Dr Quintin Bradley

This paper demonstrates the assemblage of a distinctive body of combative beliefs among social housing tenants in England engaged in formal participation with their landlords. Applying the social movement diagnostic of frame analysis, the paper identifies three ‘collective identity frames’ that signify the construction of common cause among a diverse and fragmented tenant population. These frames celebrate social housing as a public good, promote grass-roots decision-making and advocate direct democracy to public services. They champion local knowledge and local services and articulate a commitment to collective action and collective provision that opposes itself to the individualising discourse of the market. Although a lack of unity characterises the organisation of social housing tenants, this assemblage of contentious claims may signify the continuation of narratives of a tenants' movement and indicate the cautious mobilisation of a distinctive ‘counter-discourse’ in housing policy.

In this paper I want to consider the problem of resistance and agency and to look again at how we understand the challenge of social movements and the impact they have on governmental regimes.

The project of citizen governance has transformed the social housing sector in England where 20,000 tenants now sit as directors on the boards of housing associations, but the entrance of social housing tenants to the boardroom has aroused opposition from the chief executives of housing companies and triggered regulatory intervention from government inspectors. This paper investigates the cause of these tensions through a theoretical framework drawn from the work of feminist philosopher Judith Butler. It interprets housing governance as an identificatory project with the power to constitute tenant directors as regulated subjects, and presents evidence to suggest that this project of identity fails to completely enclose its subject, allowing tenant directors to engage in ‘identity work’ that threatens the supposed unity of the board. The paper charts the development of antagonism and political tension in the board rooms of housing companies to present an innovative account of the construction and contestation of identities in housing governance.

The enmeshment of urban movements in networks of collaborative governance has been characterised as a process of co-option in which previously disruptive contentions are absorbed by regimes and reproduced in ways that do not threaten the stability of power relations. Applying a theoretical framework drawn from feminist philosopher Judith Butler this paper directs attention to the development of collective oppositional identities that remain embedded in conventional political processes. In a case study of the English tenants' movement, it investigates the potential of regulatory discourses that draw on market theories of performative voice to offer the collectivising narratives and belief in change that can generate the emotional identification of a social movement. The paper originates the concept of the ‘performative social movement’ to denote the contentious claims that continue to emerge from urban movements that otherwise appear quiescent.

State strategies of localism have promoted place identity and place attachment as mechanisms to overcome community resistance to house-building. This populist appeal to a passion for place may conflict with the model of liberalised housing growth fostered by state interventions in spatial policy. Place attachment is firmly associated with feelings of collective efficacy and the protests of communities against economic development. In attempting to harness these passions to engage communities in acceptance of new house-building, the policy of neighbourhood planning introduced in England from 2011 was innovative and experimental. It devolved limited powers to communities to shape development in their neighbourhood in the anticipation that this would secure their compliance with a pro-growth agenda and increase the number of sites allocated for housing. The aim of this paper is to explore how a passion for place was expressed in neighbourhood planning and to chart the impact of narratives of place on community support for house-building. It draws on the body of housing policy developed across England by neighbourhoods since 2011 and on fieldwork research with a national sample of 50 neighbourhood plans carried out between 2013 and 2015. The paper argues that the mobilization of place attachment and place identity in neighbourhood planning created opportunities for communities to advance new socially and environmentally sustainable housing solutions that conflicted with the market model of house-building. This, in turn, unsettled the depiction of citizens’ groups as protectionist and opposed to all economic growth and demonstrated the power of place to generate more democratic inclusion in the politics of the home. The paper concludes that the passions of place might point the way to new approaches to housing supply that engage communities in needs assessment, planning, design and delivery.

The aim of this article is to reclaim the democratic legitimacy of self-selecting and informed publics in citizen engagement in housing development planning. It argues for an approach to public participation in which the issues, and the articulation of conflicting attachments to those issues, are understood as the occasion for democratic politics. The article illustrates this approach in an analysis of the use of direct democracy to decide housing allocations in the policy of neighbourhood planning in England. Drawing on literature from Science and Technology Studies and actor–network theory, it evidences the public articulation of house-building as a matter of concern and identifies the agency of housing in enrolling publics, translating interests and in fostering debate and contention. It concludes that the articulation of conflicting interests can deepen democratic engagement in housing development planning and open up the exclusions through which this issue is currently framed.

This paper explores the production of what counts as authoritative knowledge in neighbourhood planning in England. The aim of the paper is to evidence the process through which the intelligibility of place was established in participatory planning in neighbourhoods and to chart the exclusions and exceptions through which spatial norms were produced. It evidences the moderating effect that logics of economic development had in a policy dedicated to the promotion of sustainable development, and, in contrast, it analyses the new expressions of place intelligibility successfully rendered in neighbourhood planning. The paper concludes that the ability of neighbourhood planners to privilege place over logics of development points to a more inclusive and egalitarian approach to the construction of planning knowledge.

This book charts the path toward high performance sustainable buildings and the smart dwellings of the future.

