Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies

Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies develops important new relational and institutionalist approaches to policy analysis and planning, of relevance to all those with an interest in cities and urban areas.

Well-illustrated chapters weave together conceptual development, experience and implications for future practice and address the challenge of urban and metropolitan planning and development.

Useful for students, social scientists and policy makers, Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies offers concepts and detailed cases of interest to those involved in policy development and management, as well as providing a foundation of ideas and experiences, an account of the place-focused practices of governance and an approach to the analysis of governance dynamics. For those in the planning field itself, this book re-interprets the role of planning frameworks in linking spatial patterns to social dynamics with twenty-first century relevance.

Table of Content

1. The Project of Strategic Planning for Urban Areas  2. Urban 'Regions' and Their Governance  3. The Strategic Shaping of Urban Development in Amsterdam  4. The Struggle for Strategic Flexibility in Urban Planning in Milan  5. The Transformation of Identity in the Cambridge Sub-Region  6. Strategy-Making in a Relational World  7. Spatial Imaginations and Urban 'Region' Strategies  8. Getting to Know an Urban 'Region'  9. Relational Complexity and Urban Governance

About the author

Patsy Healey is Professor Emeritus in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Newcastle, where she was previously Head of Department, then Director of the Centre for Research in European Urban Environments.

She is a specialist in planning theory, planning systems and planning practices and has undertaken research on how planning strategies work out in practice and on partnership forms of neighbourhood regeneration experiences. She is Senior Editor of the Journal, Planning Theory and Practice.