Simin Davoudi

• Master of Philosophy
• Professor of Town Planning at Newcastle University

This paper aims to reinscribe an ethics of care in planning through a conceptual framework which connects the ethics of being caring with the politics of practicing care . We argue that planning’s limited attention to care is an unfortunate legacy of positivist views and their alignment with rationalist moral theories in which care is demoted to th...

Imaginaries are increasingly recognised as influential in shaping climate knowledge and action and in fixing or unsettling particular visions of the future. Whilst the imbrication of discourse and materiality is key to the distinctiveness of the concept of imaginaries, attention has tended to focus on their symbolic and discursive aspects, overlook...

This paper argues that the crisis of post‐politics has sparked an authoritarian turn in spatial planning in England. That, the proposed reform of the English planning system in 2020 is a defining moment, marking not only the failure of consensus‐seeking politics in governing dissents, but also the rising authoritarian responses to fix it. This is m...

We live in a complex and uncertain world which, among other things, is faced with climate breakdown with unknown and potentially catastrophic consequences. Governing uncertainties is particularly challenging for spatial planning which is primarily a future-oriented activity. In response to this challenge, the concept of resilience has attracted gro...

This book explores the ways in which communities are responding to today's society as government policies are increasingly promoting privatisation, deregulation and individualisation of responsibilities, providing insights into the efficacy of these approaches through key policy issues including access to food, education and health.

This book explores the ways in which communities are responding to today's society as government policies are increasingly promoting privatisation, deregulation and individualisation of responsibilities, providing insights into the efficacy of these approaches through key policy issues including access to food, education and health.

Introduction It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. (Dickens, 1859: 1) Charles Dickens opens his most political novel, A Tale of Two Cities, with these words. Nearly two centuries later, we cannot but agree with his sug...

Introduction How to thrive in today's turbulent times is a challenge for communities around the world in an age buffeted by ‘rollback’ and ‘roll-out’ neoliberalism, with governments cutting public expenditure, promoting privatisation and deregulation, and individualising social risks and responsibilities. This age of austerity has now been compound...

The final chapter returns to some key questions in the light of these empirical accounts of social renewal. What role can civil society play in response to neoliberalism and austerity, and should this be a source of hope or despair? What can we learn about the role of academia and the civic university in helping communities to thrive in turbulent t...

This chapter critically engages with a number of critical questions which arise from the interplay of hope and despair in the context of neoliberal austerity and civil society responses to it. It aims to address questions such as: should we celebrate the growing contributions from voluntary sector as the best of times for a flourishing civil societ...

This chapter include signposting and a summary of the chapters in this section of the book.

This chapter include signposting and a summary of the chapters in this section of the book.

This edited book collection explores the role of the public sector, civil society and the civic university during austerity and neoliberalism and the challenges facing communities today. Using the North East of England as a lens and drawing on practical examples of case studies of action, it considers responsibilisation, a diminished public sector,...

Sub-national statecraft and scalecraft is touted as consequential antidote to the crisis of uneven development and democratic deficit. Interrogating this supposition with reference to city-regionalization in Finland, this paper explores how a neoliberal imaginary of city-regions has been institutionalized through entanglement of discursive practice...

This paper proposes a new conceptualization of scale as performative imaginary and deploys that to explore the what, the why and the how questions of scalar fixing. Drawing on city-regionalization in England, it argues that a distinct imaginary of city-regions as economic- and city-centric spaces has been normalized through two forms of knowledge:...

Review of evidence on assessing and valuing landscape quality and its aesthetic dimensions.The review informs the monitoring and evaluation of landscape quality as one of the goals of the government’s 25 Year Environment Plan. It contributes towards a deeper understanding of the notion “natural beauty’ and related aesthetic qualities.

This article contributes to the debate about ideologically motivated planning reforms. It aims to advance the debate by exploring how change is legitimised through forms of rhetorical persuasion. It shows how political ideologies become embedded in planning policies and practices through strategies of legitimation aimed at justifying specific ideas...

“I have not come here this evening to talk to you about a utopia; no, I am here to talk to you about an adventure ...: the federating of Europe.” These are the words of Denis de Rougemont (1948, p.1), the Swiss philosopher and scholar, given at a talk on 22nd of April 1948 at the Sorbonne, Paris. He was advocating for the cultural, historical regi...

Planned city is a recurring theme in the history of urban planning but its objectives, underlying visions, and contextual frames have varied in different places and times. This entry provides an overview of the planned city and discusses some of the most influential types including the garden city, the functional city, the monumental city, and the...

