Prof John Tomaney

Professor of urban and Regional Planning

The Bartlett School of Planning

Faculty of the Built Environment

Joined UCL: 1st Sep 2012

Research summary

John’s research has been principally concerned with development of cities and regions as socioeconomic, political and cultural phenomena and the role of public policy in the management of these. This work has focused especially on questions of the governance of local and regional economies, including questions of spatial planning. John’s work contributes to debates about the relational and territorial conceptions of place and space, which remain central to debates in planning, geography and the social sciences more generally. An additional theme of work concerns the imaginative representation of cities and regions in literature and art. John’s work is frequently aimed at live policy debates and he has undertaken research for international organisations and national, regional and local governments, NGOs and private organisations. He has worked in several countries but has a particular interest in urban and regional planning in the EU, UK and Australia.

Teaching summary

ENVS3043: Regional Development, Planning and Policy in a Global Context

BENVGPL5: Spatial Planning: Concepts and Contexts

BENVGPL4: Pillars of Planning (Urban Economics)

BENVGTC1: Planning Practice

Education

Newcastle University: PhD, Urban and Regional Studies | 1991
University of Sussex: MA, Urban and Regional Studies | 1987
London School of Economics and Political Science: BSocSci, Social Administration | 1985

Biography

Prof. John Tomaney is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Previously he was Henry Daysh Professor of Regional Development and Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS), Newcastle University. He has held visiting appointments in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at Monash University, Melbourne; Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of New South Wales, Sydney; CURDS, Newcastle University; Gran Sasso Science Institute; Manchester Business School and University College Dublin and is an Fellow of the Academy of Social Science (UK) and the Regional Australia Institute. He was educated at the London School of Economics, University of Sussex and University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

He has published over 100 books and articles on questions of local and regional development including Local and Regional Development (2nd Edition, Routledge, 2017) and Handbook of Local and Regional Development (Routledge 2011) co-authored with Andy Pike and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose. He has undertaken numerous research projects in the UK and elsewhere. Among the organisations for which he has conducted research are: UK Research Councils, government departments in the UK and elsewhere, the European Commission, the OECD and local and regional development agencies and private sector and voluntary organisations and think tanks in the UK and abroad. He has given evidence to Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Committees in the UK. In addition, he is a regular commentator in the UK media on matters of local and regional development.

Publications