This paper discusses the commonalities and differences in local and regional economic development (LRED) across England, Northern Ireland, Australia and the US. The focus is on four themes: the institutional characteristics of the respondents; governance, partners and partnerships; the...

The paper compares the effectiveness of a number of employment-generating schemes in terms of the proportion of jobs created going to locally resident unemployed workers. Whilst the paper establishes that considerable leakages do occur, a wide range of experience is identified which may in part...

The growing debate around sustainable cities has generated a substantial academic and policy literature. It is becoming increasingly clear that there are a number of different approaches being considered. This article develops four models of sustainable urban development from this literature,...

This paper examines the proliferation of soft spaces of governance, focusing on planning. We move beyond more functional explanations to explore the politics of soft spaces, more specifically how soft space forms of governance operate as integral to processes of neoliberalisation, highlighting...

This special issue looks at spatial planning and the new localism, focusing on the recent changes to policy in England following the May 2010 elections when the Coalition government came to power. As Bas Waterhout, Frank Othengrafen and Olivier Sykes note in their contribution, changes in...

English planning again finds itself in a transition from one paradigm-spatial planning-to another-localism. Whilst there is uncertainty and a debate over the significance of these changes and whether they represent a rupture or evolution, we argue in this paper that such change is best...