Governing Post Suburban Growth

Governing Post-Suburban Growth was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Overview

Undertaken by Professor Nick Phelps and his team of collaborators - Sonia Roitman, Fulong Wu and Oleg Golubchikov, the research aims to contribute a comparative understanding of the constellation of actors driving the land development processes at the fringes of capital city regions across the world.

The rise of "technoburbs"; "edge cities" and "edgeless cities" in the United States has prompted widespread debate over the seemingly post-modern processes of urbanisation under which the economic, social and political gravity of cities has shifted to the outer suburbs.  Indeed, these hypothesized changes have been seen to have produced a new class of post-suburban settlement. 

In this project, Nick Phelps and his team critically examine the extent to which rapidly growing settlements at the edge of capital cities in the USA, China, UK, Finland, Spain and Russia can be considered "post-suburban".

The project focuses on a comparative exploration of the politics of post-suburbia; the constellation of actors driving the development process and the political tensions raised by such growth.  Political tensions explored in detail include: growth versus conservation; growth versus provision for collective consumption, and the prospects for governmental reorganisation in different parts of the "post suburban" world. The study focuses on six cases at the edge of capital cities: Croydon (London), Espoo (Helsinki), Getafe (Madrid), Tysons Corner (Washington DC), Yizhuang (Beijing).

People

Professor Nick Phelps
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Outputs

Phelps, N.A. and Wu, F. (Eds.) (2011) International Perspectives on Suburbanization: a Post-suburban World? Palgrave-MacMillan, Basingstoke. (in production)

Golubchikov, O. and Phelps, N.A. (2011) 'The political economy of place at the post-Socialist metropolitan periphery: governing growth on the edge of Moscow', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36(3): 425-440

Roitman, S. and Phelps, N.A. (2011) 'Do gates negate the city? The Recent Growth of gated residential developments in Pilar, Argentina', Urban Studies (in press)

Wu, F. And Phelps, N.A. (2011) '(Post)suburban development and state entrepreneurialism in Beijing's outer suburbs', Environment & Planning A 43 (2): 410-430

Phelps, N.A., Wood, A.M. (2011) 'The new post-suburban politics?' Urban Studies (in press)

Phelps, N.A., Wood, A.M. and Valler, D.C. (2010) 'A post-suburban world? An outline of a research agenda', Environment & Planning A 42 (2): 366-383

Phelps, N.A. (2010) 'Suburbs for Nations: Some interdisciplinary connections on the suburban economy', Cities 27 (2): 68-76

Wu, F. And Phelps, N.A. (2008) 'From suburbia to post-suburbia in China: Aspects of the transformation of the Beijing and Shanghai global city regions', Built Environment 34 (4): 464-482 

Impact

The research has been picked up and alluded to by Croydon Council Chief Executive in a speech at the London School of Economics.