Product Description
While post-structuralist approaches to social theory have been prevalent within many fields of social inquiry since its emergence in the late 1970s, to date post-structuralism hasn't been significantly adopted when examining government institutions and practices. This volume uses post-structuralist theory to develop a framework for the analysis of government institutions and policy and applies this the study of government housing policy in Western nations. The book outlines the implications of post-structuralist analysis of housing theory and practice for future developments in both housing theory and government housing policy in Western nations. ... Read more

Product Description
The provision of infrastructure for urban developments is increasingly becoming a highly contentious and important issue in planning negotiations. By drawing together a range of case studies from North America and Europe, this book compares how a number of planning systems deal with this issue. There is a general trend by planning agencies towards the securing of infrastructure from the private sector. This necessitates a negotiation process between planning agencies, developers and infrastructure providers and this volume shows how this process varies according to attitudes towards property rights, the nature of the planning system and the existence of other frameworks such as Environmental Impact Assessment. By doing so, the collection presents an original perspective on both the negotiation process in planning and on how infrastructure should be provided. ... Read more

Product Description
Planning This book stems from a Research Project financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research (MIUR) which has been carried out in the period 1999-2002. The Project, entitled "Knowledge Engineering in Planning Process" was aimed at developing Artificial Intelligent technologies in analysis, project and evaluation in territorial planning. This approach, which has recently been defined "Geocomputation" in the scientific literature, constitutes an emerging paradigm in territorial sciences. The final research results were presented in a workshop which took place in Milan in November 2001. In addition to the parties of the project, the meeting hosted speakers internationally well known as the cutting edge of researchers in the field. Among them: Mike Batty (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)-UCL- London), Dino Borri (Polytechnic of Bari), Chris Webster (Cardiff University), Kai Nagel (Computer Science Institut- Zurich), Katerina Hlavackova-Schindler (Vienna University of Economic and Business Administration), Lena Sanders - CNRS, Paris, Paul Torrence CASA-UCL London. The book collects the proceedings of this concluding workshop. ... Read more

Product Description
The New Labour government has made an institutional turn, from doing things 'to' people to enabling them to do things 'for' themselves. This self-help approach is perhaps most clear in areas such as health, pensions and education. This text explores how the approach can be applied to deprived urban neighbourhoods. Answers are sought to a range of questions. What are the rationales for purusing an "assisted self-help" approach? To what extent are deprived neighbourhoods already using self-help? does such activity reduce or reinforce the social and spatial inequalities produced by the formal labour market? The book is divided into three sections: the rationales for an assisted self-help approach; how self-help is practised in everyday life in deprived urban neighbourhoods; and the strategies that could be adopted to enable people to help themselves. ... Read more

Product Description
Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning offers a new selection of the best urban planning scholarship from each of the world's planning school associations. The award winning papers presented illustrate the concerns and the discourse of planning scholarship communities and provide a glimpse into planning theory and practice by planning academics around the world. All those with an interest in urban and regional planning will find this collection valuable in opening new avenues for research and debate.

This book is published in association with the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN), and the nine planning school associations it represents, who have selected these papers based on regional competitions. ... Read more

Product Description
After acknowledging the veracity of the "Eternal Values", John Udy recognizes "Equality" (through promotion of information and community), "Life", "Liberty" (through the balancing of reciprocal values), and the "Pursuit of Happiness" as the sound values for urban and regional planning. ... Read more

Product Description
Although the struggle for independence in colonial Africa was characterized by pronouncements unconditionally condemning imperialism and promising to eliminate all vestiges of European domination, the post-colonial leaders, almost without exception, decided in favour of adopting European models of development.Thus, despite rhetoric to the contrary, development policies in post-colonial Africa continues to reflect and embody Western-especially European-Values.Nowhere else is this assertion more tenable than in the area of urban and regional planning, where the models were either inherited from the departing colonial administration or have recently been borrowed from some metropolitan country.Yet to receive the same degree of attention are questions relating to the rationale for adopting such models on the part of post-colonial states.In other words, crucial questions such as the following remain largely unanswered.Why have authorities in post-colonial states decided in favour of European or Western planning models?What are the implications for different societal groups of adopting such models?The main objective of this book is to attempt to uncover answers to these and cognate questions.The empirical referent of the project is Cameroon.The country's history-being the only African country to have been colonized by three different European powers, Germany, Britain and France-make it ideally suitable as a context for exploring questions of the genre raised above. (From Preface) ... Read more

Product Description
The chapters in this text originated from a conference organized by Dundee University's Department of Politics during September 1999. However, many of the papers were not completed until the following May, a while after Scotland's Parliament had been up and running. ... Read more

Product Description
Planning today has to deal with a completely different world from the one in which many of the basic ways of thought of the profession were founded. Many traditional planning approaches often seem less relevant when attention is increasingly being focused on sustainable development, deregulation and competitiveness in a global world. Focusing on the changes that are taking place in the realm of planning practice and spatial planning across Europe, this text examines the driving forces for institutional change. It brings together a team of leading planning academics with experience of planning practice and policies, from the UK, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Italy and Norway. Throughout the 12 chapters of the book, they examine and compare new approaches to planning across Europe at local, metropolitan, regional, national and international levels. ... Read more

Product Description
The role of social interaction and of its institutional patterns in realizing an effective linkage between knowledge and action is a classic issue of planning theory. As such, it is also linked to shifting conceptions of the "effectiveness" of planning and of its normative aims. This study of insitution design and building attempts to address the subject from an interactive and action-oriented perspective, as an invitation to think of planning - in an attitude of critical pragmatism - not merely, or primarily, as an "institutionalized" practice, as a "function" of institutions, but as a factor of institutionalization: as a form of generative action, constitutive of forms of institutionalization of social practices and, as such, of potential resources for their experimentation. This volume is divided in to three parts, the first part is devoted to tracing the reasons for a (renewed) focus on the institutional dimension of planning, with reference to the imperatives as well as to the challenges for institutional innovation in tasks of territorial governance and the second part features a case study of an experience of planning based on practices of consensus-building in New Jersey.The third part attempts to address issues concerning the role of social interaction and of its institutional patterns of conduct in an action-oriented perspective. ... Read more

Product Description
This book examines the pressure that politicians, policy makers and planners are under in Detroit and Belfast to put 'image building' at the centre of urban development. The book also considers the consequences of such pressures. The heightened importance of image generally nowadays, in the formulation of development agendas, is discussed before a focus on two worst case scenarios: Detroit as the 'natural' selection by Hollywood for the urban nightmare "Robocop" films and Belfast which is frequently bracketed together with Beirut by the international media. Image mobilization through physical planning, which in Detroit dates back to the Renaissance Centre of Henry Ford in the early seventies and which in Belfast dates from the revival of the city centre in the eighties, is set in the context of the wider economic and political environment in both divided regions. ... Read more

Product Description
An estimated 600 million people now live in informal or 'squatter' settlements in the rapidly growing cities of the developing world. With such settlements often lacking basic necessities, there is an urgent need to address this urban crisis. Recently, innovative approaches have focused on the role of community-based organizations (CBOs) in setting up self-help and participatory programmes. This incisive book questions whether communities have the ability to organize, engage government and undertake major redevelopment. It also examines when and how mobilization of communities occurs and if such organizations possess any influence in the intensely political decision-making arena of urban land development. It is illustrated by a detailed analysis of the experience of CBOs in Manila, as the Philippine government has undertaken what is perhaps the most radical experiment in decentralized, participatory approaches to urban governance in the world. The book emphasizes the external conditions that influence patterns of collective action within communities and addresses issues such as the local political economy and the communities' place within the global economy. ... Read more