The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration

In the past decade, urban regeneration policy makers and practitioners have faced a number of difficult challenges, such as sustainability, budgetary constraints, demands for community involvement and rapid urbanization in the Global South. Urban regeneration remains a high profile and important field of government-led intervention, and policy and practice continue to adapt to the fresh challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, as well as confronting long standing intractable urban problems and dilemmas.This Companion provides cutting edge critical review and synthesis of recent conceptual, policy and practical developments within the field. With contributions from 70 international experts within the field, it explores the meaning of ‘urban regeneration’ in differing national contexts, asking questions and providing informed discussion and analyses to illuminate how an apparently disparate field of research, policy and practice can be rendered coherent, drawing out common themes and significant differences. The Companion is divided into six sections, exploring: globalization and neo-liberal perspectives on urban regeneration; emerging reconceptualizations of regeneration; public infrastructure and public space; housing and cosmopolitan communities; community centred regeneration; and culture-led regeneration. The concluding chapter considers the future of urban regeneration and proposes a nine-point research agenda.This Companion assembles a diversity of approaches and insights in one comprehensive volume to provide a state of the art review of the field. It is a valuable resource for both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in Urban Planning, Built Environment, Urban Studies and Urban Regeneration, as well as academics, practitioners and politicians.

Dr Michael E. Leary is aSenior Lecturer and Course Director for the MA Planning Policy and the MA Urban Regeneration at London South Bank University. Michael qualified as a Chartered Town Planner in the 1980s. Over the years he has worked in public sector planning and as a planning consultant. Dr John McCarthy is aReader in Urban Studies in the Institute for Building and Urban Design, School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University. John worked as a planning practitioner in the public sector in London in the 1980s, and has worked in academia at the University of Dundee and Heriot-Watt University.