Jigsaw cities: Big places, small spaces

Description

This new book explores Britain's intensely urban and increasingly global communities as interlocking pieces of a complex jigsaw; they are hard to see apart yet they are deeply unequal. Jigsaw Cities examines these issues using Birmingham, Britain's second city, as a model of pioneering urban order and as a victim of brutal Modernist planning.

Anne Power is Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Sustainable Development Commissioner responsible for regeneration and sustainable communities; member of the Government's Urban Task Force; author of books on cities, communities and marginal housing areas in the UK and abroad. John Houghton was head of the Communities Division at the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit; a visiting research associate at CASE; and currently a Harkness scholar at the University of Minnesota. John Houghton worked as Anne Power's assistant during 2002-03 while Anne was Chair of the Independent Commission on the Future of Housing in Birmingham.

"Jigsaw Cities is pacy, punchy and powerful. Even if you don't agree with all of it you won't want to put it down. It's a timely challenge to current orthodoxy and an intelligent and controversial intervention in the debate about contemporary British urbanism. The authors are persuasive advocates for places that have been on the receiving end of misguided housing policies, for the excluded, for local solutions to local problems. Jigsaw Cities is a polemical and passionate analysis of what has been done to our some of our poorest urban neighbourhoods and how damaged communities can rebuild themselves." Richard Simmons, Chief Executive, CABE, UK "In an increasingly urban world, the decisions we take now about how our cities are planned, developed and managed are fundamentally important to tackling the global environmental crisis we face. This book offers us a clear routemap towards greater urban sustainbility, examining how we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and develop socially inclusive, environmentally efficient and vibrant urban centres, fit for the 21st century." Paul King, Director of Campaigns, WWF-UK "At a moment of immense urban possibilities, Anne Power and John Houghton have delivered a roadmap for retrofitting British cities in a way that advances economic prosperity, promotes environmental sustainability and furthers social inclusion and opportunity. They move effortlessly from the macro to the micro, from vast city-regions to small neighborhoods, pragmatically integrating the jigsaw pieces of national priorities, historic cities and fragmented policies. Their call for community-led urban regeneration provides a strong, timely caution against 'Made in Whitehall' solutions that ignore the complexities of real places. There is a smart way to grow Britain, and this book is it." Bruce Katz, Vice President and Director, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, Washington, USA