Cities and communities

Spatial planning is at a crossroads, with nearly half of UK planners now employed in the private sector. This book reveals what it’s like to be a UK planner in the early 21st century and how the profession can fulfil its potential for the benefit of society and the environment.

This collection presents critical and action-oriented approaches to addressing food systems challenges across places, spaces, and scales. With global case studies, it explores the interconnections between the social and ecological dynamics of food systems, exploring efforts to co-construct more equitable and sustainable food systems for all.

Understanding justice, for many, begins with questions of injustice. Giving insights into real life research practices for scholars at all levels, this book aids our understanding of how to employ and live justice through our work and daily lives.

This book explores how race, sexuality and gender are employed in political projects of belonging, whilst examining the implications for individual identity formation, in the context of Sweden.

The sixth, fully updated edition of this bestselling guide links the theory and practice of community work in an insightful and relatable read for students and practitioners. The textbook features brand new sections on work in health, housing, with children, young people and those with disabilities and the changing role of IT.

How can we design, develop and adapt urban environments to better meet the needs of an increasingly diverse ageing population?  This book highlights the urgent need to address inequalities that shape the experience of ageing in urban environments, and demonstrates that despite obstacles, meaningful social change is achievable locally.

Based on a multidisciplinary analytical framework, it explains why and how some peripheral cities have become the locus of violent orders, whereas others have managed to control violence, and to examine the role of violence in the workings of local governance.

Contrasting London with Hong Kong, this book tells the story of the two cities’ public and private sector forms of public space governance. The authors consider the challenges and impacts that different forms of provision have on those with a stake in them, and on the cities as a whole.

This book provides an introductory overview to the concept of ‘urban informality’, taking an international perspective across the global North and South. It explores theoretical understandings of the term, and looks at how it affects ways of living, such as land use, housing and basic services, working lives and political informality.

This book explores the connections between race, place and space, and their role in maintaining racial hierarchies. Focusing on White residents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, it employs interviews, participant observation and content analysis to unveil the enduring racial inequality in this supposedly progressive area.

This collection pays unique attention to the problems of addressing inequality within decarbonisation, such as high consumption, degrowth approaches and perverse outcomes. Illustrated with case studies from the city to the household, this timely book looks at ways to quicken the transition from high carbon inequalities to post-carbon inclusion.

A deep exploration on how questions of time and its organisation affect planning practice, this book questions ‘project speed’: where time to think, deliberate and plan has been squeezed. The authors demonstrate the many benefits of slow planning for the key participants, multiple interests and planning system overall.