Urban communities

This book explores the ways in which communities are responding today’s society as government policies are increasingly promoting privatisation, deregulation and individualisation of responsibilities, providing insights into the efficacy of these approaches through key policy issues including access to food, education and health.

Drawing on international examples, this book interrogates the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Contributors from six continents, reimagine community development as they consider how aesthetic arts contribute to processes of peacebuilding, youth empowerment, participatory planning and environmental regeneration.

This original study makes a compelling case for a more ethical approach to urban development and management. Countering the conventional, neoliberal thinking of urban planners and academics, it uses case studies to show how a philosophy of caring can promote the wellbeing of our cities’ many inhabitants.

Often portrayed as an apolitical space, this book demonstrates that home is in fact a highly political concept. This book explores the legislative changes dismantling vulnerable groups’ rights to decent and affordable housing.

Bridging housing studies and social policy, this book analyses competing interpretations of the role and value of social housing in the UK.

The author provides new research on the relationship between housing and wellbeing, and challenges the pervasive policy and social consensus that owner-occupation is the ‘natural’ choice of aspiring people.

This book provides an innovative perspective to consider contemporary urban challenges through the lens of urban vacancy. The contributors develop new empirical insights that rethink ruination, urban development and political contestation over the re-use of vacant spaces in post-crisis cities across the globe.

Connolly draws on the recent changes in the Malaysian state of Penang to open up new perspectives on urban development, governance and the politics of place. Reviewing the role of residents, activists, planners and other experts in socio-natural changes and urban regeneration, it builds an important new framework of landscape political ecology.

Drawing on geographical, cinematic and photographic readings, this unique book looks at how places change, the role of planners in bringing about urban change, and the public's attitudes to that change.

Why do businesses still value urban life over the suburbs or countryside? This accessible book makes the case for Face-to-Face contact, still considered crucial to many 21st century economies, and provides tools for thinking about the future of places from market towns to World Cities.

The ‘smart city’ is often promoted as a technology-driven solution to complex urban issues. Drawing on original research conducted in urban African settings, this book provides a much-needed alternative view, exploring how ‘home-grown’ digital disruption, driven and initiated by local actors, upending the mainstream corporate narrative.

This edited book examines why what happens in Detroit matters for other cities around the world. Bridging academic and non-academic voices, contributions from many of the leading scholars on Detroit are joined by some of the city’s most influential writers, planners, artists and activists.

A timely and critical review and analysis of the development and implementation of New Labour's rural policies since 1997.