Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Preface
- one Policy and places
- two Health, neighbourhoods and complexity
- three Emergence and environment press
- four The neighbourhood effect
- five Neighbourhood renewal and health inequalities
- six Health inequality as a policy priority
- seven Conclusion: neighbourhoods in the wider picture
- References
- Index
- Also available from The Policy Press
three - Emergence and environment press
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Preface
- one Policy and places
- two Health, neighbourhoods and complexity
- three Emergence and environment press
- four The neighbourhood effect
- five Neighbourhood renewal and health inequalities
- six Health inequality as a policy priority
- seven Conclusion: neighbourhoods in the wider picture
- References
- Index
- Also available from The Policy Press
Summary
Feedbacks and interactions: going upstream
Qualitative change in a system can arise from internal agency, an external intervention or more typically a mixture of both. At any given time, however, environmental parameters present limits to what is possible in a given phase space. Within these limits a variety of outcomes are possible, with local agency making a difference. The limits can also change with a phase transition. Take the example of a social housing estate in England. This housing tenure is nationally regulated in ways that create a defined space of possibilities, with limits defined by access to the tenure depending on housing need. Within these limits the range of possibilities for the local system state depend on the amount of local demand for social housing, the demographic composition of this demand, and the local response. These conditions can mean that a social housing estate is a settled, stable and popular place to live or an unstable and unpopular neighbourhood. In England tenants have the right to buy their rented properties and, as already discussed, many regeneration initiatives aim to diversify the tenure of social housing estates with more privately owned housing. At a certain point this extension of owner-occupation may change the parameters governing the state of the area and a phase transition to another state may occur; one in which new parameters such as mortgage interest rates take the place of previous parameters such as rent and subsidy policies. One consequence of such a change is that the neighbourhood may become more settled, with less turnover, but social housing opportunities will have been reduced.
Interactions between the agents in a system and with their environment have the potential to produce non-linear change or transitions to different qualitative states. This is what is meant by emergence: the outputs of a system are not proportional to the inputs – as with linear change – but are new states arising from causal combinations creating a qualitative change. Relations between agents and with their environment are therefore important in understanding the emergent potential of a system – the positions in the phase space it could occupy – especially how feedbacks have either a stabilising or transformative effect. Negative feedback maintains a stable state during which there is little or only incremental change in response to an input.
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- Information
- Placing HealthNeighbourhood Renewal, Health Improvement and Complexity, pp. 55 - 78Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2006