Britain’s planning system began as ‘town and country planning’ to repair the ravages of unplanned industrialism and promote ideal environments for the future. Steering a course between left and right, public control and for-profit development, it survived successive booms and busts, broadening to include new concerns like ecology, conservation and community participation. By the 1986, when this book was first published, the system’s survival beyond the year 2000 was in doubt. It did endure, but it is now under serious threat from the right, which sees it as obstructing enterprise and the restoration of ‘growth’. It has been stripped of some of its core aims and mechanisms, while as yet there is no agenda distinguishing growth that will be sustainable from growth which self-evidently is not. The Government of Space was written as a concise guide for the non-specialist to the origins and evolution of British planning, its intellectual pedigree, achievements and cruxes. It is an invaluable background to the state of planning and the cases for and against it today.

Since the 1970s, the field of political geography has undergone a significant transformation, where new methodologies have been implemented to investigate the exercise of the power of the state within the urban environment. First published in 1985, the essays in this collection addressed the growing need to assess the academic revisions that had been taking place and provide a reference point for future developments in the discipline. Still of great relevance, the essays consider the most prominent themes in areas of key importance to political geography, including theory and methodology, minority groups, local government and the geography of elections. This volume will be of significant value for students of political geography, urban demography and town planning.

First published in 1976, this book tells of the dramatic struggle between tenants’ groups, community associations, students, squatters, intellectuals, political parties, and property developers at Tolmers Square in north London. The author describes how property developers, interested only in maximising profits, attempted to redevelop the Tolmers area for offices, while the local authority, pressurised by local tenants and faced with a housing shortage, tried to redevelop for housing. This book is about the politics of central city redevelopment. Although this text focuses on one particular case study, the same processes operate in all cities where land is used as a commodity for financial speculation. By tracing the Tolmers case in detail, this text demonstrates the forces which operate in city redevelopment, and shows the affect which various forms of opposition can have.

First published in 1982, Introduction to Political Economy is a clear and concise introduction to the normative aspects of economics by one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject. In this highly readable book, Professor Mishan takes the student to the heart of the subject without recourse to algebra and with only the simplest of diagrams. The author carefully distinguishes the various meanings of the terms political economy, normative economics, welfare economics and allocative economics. He considers the standard allocation rules and the crucial concepts of consumer surplus and rent, which are so important to cost-benefit analysis, while then going on to resolve the paradoxes of the efficiency criterion. Lastly, Professor Mishan assesses both the social worth of radical conservatism, which is associated with the Chicago School of Economics, and the relevance of the modern theory of welfare economics to social welfare.

Originally published in 2006, the Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties, is a comprehensive 3 volume set covering a broad range of topics in the subject of civil liberties in America. The book covers the topic from numerous different areas including freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition. The Encyclopedia also addresses areas such as the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, slavery, censorship, crime and war. The book’s multidisciplinary approach will make it an ideal library reference resource for lawyers, scholars and students.

First published in 1990, this book provides an overview of the global distribution of the electronics industry and the structural factors which promoted this distribution by the end of the 1980s. Regarded as a ‘flagship’ sector in both advanced and developing countries, the electronics industry is encouraged by governments everywhere. Covering both the civilian and the military sides of the industry, Professor Todd reflects on the future of civilian electronics in the light of its global segmentation, and hints at the fundamental role of governments in the unfolding of both civilian and defence-electronics developments. He also endorses the overwhelming significance of strategies being played by electronics enterprises in both the USA and Japan.

This book, published in 1980, is an iconoclastic account of one of the pillars of the welfare state, British town and country planning, between 1945 and 1975. Always a fine balance between central control and market forces, it was challenged by strains within and between the environmental professions and protest by people dispossessed or alienated by re-shaped urban environments. Remaking Cities critiques the export of western-style planning to the developing world and reviews initiatives rooted in different understandings of ‘growth’ appearing in those years. Nearly forty years on, many of the same issues beset us, notably the depressingly familiar inner city problem, despite countless reports, funds and ‘programmes’. But now our infrastructure and services, once publicly owned, are privatised and fragmented, and local government progressively relegated. The very core of planning, development control, is being pared in a struggle to regain the ‘growth’ which led to our current crisis. This gives fresh importance to the need for new modes of creating liveable, sustainable environments, emphasised in this important work.

The strong community ties of mining villages are the central concern of this book, which deals with the social history and sociology of mining in County Durham in the twentieth century. Focusing on the country as a whole, this title, first published in 1978, asks what is most distinctive about the area in the past and how it is changing in the present. The personal documents presented in the first chapters of the book bring to life the local mining community with an evocative picture of village life at the turn of the century. These first-hand accounts are integrated with the results of social research carried out at Durham University over a number of years. Mining and Social Change will be of interest to students of history and sociology.

First published in 1990, this title presents the personal reflections of renowned community architect Rod Hackney, who served for many years as President of both the Royal Institute of British Architects and the International Union of Architects. Educated in the Modernist tradition of architecture in Britain and Denmark, Hackney’s return to England in the 1970s changed his outlook completely. Cities like Birmingham and Sheffield had been ruined by ill-conceived planning; whole communities had been torn apart by massive destruction of Victorian terraces, and relocated to grim tower block estates. To those communities that he has rescued from the threat of redevelopment, Rod Hackney is a local hero. Determined to save Britain’s inner cities, he has been a major influence on Prince Charles and a powerful spokesman for the silent majority of the urban poor, who often have no say as to where and how they live.