New relationships between service users and the welfare state have emerged as a result of governmental strategies of public service reform in which participation has appeared as the cure for a putative welfare dependency. A new public has been invoked in technologies of governance which have conflated responsible citizenship with participation in the marketplace and have aimed to change the behaviour of welfare service users accordingly. This paper investigates the ability of welfare service users to resist, or amend, the disciplinary intentions of these discourses, to constitute ‘counter-publics’, and to formulate their own visions of public services. Drawing on research with English social housing tenants engaged in participation with their quasi-public landlords, and applying a theoretical framework based on the work of feminist and queer theorist Judith Butler, the paper explores the behavioural effects of participation on tenants and evidences their use of consumerist and communitarian discourses to construct alternative perceptions of a ‘public’, and re-imagine their relationship with public services.

The slow response of volume housebuilders to changes in demand has been cited as a contributing cause of a global crisis of housing affordability and allegations of land banking have persistently dogged the industry. This article reviews the supply responsiveness of speculative housebuilders in the United Kingdom and Australia through the neglected Marxian analytic category of absolute rent. Absolute rent directs attention to the relationship between the value of land and the cost of housing and models a market in which landowners may withdraw land from supply to inflate prices. Through the lens of absolute rent, the real estate practices of the housebuilding industry can be understood as a strategy of artificial scarcity straddling land and housing markets. The findings of this investigation demonstrate the insights to be gained by a return to absolute rent that will valuably expand the current debate on the supply and cost of housing.

With the advent of flexible tenancies, marketised rents, the abolition of a consumer-focused regulator and the disbanding of the National Tenant Voice, three decades of efforts to induce consumer pressure in the English social housing sector have been abandoned by the Coalition Government. It appears social housing tenants in England are no longer to be considered as consumers and have been returned instead to their stigmatised identity as welfare dependents. While these twin identities have long characterised the position of tenants in the social housing sector, the promise of liberty and equality inherent in the role of the consumer has been the basis through which the quality of the offer of social housing has been maintained and through which claims on social citizenship have been launched. This paper analyses the mechanisms by which a consumer identity has been mobilised to ensure the resilience of the social housing sector in the face of continuous governmental erosion. Drawing on a detailed positioning analysis of discussions in tenants’ organisations, it investigates the use of a consumer identity in collective mobilisations to defend the quality of the sector and, inspired by the work of Deleuze and Guattari, and Hardt and Negri, it provides a theoretical framework through which to consider the potential for future claims on social citizenship on the margins of housing policy.

The policy intention behind the state launch of neighbourhood planning in England was to overcome community opposition to house-building. It was anticipated that neighbourhood plans would increase the number of sites allocated for housing by giving communities more influence over the shape of development in exchange for their compliance with a pro-growth agenda. By the end of 2015, with over 100 neighbourhood plans in place and a further 1700 underway, the government announced the success of the policy in increasing housing allocations by more than 10 per cent. Far from ending a system that pitted communities against developers, however, the policy of neighbourhood planning had, if anything, exasperated this conflict. The volume house-builders and their agents characterised neighbourhood plans as protectionist and mounted a series of legal challenges against them. This paper explores the antagonism between neighbourhood plans and developers. Drawing on a range of case studies, it argues that neighbourhood planning is emerging as a political lobby for systems change in the English housing market; one diametrically opposed to the speculative approach of the volume house-builders.

With over 850 Neighbourhood Plans underway, and some already guiding the shape of development, can we tell if the devolution of influence and control to local communities envisaged by the Coalition government is also taking place? Neighbourhood planning provides the statutory framework to integrate participatory and representative democracy in local plan-making so we might very well expect there to be political – with a small ‘p’- impact. Government Ministers have talked about giving local people power and control over what happens in their neighbourhood, and one of the principle objectives of the policy is to increase civic and democratic participation . Although there is healthy scepticism over the extent to which any real delegation of power is taking place and deep concerns over the patchwork of uneven development emerging, there are already signs that neighbourhood planning may have a reinvigorating effect on local democracy. Research being carried out by Leeds Metropolitan University, involving a sample of 25 rural and urban neighbourhoods, suggests that there may be four areas of impact where the policy is capable of achieving a fundamental shift in civic engagement.

The policy of tenure neutrality championed by the International Union of Tenants advances a model of general needs or universal social rented housing provision unrestricted by income limits or needs-based rationing. Support for this model has been severely undermined by recent European Commission rulings that have restricted access to social housing to those least capable of coping in a competitive market place. As general needs demand for affordable housing continues to swell, the challenge for adherents of tenure neutrality is to demonstrate that universal social housing can meet both the needs of the most vulnerable and the demands of those excluded from homeownership by price inflation and credit limits. This paper examines the promotion of universal social housing by tenants’ organisations and challenges the extent to which this model is intended ‘for all’. It reviews strategies to reinvigorate support for tenure neutrality in arguments for widening access and supply of social housing.

