The Collaborating Planner?: Practitioners in the Neoliberal Age

This new book aims to understand how both specific planning and broader public sector reforms have been experienced and understood by chartered town planners working in local authorities across Great Britain.

After setting out the reform context, successive chapters then map responses across the profession to the implementation of spatial planning, to targets, to public participation and to the idea of a 'customer-focused' planning, and to attempts to change the culture of the planning. Each chapter outlines the reaction by the profession to reforms promoted by successive central and devolved governments over the last decade, before considering the broader issues of what this tells us about how modernisation is rolled-out by frontline public servants.

This accessible book fills a gap in the market and makes ideal reading for students and researchers interested in the UK planning system.