RP Archives

Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe

Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe brings together historians, anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, urban planners and political activists to break new ground in the globalisation of knowledge about informal housing. Providing both methodological reflections and practical examples, they compare informal settlements, unauthorised occupation of flats, illegal housing construction and political squatting in different regions of the world. Subjects covered include squatter settlements in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, squatting activism in Brazil and Spain, planning laws and informality across countries in the Global North, and squatting in post-Second World War UK and Australia.

The volume’s global approach is found not only in the variety of topics but in the origins of its authors, who between them contribute specialist knowledge from Africa, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, North and South America, and Eastern and Western Europe. Bringing together such a wide range of authors and subjects demonstrates the power of comparative research to open up new perspectives. By comparing, for example, toleration of informal housing in Hong Kong and Paris, squatting in the Netherlands and communist East Germany, or slums in nineteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century Africa, the chapters connect different contexts in path-breaking fashion.

Mapping Society

From a rare map of yellow fever in eighteenth-century New York, to Charles Booth’s famous maps of poverty in nineteenth-century London, an Italian racial zoning map of early twentieth-century Asmara, to a map of wealth disparities in the banlieues of twenty-first-century Paris, Mapping Society traces the evolution of social cartography over the past two centuries. In this richly illustrated book, Laura Vaughan examines maps of ethnic or religious difference, poverty, and health inequalities, demonstrating how they not only serve as historical records of social enquiry, but also constitute inscriptions of social patterns that have been etched deeply on the surface of cities.

The book covers themes such as the use of visual rhetoric to change public opinion, the evolution of sociology as an academic practice, changing attitudes to physical disorder, and the complexity of segregation as an urban phenomenon. While the focus is on historical maps, the narrative carries the discussion of the spatial dimensions of social cartography forward to the present day, showing how disciplines such as public health, crime science, and urban planning, chart spatial data in their current practice. Containing examples of space syntax analysis alongside full colour maps and photographs, this volume will appeal to all those interested in the long-term forces that shape how people live in cities.

Major Infrastructure Planning and Delivery

Major Infrastructure Planning and Delivery introduces the system for planning and consenting Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) in England (which has also applied for some schemes in Wales). These are the major projects involving power stations and large renewable energy schemes, motorways, railways and a range of other high profile, high impact and sometimes controversial development schemes, including some closely linked to the UK’s transition to net zero.

The book explains where this separate system for governing major infrastructure came from and how it operates in practice, with a particular focus on the relationship between planning, consent and delivery of these infrastructure projects. Detailed case studies of the A14 highway, Thames Tideway super sewer, Galloper offshore windfarm and Progress Power station, drawing on research by the authors, illustrate issues of the often overlooked continuing role of local government, the engagement of local communities and stakeholders, and the modification of schemes between consent and construction.

At a time of ongoing government planning reform, increased concern about climate change, and still unresolved consequences of Brexit, as well as timeless debates such as over national need versus local impact, this timely book offers rich detail on the particular approach to major infrastructure planning in England, but also speaks to wider issues around the governance of development and implementation of government policy under late capitalism.