In 1998, Tony Blair, as British Prime Minister, declared that ideology was dead; all that counted in government was that policies should work (Independent 1998). His declaration of a post-ideological era was provocative but not entirely new. The ‘end of ideology’ thesis originated with neoconservatives (Bell 1960) who saw the rise of liberal capita...

In 1998, Tony Blair, as British Prime Minister, declared that ideology was dead; all that counted in government was that policies should work. His declaration of a post-ideological era was provocative but not entirely new. The ‘end of ideology’ thesis originated with neoconservatives who saw the rise of liberal capitalism as the dawn of a political...

The discussion on urban metabolism has been long dominated by natural scientists focussing on natural forces shaping the energy and material flows in urban systems. However, in the anthropocene human forces such as industrialization and urbanization are mobilizing people, goods and information at an increasing pace and as such have a large impact o...

This Policy and Practice (P&P) originated from the round table discussion held in the UK and Ireland Planning Research Conference at Queens University Belfast from 11 to 13 September 2017. Its aim is to explore the representational and performative role of spatial imaginaries in both describing identities and ascribing them to places and thus influ...

This article draws from the existing literature on litter to develop a framework for a deeper understanding of litter and consequently better policy responses. It aims to address three key questions: What are the different types of litter? What are their prevalence and impacts? What implicit theories of change underlie current policies and campaign...

Since the inception of modern urban planning in the early 20th century, numerous urban planning policies have been introduced that seek to steer urban form towards desired patterns. Some have explicitly focused on promoting energy efficient urban forms to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to sustainable urban metabolism. Despite the proliferat...

This paper applies an evolutionary resilience framework to complex socio-ecological systems in the coastal regions in Europe with a particular focus on lagoons. Despite their variations, lagoons share common challenges in achieving effective and sustainable ways of governing and managing economic, social and environmental uncertainties. Our aim is...

There is a need for an integrative approach across disciplines for sustainable lagoon and estuary management as identified by integrated coastal zone management. The ARCH research project has taken initial steps to overcome the boundaries between disciplines and focus on cross-disciplinary integration by addressing the driving forces, challenges, a...

There is a critical difference between going through the empty ritual of participation and having the real power needed to affect the outcome of the process… [Participation] without redistribution of power is an empty and frustrating process for the powerless. It allows the powerholders to claim that all sides were considered, but makes it possible...

There is an immense need patiently to disseminate information, to dwell repeatedly on the concrete cases of injustice and on the concrete cases of ecological unsustainability. (Naess, 1999: 28) People care deeply about their local environment because its quality affects their quality of life, wellbeing and contribution to environmental sustainabili...

Modern political theory asserted the equal moral worth of all persons, and social movements of the oppressed took this seriously as implying the inclusion of all persons in full citizenship status under the equal protection of the law. (Young, 1989: 250) Liberal theories of justice, such as John Rawls’ ‘justice as fairness’, seek to achieve a fair...

Introduction More than half of the world's population live in cities. Many of those people live in grinding poverty while some enjoy unimaginable wealth. The juxtaposition of extreme wealth and poverty in a single city might be surprising but for the fact that such radical inequalities are a common feature of almost all cities. Moreover, economic i...

Disparities breed resentment and mistrust. The perception that some are gaining access to advantages and opportunities denied to others is an unhealthy and dangerous situation. For communities to thrive people must feel they are being treated fairly and have equal chances to enjoy a good quality of life … We can choose another way, and strive to ma...

It would be a pity indeed if the busyness of political philosophers was to go completely unnoticed by spatial theorists and applied researchers. Equally, it would be a pity […] if this essay were to stand alone as a review of implications of that busyness. (Pirie, 1983: 472) These are the opening words of an article by G.H. Pirie, which seemingly f...

Defining the justice in ‘environmental justice’ has not been straightforward and remains an open question. While not claiming to provide a definitive solution, this chapter seeks to move the debate forward by developing a pluralistic understanding of justice to identify when an uneven distribution of urban greenspace could be considered an environm...

This concluding chapter draws on the arguments and evidence provided by the contributors to this volume to discuss different conceptions of justice in and of the city, the diverse theoretical traditions that underpin them and different ways of studying them. It argues that this diversity reflects the complexity and the contested character of the in...

This chapter provides the theoretical background for the theme of the book and its focus on ‘ordinary’ cities. It introduces liberal theories of justice and fairness and their critiques. Drawing on the concept of spatial justice, the chapter aims to situate debates about justice in and of the city in the broader debates about conceptualisation of j...

