Challenges facing housing affordability in Beijing in the twenty‐first century
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is analyse to what extent the high price had led to low levels of housing affordability in the period 2002‐2006 in Beijing. Due to the importance of housing for local residents and the crucial position that real estate market in the Chinese economy is currently in, research into the housing affordability issues is now essential. It is important to consider the social circumstances that are predominantly related to both the standard of living and the national economy in Beijing.Design/methodology/approach – The housing price to income ratio (PIR) method and Housing Affordability Index (HAI) model are used to measure housing affordability in Beijing. Then, the reasons for the high housing prices in Beijing are discussed and government homeownership‐oriented policies to help citizen on housing issues are examined. Finally, future proposals which can contribute to ease the housing affordability problem are recommended.Findings – The main findings in this research are that t...
Measuring Affordability in Public Housing from Economic Principles: Case Study of Hong Kong
Affordability is a dominant and controversial issue in housing policy all over the world. Hong Kong is no exception. In 1987, the government took a notable shift in its housing policy toward a more market-oriented system. As such, the notion of affordability overrode the notion of need. Like the United States and the United Kingdom, Hong Kong uses the median rent-to-income ratio as an affordability yardstick for rent setting. However, this approach suffers serious criticisms for its arbitrary benchmarking. This paper aims to examine the “affordability” issue among public rental housing tenants in Hong Kong. It takes a broader view by analyzing both their housing and nonhousing consumption patterns using economic first principles. It starts with an overview of conventional concepts of affordability and their shortcomings. It then applies the economic first principles to measure household affordability and test the “reasonableness” of using the median rent-to-income ratio as a benchmark. Rather interestingly, the findings suggest that the easy-to-use median rent-to-income ratio, currently adopted by the Hong Kong Housing Authority, cannot reflect the affordability of public rental housing tenants. This paper argues that household affordability could be gauged more correctly by adopting economic first principles, which render a better operational definition in housing resource allocation.
The Open Mobile Alliance: Delivering Service Enablers for Next-Generation Applications
Apractical overview of OMA specifications and how they enable mobile multimedia services & much more ! The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is an industry forum, which develops open specifications to help in the creation of applications and services to be deployed over converged networks. The alliance is the leading industry forum for generating market-driven specifications for interoperable mobile service enablers that facilitate global user adoptions of mobile multimedia services. Members include traditional wireless industry segments, such as mobile operators mobile operators (e.g. AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Vodafone), equipment and mobile systems manufacturers (e.g. Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Samsung, Siemens, Sony-Ericsson), and Information Technology vendors (e.g. BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems and NEC). Since its formation in 2002, the OMA has made significant progress in areas such as push-to-talk over cellular, device management, presence and group management, and messaging. The Open Mobile Alliance: Provides a comprehensive overview of the service enablers published by the OMA, tying together all the different piece parts developed by the individual working groups Offers a thorough introduction to the OMA Service Environments (OSE) and the specification process for enabling technologies. Discusses enablers for services such as gaming, IMS, Parlay, mobile broadcast and web services. Contains contributions from all stakeholders in the mobile application value chain. The Open Mobile Alliance Alliance is an invaluable resource for OMA members, product managers, network architects and planners, standards managers, standards engineers and IT professionals. Advanced Students and lecturers on mobile application development and standardization courses will also find this book of interest."The success of OMA is due to its individual members' contributions, and this book is testament to their hard work. The individual members' efforts and the authors of this book are to be congratulated on their magnificent achievements." Mark Cataldo, Senior Advisor, Orange SA, OMA Technical Plenary Chairman