Environment and Sustainability - Research

Global building and construction cultures are hard-wired to constructing too much, too badly, with major social and ecological consequences. Rob Imrie calls us to build less and to build better as a pre-requisite for enhancing welfare and well-being.

Drawing on modern science and ancient Greek philosophy, this book calls on us to explore our collective and personal convictions about success and good life. It challenges the mainstream worldview, rooted in economics, that equates happiness with pleasure, and encourages greed, materialism, egoism and disconnection.

Leading green criminologist Rob White asks what can be learned from the problem-solving focus of crime prevention to help face the challenges of climate change. Part of the New Horizons in Criminology series.

This timely book provides a fresh analysis of the limitations of the growth-dependence planning paradigm and considers alternative urban development models, ways of protecting and enhancing existing low value land uses and means of managing community assets within the built environment

With Agenda 2030, the UN adopted wide-ranging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that integrate development and environmental agendas. This book has a unique focus on the political tensions between environmental and socio-economic objectives and advocates for a cooperative shift towards environmentally sound sustainability.

In this timely book, Ed Atkins asks: are we getting decarbonisation right? And how could it be made better for people and communities? In doing so, this book proposes a different type of energy transition. One that prioritises and takes opportunities to do better – to provide better jobs, community ownership and improve people’s homes and lives.

Spanning multiple countries across South America, Europe and Africa, this book uses an international comparative perspective to investigate the phenomenon of self-building for low- and middle-income groups in urban areas, examining the tensions between regulation and self-regulatory initiatives.

Critically analysing how waste is currently configured as a ‘household’ issue, this book illuminates the implications of these framings and how public sociology can engage critical publics to reorient waste as a global socio-ethical issue.

This topical book offers an analysis of the current state of the planning system in England and an evidence-based review of over a decade of change. With a critique of ongoing UK planning reforms, the book argues that the planning system is often blamed for a range of issues that are in fact the fault of ineffective policymaking.

Hope must be mixed with realism in our approach to the climate emergency, and in this book philosopher John Foster presents a revolutionary approach to our pressing need for a habitable human future.

Matthew Quinn plots a landmark reimagination of governance and public administration, underpinned by sustainable development and civic republicanism.

Examining the root causes of the global waste problem, this book challenges existing policies, highlighting what needs to change if we are to get serious in tackling this global problem. It concludes with policy implications for shifting waste from an ‘end-of-pipe’ concern to being at the heart of the debate over decarbonisation.