Introduction The budget for new road building, if used differently, could provide 1,000 new parks at an initial capital cost of £10 million each – two parks in each local authority in England. (CABE study, quoted in Marmot, 2010: 25) Urban greenspace provides a vivid illustration of the debate over how multiple factors can coincide to turn the dist...

This book examines the theory and practice of fairness and justice in and of ‘ordinary’ cities through a multi-disciplinary collaboration, which draws on expertise in planning, politics, geography, ethics, education, law and urban design. The importance of understanding, identifying and addressing injustice in the contemporary city cannot be over e...

In this chapter, I argue that resilience, a concept rooted in complex systems theory, is becoming an alternative rationality for governing complexity and uncertainty. However, it is a specific interpretation of resilience that is co-opted into and reinforced by policy discourses; one which is in tune with the liberal framing of freedom and responsi...

With more than half the world's population now living in urban areas, ,fairness- and ,justice- within the city are key concepts in contemporary political debate. This book examines the theory and practice of justice in and of the city through a multi-disciplinary collaboration, which draws on a wide range of expertise. By bringing diverse disciplin...

In the pre-modern time, natural hazards were viewed as divine retributions decreed from on high by divine forces such as Fortuna -the Roman goddess of fate and translated into English as fortune. People were passively exposed to these ‘strokes of fate’ and believed that they were unable to change them. The Enlightenment project sought to bring such...

It is often suggested that a defining feature of planning is its interventionist nature which requires connecting knowledge to action. With the upsurge of evidence-based planning, much is rehearsed about the utilitarian necessity of making such connection. What is less widely discussed is the epistemological nuances and challenges of knowledge-acti...

Energy consumption in cities is related to complex interactions between urban form, transport flows, building design, types of infrastructure used, the design and layout of, and materials used in, buildings, and people's daily practices in using the built environment. Transition to a low-carbon built environment is crucial for climate change mitiga...

Abstract: Although sharing some common origins with environmental justice, in recent years, climate justice has emerged as a separate domain, one that entails both greater uncertainties and greater temporal and spatial distance between its causes in human activities and climatic shifts or extreme events. This article situates climate justice in rel...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it presents a pluralistic framework for justice that combines an expanded interpretation of distributive justice with concerns for recognition, participation, capability, and responsibility. It argues that the latter has not attracted the scholarly attention that it deserves in the environmental justic...

Reducing energy demand is not simply about developing energy efficiency measures and technologies, but also changing behaviour and everyday practices. Although the over-emphasis on individual behaviour as the main driver of transition to low-carbon societies may be contested on the grounds that it distracts attention from the wider structural, econ...

Climate change is a powerful reminder of the interdependencies of the humannature relationship and the fallacy of the modernist assumption about our ability to tame nature for our exploitation with little or no consequences. However, it is argued that such reflexivity is being subverted by the dominant discourses of climate change which portray: na...

This paper aims to provide detailed analysis of the impact of climate change on winter sport tourism in European regions. The analysis considers “impact” as the combined effect of exposure to climate change stimuli and economic sensitivity of the winter tourism sector. Using this framework, a new methodology is developed that adds a spatial dimensi...

Abstract: Although sharing some common origins with environmental justice, in recent years, climate justice has emerged as a separate domain, one that entails both greater uncertainties and greater temporal and spatial distance between its causes in human activities and climatic shifts or extreme events. This article situates climate justice in rel...

The main objective of the TANGO project is to draw and synthesize conclusions about territorial governance throughout Europe. Based on a theory-driven, pragmatic and consensual definition and operationalization of territorial governance, the focus of the project is to understand the processes by which actors and institutions at different levels for...

The TANGO (Territorial Approaches to New Governance) project asserts that territorial governance, as defined in this project, matters in order to achieve specific territorial development goals and, in doing so, to strive towards the EU’s objective of territorial cohesion. But inevitably how, why and under which circumstances territorial governance...

Localism is advocated by the UK Coalition Government as laying the foundation for the Big Society and strengthening local democracy (DCLG, 2010). In this commentary we raise a number of questions about the validity of this claim and the democratic legitimacy of neighbourhood forums by drawing partly on the findings from a case study of North Shield...

Simin Davoudi argues that reflexive environmentalism which instills the sustainability agenda is increasingly displaced by the increasingly dominant discourses of climate change that are shifting the focus from nature as asset to nature as risk. The more nature is conceived of as a threat to us, the more our relation to it is framed in terms of saf...