Following the Thatcher and Major administrations there was an apparent renaissance of planning under New Labour. After a slow start in which Labour's view of planning owed more to a neo-liberal, rolled back state model reminiscent of the New Right the Government began to appreciate that many of its wider objectives including economic development, climate change, democratic renewal, social justice and housing affordability intersected with and were critically dependent upon the planning system.

A wide range of initiatives, management processes, governance vehicles and policy...

This book brings together a number of highly innovative and thought provoking contributions from European researchers in territorial governance-related fields such as human geography, planning studies, sociology, and management studies. The contributions share the ambition of highlighting troubling contemporary tendencies where spatial planning and territorial governance can be seen to circumscribe or subvert 'due democratic practice' and the democratic ethos. The book also functions as an introduction to some of the central strands of contemporary political philosophy, discussing their...