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can contribute to the management of a data driven simulation system, in particular with regard to adaptive selection of data and refinement of the model on which the simulation is based. We consider two different classes of intelligent agent that can control a data driven simulation: (a) an autonomous agent using internal simulation to test and refine a model of its environment and (b) an assistant agent managing a data-driven simulation to help humans understand a complex system (assisted model-building). We present a prototype implementation of an assistant agent to apply DDDAS to social simulations. The automation of the data-driven model development requires content interpretation of both the simulation and the corresponding real-world data. The paper discusses the use of Association Rule Mining to produce general logical statements about simulation and data content as well as the use of logical consistency checking to detect observations that refute the simulation predictions. Finally we consider ways in which this kind of assistant agent can cooperate with autonomous data collection and analysis agents to build a more complete and reliable picture of the observed system.

This submission develops a set of arguments around the path dependency of places – how previous policy eras shape the trajectory and outcomes of places - and the tensions between social inclusion policies and practices on the one hand and competitiveness on the other. Path dependency results from previous legacies of the built form and access and eligibility rights. The "narrative" of places, the categories and descriptions used in delineating neighbourhoods and shaping policy is also influential. A coherent line of research is demonstrated which has revolved around the definition, measurement and scale of deprivation and housing's role in social exclusion and competitiveness debates. Originally focused at household and individual level, the enquiry shifted to the role of neighbourhoods and places in terms of their "compositional" and "environmental" meaning. The thesis revolves around the concept of participation standards and the underpinning principles of citizenship arising from denial of access to relative "norms and standards". This highlights tensions in the competing goals of competitiveness and inclusion in housing and urban policy at different scales resulting in differential speeds and experiences of place. Logically this would suggest that the evolution of citizenship and participation can legitimately embrace the concept of citizenship of place.

This article considers the leadership requirements in a subregional context drawing on case study material from a range of research concerned with leadership of place. To better illustrate complexity and understand the impact of different spatial scales and leadership in a subregional context we draw upon work we have undertaken within a growth area. We assert that the leadership requirement differs according to the context of the given place and the degree to which the system is supportive of the place-shaping requirement. Drawing out of an understanding of why place matters, we identify the potential constraints and opportunities that can arise when leading within a subregional context. We suggest that the leadership of place is an iterative process and cannot be created around ‘false’ economies or contrived geographical boundaries. We suggest that the sustainability and resilience of place will only become embedded when public actions and cross-sector interventions arise from a spatial literacy – an understanding of the requirement of a given place both in terms of its spatial context and community capacity. We conclude that leadership of place is a contextually-based, collective cross-cutting process and that the leaders need to be able to shape and develop a supportive system alongside the more physical and service-based interventions to shape and make place.