"Localism" has been deployed in recent debates over planning law as an anodyne, grassroots way to shape communities into sustainable, human-scale neighborhoods. But "local" is a moving category, with contradictory, nuanced dimensions. Reconsidering Localism brings together new scholarship from leading academics in Europe and North America to develop a theoretically-grounded critique and definition of the new localism, and how it has come to shape urban governance and urban planning. Moving beyond the UK, this book examines localism and similar shifts in planning policy throughout Europe, and features essays on localism and place-making, sustainability, social cohesion, and citizen participation in community institutions. It explores how debates over localism and citizen control play out at the neighborhood, institutional and city level, and has come to effect the urban landscape throughout Europe. Reconsidering Localism is a current, vital addition to planning scholarship.

"Localism" has been deployed in recent debates over planning law as an anodyne, grassroots way to shape communities into sustainable, human-scale neighborhoods. But "local" is a moving category, with contradictory, nuanced dimensions. Reconsidering Localism brings together new scholarship from leading academics in Europe and North America to develop a theoretically-grounded critique and definition of the new localism, and how it has come to shape urban governance and urban planning. Moving beyond the UK, this book examines localism and similar shifts in planning policy throughout Europe, and features essays on localism and place-making, sustainability, social cohesion, and citizen participation in community institutions. It explores how debates over localism and citizen control play out at the neighborhood, institutional and city level, and has come to effect the urban landscape throughout Europe. Reconsidering Localism is a current, vital addition to planning scholarship.

As in many other areas of public policy in the United Kingdom, in recent years city planning has increasingly been localized, all the way down to the neighborhood level. This book is the first to critically analyze this shift, which has proved to be among the most contentious and controversial of all contemporary planning initiatives. Focusing on the newly granted rights of communities to draw up statutory Neighbourhood Development Plans, it moves from there to engage with larger debates about the theory and practice of localism, setting this trend within an international context with cases from the United States, Australia, and France, as well as the United Kingdom.

This book draws on preeminent planning theorist Patsy Healey’s personal experiences as a resident of a small rural town in England, to explore what place and community mean in a particular context, and how different initiatives struggle to get a stake in the wider governance relations while maintaining their own focus and ways of working. Throughout the book, Healey assesses the public value generated by community initiatives and the impact of such activity on wider governance dynamics. Healey explores the power which small communities are able to mobilise through self-organisation and grassroots activism. Through the lens of Wooler and Glendale as a micro-society, the book centres on a community experiencing an economic and demographic transition. It focuses on three initiatives developed and led by local people – a small community development trust, an informal attentionmobilising network, and a Neighbourhood Plan project which uses an opportunity provided within the formal planning system. It examines how, in such civil society activism, people came together to promote local development in a place and community neglected by the dominant political economy. The book details the power and force of community initiative and its potential for transforming both the future possibilities for the place and community itself, as well as wider governance relations. Overall, it seeks to enrich academic and policy discussion about how the relations between formal government and civil society energy could evolve in more productive and progressive directions.

This book tackles the challenges posed by accelerating urbanization, and demystifies Social Sustainability, the least understood of all the different areas of sustainable development. The volume’s twin focus on these profoundly intertwined topics creates a nuanced and vitally important resource. Large migrations from rural areas to cities without appropriate planning and infrastructure improvements, including housing, education and health care optimization, have created significant challenges across the globe. The authors suggest technology-rich strategies to meet these challenges by careful application of data on population growth and movement to the planning, design, and construction of operational infrastructures that can sustainably support our increasingly rapid population growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic and other highly transmissible diseases outbreaks have given a new significance to the concept of “resilience”, placing it in the spotlight of built environment-related studies. New directions have emerged from expanding on adaptive planning, urban layouts, urban morphologies, spatial planning, healthy cities, etc. To enhance resilience in the post-pandemic era, various theories, practices, and hypotheses are being formulated by scholars around the world. For this book project, we invite chapter proposals that provide forefront discoveries about the built environment resilience during and after the ongoing pandemic. Historical perspectives of resilience and other highly transmissible diseases are also relevant to understanding the COVID-19 issues. The authors are encouraged to elaborate on critical exploratory, innovative, and cutting-edge research approaches, highlighting the effects of COVID-19 and other highly transmissible diseases in the design, planning, and perception of the built environment. We aim to gather scientific experiences, reviews, analyses, discussions, recommendations, and solutions in the fields of urban planning, urban design, urban management, environmental science, architecture, etc. The book aims to document resilience-related innovations and new perspectives for the built environment, how people’s interactions adapt to new realities, and which mechanisms, tools, and strategies are required for such transformations in the following two scales of the built environments: (1) City/district; research on planning, commuting and mobility, politics, urban configurations, regulations, transmission and prevention, models, top-down processes, innovation processes, etc. (2) Community/neighborhood; research on collaboration, transmission and prevention, isolation and quarantine, social aspects, accessibility to services, technologies, education, policies, and innovative solutions. The book covers a wide range of studies, including physical and non-physical studies, which may refer to the city infrastructure, green/blue spaces, housing, policy-making, health services, social and economic issues, etc. The findings and results contribute to the decision-making of governments, organizations, and institutions, as well as inspire scholars and future research for developing resilience in the post-pandemic era.