Category Archives: Neighbourhood Planning

A pre-modern repertoire of collective action associated with anti-enclosure struggles has been reactivated by contemporary social movements engaged in urban property conflicts.  Traditional rituals of public shaming and folk justice that once upheld a moral economy of common property rights have … Continue reading →

Plotlands – the informally-planned settlements of self-built bungalows, chalets and shanties that gave working class families affordable access to rural and seaside property between the wars – are a distinctive feature of the British landscape and a living reminder of … Continue reading →

Local authorities in England systematically under-count the need for affordable homes. This under-counting is deliberate and serves to cover up their abysmal failure to tackle a crisis of affordability in housing. The deliberate undercounting of affordable housing need is built … Continue reading →

In his commanding book, The City and the Grassroots, Manuel Castells (1983: xviii) argued that all major innovations in the built environment and the meaning and structure of society are “the outcome of grassroots mobilisation and demands”. The achievement of statutory … Continue reading →

Available for pre-order on February 24, 2023. Publication March 17, 2023 https://www.routledge.com/Property-Planning-and-Protest-The-Contentious-Politics-of-Housing-Supply/Bradley/p/book/9781032206363

In a new book to be published in 2023 by Routledge, I address the growth of community opposition to deregulated housing development. I situate this opposition in a landscape of contentious politics, as a broad-based social movement with its origins … Continue reading →

A report on the findings of research with place-based groups in England engaged in planning decisions This report provides a brief summary of the findings of my research into attitudes to development planning among members of place-based amenity groups. Over … Continue reading →

Green Belt is an environmental designation internationally adopted by spatial planning regimes, and famously associated with the arousal of passionately loyal identification. The passions aroused by Green Belt are often disparaged by the planning profession, but the capacity to arouse … Continue reading →

In this new paper I want to investigate the use of direct democracy to decide the location of new housing in England as part of a suite of participatory practices known as neighbourhood planning. I am not satisfied with the way … Continue reading →