Shaping Places: Urban Planning, Design and Development

by David Adams, Steve Tiesdell

Shaping Places explains how towns and cities can turn real estate development to their advantage to create the kind of places where people want to live, work, relax and invest. It contends that the production of quality places which enhance economic prosperity, social cohesion and environmental sustainability require a transformation of market outcomes. The core of the book explores why this is essential, and how it can be delivered, by linking a clear vision for the future with the necessary means to achieve it. Crucially, the book argues that public authorities should seek to shape, regulate and stimulate real estate development so that developers, landowners and funders see real benefit in creating better places. Key to this is seeing planners as market actors, whose potential to shape the built environment depends on their capacity to understand and transform the embedded attitudes and practices of other market actors. This requires planners to be skilled in understanding the political economy of real estate development and successful in changing its outcomes through smart intervention. Drawing on a strong theoretical framework, the book reveals how the future of places will come to be shaped through constant interaction between State and market power. Filled with international examples, essential case studies, color diagrams and photographs, this is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students taking planning, property, real estate or urban design courses as well as for social science students more widely who wish to know how the shaping of place really occurs.

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Adams spends as much time as possible in the Australian bush, honing survival skills, gold, treasure fossicking, and hunting feral animals throughout Australia. He served as an Officer in the Australian Army Reserve during the post-Vietnam era. Dave has trained alongside members of the United States Marine Corps and Special Air Services SAS personnel. Serving his last two years in the A.D.F as a Platoon Commander Military Police provided him with exposure to law enforcement working closely with his civilian counterparts in the Queensland Police Service. Dave relies on this real-life experience to provide him with authentic characters, settings, and a knowledge of military equipment and procedures. He continues to travel the world in search of exciting settings and characters that he hopes will transport his readers to these exotic places while adding a reality to his books.
e in the Goodreads data base.