Provides a series of insights into the planning process, introduces the key issues currently facing planning and offers prescriptions for the changes required as we move into the next millenium. Leading experts outline the changing context for land use and environmental policy in Britain and explain why the existing processes and profession of town planning are likely to be unable to provide satisfactory policy responses in the future. Key themes debated include:
* widening the remit of traditional town planning * giving land and buildings a community value
* acting for people rather...

Urban governance and sustainability are rapidly becoming key issues around the world. Currently three billion people - half the population of the planet - live in cities, and by 2050 a full two-thirds of the world's population will be housed in ever larger and increasingly densely populated urban areas. The economic, social and environmental challenges posed by urbanization on such a large scale and at such a rapid pace are staggering for local, regional and national governments working towards sustainability. Solutions to the myriad problems plaguing the quest for sustainability at the...

Urban governance and sustainability are rapidly becoming key issues around the world and the EU is currently finalizing its Urban Thematic Strategy, which will guide European urban environmental policy for the next decade. Based on three years of field research in 40 European cities, this book is the first to empirically test the assumptions of the 'sustainability agenda', developed in Rio and embodied in Local Agenda/Action 21. These assumptions state that good governance is a necessary precondition for the achievement of sustainable development, particularly at the local level, and that the...