Locating Localism


Book Description

Locating localism explores the development of localism as a new mode of statecraft and its implications for the practice of citizenship. Drawing on original research, Jane Wills highlights the importance of having the civic infrastructure and capacity to facilitate the engagement of citizens in local decision making. She looks at the development of community organising, neighbourhood planning and community councils that identify and nurture the energies, talents and creativity of the population to solve their own problems and improve our world. Combining political theory with attention to political practice, the book takes the long view of this new policy development, positioning it in relation to the political geo-history of the British state. In so doing, it highlights the challenges of the state devolving itself and the importance of citizens having the freedom, incentives and institutions needed to act.




Locating Localism


Book Description

In the wake of many decades of increasing centralization, localism has been making a decided comeback in recent years. This book explores the development of localism as a new mode of statecraft and its implications for the everyday practice of citizenship. Jane Wills highlights the importance of civic infrastructure to effective engagement of citizens in local decision making, looks at the development of community organizing, neighborhood planning, and community councils, and positions this turn to the local in relationship to the longer geopolitical history of the British state.




Small Isn't Beautiful


Book Description

“Eat local” has become a popular marketing slogan in recent years, based on the idea that food grown or raised nearby is better for you and friendlier to the environment than similar products shipped in from many miles away. That slogan reflects a broader worldview suggesting that everything local, including government and knowledge, is better than what originates somewhere else. Small Isn’t Beautiful acknowledges that some things that are local are good, but denies that what’s local is always or even often better than what’s far away. “Localism” is based on an “undeserved aura of respectability, virtue, and good sense” and can produce results that are misguided or even dangerous. Particularly when it comes to public policies, decisions made at the local level are rarely superior and are sometimes unjust. Small Isn’t Beautiful exposes the supposed “virtue” of localism as a hodgepodge of weak arguments and misleading hunches. Trevor Latimer's engagingly written and provocative book will appeal to all readers who want to understand localism beyond slogans and marketing.




The New Localism


Book Description

The New Localism provides a roadmap for change that starts in the communities where most people live and work. In their new book, The New Localism, urban experts Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak reveal where the real power to create change lies and how it can be used to address our most serious social, economic, and environmental challenges. Power is shifting in the world: downward from national governments and states to cities and metropolitan communities; horizontally from the public sector to networks of public, private and civic actors; and globally along circuits of capital, trade, and innovation. This new locus of power—this new localism—is emerging by necessity to solve the grand challenges characteristic of modern societies: economic competitiveness, social inclusion and opportunity; a renewed public life; the challenge of diversity; and the imperative of environmental sustainability. Where rising populism on the right and the left exploits the grievances of those left behind in the global economy, new localism has developed as a mechanism to address them head on. New localism is not a replacement for the vital roles federal governments play; it is the ideal complement to an effective federal government, and, currently, an urgently needed remedy for national dysfunction. In The New Localism, Katz and Nowak tell the stories of the cities that are on the vanguard of problem solving. Pittsburgh is catalyzing inclusive growth by inventing and deploying new industries and technologies. Indianapolis is governing its city and metropolis through a network of public, private and civic leaders. Copenhagen is using publicly owned assets like their waterfront to spur large scale redevelopment and finance infrastructure from land sales. Out of these stories emerge new norms of growth, governance, and finance and a path toward a more prosperous, sustainable, and inclusive society. Katz and Nowak imagine a world in which urban institutions finance the future through smart investments in innovation, infrastructure and children and urban intermediaries take solutions created in one city and adapt and tailor them to other cities with speed and precision. As Katz and Nowak show us in The New Localism, “Power now belongs to the problem solvers.”




The Resurgence of Parish Council Powers in England


Book Description

Parish councils are often underappreciated and undervalued in what they do even though they are an essential part of the governing of England today. In spite of this, the number of parish councils and the roles they perform are increasing. This book explores the reasons for this apparent resurgence in parish councils. Some of it is a response to local demand, especially with the impact of austerity on local government as a whole. At the same time, austerity measures have seen moves to much larger units of local government. Again, the demand for a more local tier of government has resulted in the creation of new parish councils. There is a huge caveat and this is in relation to capacity. Do these new councils have the capacity to deliver the services demanded of them?




Neighbourhood Planning


Book Description

This book carries out an in-depth investigation of a neighborhood planning process that engages critically with the issues surrounding articulation of local concerns in a strategic manner and the prospects of implementing ‘bottom up’ community initiatives successfully. It highlights the dynamics involved in shaping the content of a neighbourhood plan and the implications of the different ways in which a place is constructed. The book challenges the notions of a singular place that is described in a neighbourhood plan. It examines conceptual, thematic, strategic and performative constructions of place and the capacity for neighbourhood plans to be developed within this context. It explores the value of connecting the formulation of a neighbourhood plan with the emergence of a relevant local plan, allowing for more meaningful local influence on strategic policymaking. With first-hand insights on neighbourhood planning, this book offers a novel contribution to the fields of planning, urban studies, and urban geography.




Local government and democracy in Britain


Book Description

Local government in the UK is in crisis. It is now neither local in terms of the geography and populations of its principle units, nor does it truly govern in these areas. As this book reveals, over the previous 200 years local government has moved from a system in which local interests held governance over localities to one in which central government and national and multi-national agencies such as corporate businesses hold governance over local and community decision-making. These changes seriously undermine the important role that local government can play in liberal democracy in the UK. The book explains the nature of local government today and asks if there is any possibility of change.




Care, Crisis and Activism


Book Description

What kinds of care are being offered or withdrawn by the welfare state? What does this mean for the caring practices and interventions of local activists? Shedding new light on austerity and neoliberal welfare reform in the UK, this vital book considers local action and activism within contexts of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Presenting compelling case studies of local action, from protesting cuts to children's services to local food provisioning and support for migrant women, this book makes visible often unseen practices of activism. It shows how the creativity and persistence of such local practices can be seen as enacting wider visions of how care should be provided by society.




Handbook on Local and Regional Governance


Book Description

Holistic in approach, this Handbook’s international range of leading scholars present complementary perspectives, both theoretical and empirically pertinent, to explore recent developments in the field of local and regional governance.




Handbook of Gentrification Studies


Book Description

It is now over 50 years since the term ‘gentrification’ was first coined by the British urbanist Ruth Glass in 1964, in which time gentrification studies has become a subject in its own right. This Handbook, the first ever in gentrification studies, is a critical and authoritative assessment of the field. Although the Handbook does not seek to rehearse the classic literature on gentrification from the 1970s to the 1990s in detail, it is referred to in the new assessments of the field gathered in this volume. The original chapters offer an important dialogue between existing theory and new conceptualisations of gentrification for new times and new places, in many cases offering novel empirical evidence.