Urban sprawl � low-density subdivisions and business parks, big box stores and mega-malls � has increasingly come to define city growth despite decades of planning and policy. In Perverse Cities, Pamela Blais argues that flawed public policies and mis-pricing create hidden, "perverse" subsidies and incentives that promote sprawl while discouraging more efficient and sustainable urban forms � clearly not what most planners and environmentalists have in mind. She makes the case for accurate pricing and better policy to curb sprawl and shows how this can be achieved in practice through a range of market-oriented tools that promote efficient, sustainable cities.

Instruments of Planning: Tensions and Challenges for more Equitable and Sustainable Cities critically explores planning’s instrumentality to deliver important social and environmental outcomes in neoliberal planning landscapes. Because each instrument is unique and may be tailored to its own jurisdictional needs, Instruments of Planning is a compendium of case studies from urban regions in Australia, Canada, the United States and Europe, providing readers with a collection that critically challenges the role and potential of planning instruments and instrumentality across a range of contexts. Instruments of Planning captures the political, institutional, and economic challenges that confront planning. It examines planning instruments designed to assist with strategic planning and implementation, and considers the role that technology plays in unpacking and understanding complexity in planning. Written by Rebecca Leshinsky and Crystal Legacy of RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, this book fills the gap in planning theory about the instrumentality of planning in the neoliberal urban context. It is essential reading for students, urban researchers, policy analysts and planning practitioners.

This report examines how land is governed in France. It describes the laws, policies and practices that shape spatial and land-use planning in the country as a whole, and provides a detailed assessment of Clermont-Ferrand and Nantes Saint-Nazaire.