The policy of tenure neutrality championed by the International Union of Tenants as essential to a right to adequate housing advances a model of general needs or, in other words, universal social rented housing provision unrestricted by income limits or needs-based rationing. Support for this model has been severely undermined by recent European Commission rulings that have restricted access to social housing to those least capable of coping in a competitive market place. As general needs demand for affordable housing continues to swell, the challenge for adherents of tenure neutrality is to demonstrate that universal social housing can meet both the needs of the most vulnerable and the demands of those excluded from homeownership by price inflation and credit limits. This paper examines the promotion of universal social housing by tenants’ organisations and challenges the extent to which this model is intended ‘for all’. In a case study of the defence of municipal housing by English tenants’ movements, it identifies the exclusionary narratives that render the particular housing needs of advantaged social groups as universal. The paper concludes by reviewing strategies to resolve the tensions between the universal and the particular to reinvigorate support for tenure neutrality in arguments for widening access and supply of social housing.

As part of a programme of austerity measures, the UK Coalition government has made access to social rented housing increasingly conditional and temporary. This conditionality has presented social housing as a right that must be earned through responsible behaviour, a discourse that suggests continuing public support for a right to housing, and, paradoxically reflects belief in housing as a universal welfare service. This contradictory discourse has been most visible in the granting of priority access to social housing tor members of the armed forces, a measure which recalls the slogan of ‘homes for heroes’ that accompanied the construction of the first general needs public housing after World War I. This paper seeks to explore the persistence of a popular discourse of universality around social or public housing. It locates its resilience in the ‘abeyance work’ of tenants’ movement organisations and campaign groups and demonstrates how these movements maintain collective beliefs in social rented housing as a universal right.

This presentation reports on Neighbourhood Planning workshops run by Leeds Beckett University in 2016 with the help of a CHOBE Small Grant. The workshops enabled planning lecturers and students from Leeds Beckett University to support communities writing neighbourhood development plans for their areas. With over 60 neighbourhood planning groups in the city, Leeds Beckett’s Planning School aimed to support neighbourhood planning groups share experiences, discuss common issues and devise solutions with the advice of the university’s planning and housing lecturers and postgraduate students. It was anticipated that community planners would gain practical skills and knowledge to help them in the plan-making process and would benefit from sharing their experiences providing mutual support. Key principles for the workshops were the importance of dialogue, informality and responsiveness in teaching and learning, and the practical application of learning or praxis. The aim of the presentation is to explore the creative tensions that emerged at this interchange between experiential and technical knowledge. It raises questions around the power dynamics of pedagogy, the limitations of praxis and the political nature of learning in its evaluation of community knowledge exchange.

The aim of this paper is to consider the passions aroused by Green Belts in their urban containment function as a political accomplishment that has the capacity to orient publics around new spaces of governance. The paper addresses what it identifies as a problem of relevance in the new Combined Authorities in England where public identity and belonging may be more firmly rooted in other places and settings. It draws on the literature on material participation to locate the capacity to foster public belonging in objects, things and settings, and considers the environmental planning designation of Green Belt as an assemblage of the human and non-human which has the power to connect and contain. In a case study of plans for Green Belt reduction in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, the paper evidences the power of the non-human to mobilise public engagement and to foster territorial identity. The paper concludes by setting out an approach to public participation that foregrounds the importance of material interests and affective relations with objects and things in the formation of political communities.

This article investigates the performative role of accountancy in embedding market mechanisms in public services. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, it argues that marketisation can be understood as a work of calculative modelling in which the fiction of a self-regulating market is propagated through the concealment of the social and political practices on which it depends. Exploring this thesis in the marketisation of housing land supply, the article provides a forensic study of an accountancy procedure called the Housing Delivery Test that modeled an ideal housing market in the English land use planning system. The study points to the importance of Polanyi’s analytic in theorising the performativity of calculative practices in the project of marketisation, not as creating the economy they describe, but in fashioning a fictional market.

The concept of affordability in housing policy signalled a critical shift away from the priorities of housing need. This displacement of need by affordability can be understood as an act of economic valuation in which market price becomes the standard against which housing policies are measured. In this article I draw on John Dewey’s neglected theory of value to examine the relation between price and need. I apply this theory to an investigation of the assessments of housing need carried out by municipal authorities to establish quotas for the delivery of affordable housing in England. I argue that the shift from need to affordability has separated the concept of value from the process of valuation and resulted in a displacement of housing policy goals. I conclude that the systemic failure to address affordability problems in global housing markets should direct our attention to the failure of price to adequately value a prized goal of public policy.

The collective empowerment imagined in the government rhetoric of localism bears little resemblance to the market model of aggregative democracy that characterises much of the practice of participation in spatial planning. This paper explores one of the rare statutory strategies to engage collective participation and to mobilise the neighbourhood as an institution of spatial planning. In a study of neighbourhood planning in England it investigates the new political identities that emerged and the conflicts and antagonism that accompanied them. Drawing on the work of philosopher Chantal Mouffe, the paper explores the significance of the political practices that resulted for the state strategy of localism.

The Tenants' Movement is both a history of tenant organization and mobilization, and a guide to understanding how the struggles of tenant organizers have come to shape housing policy today. Charting the history of tenant mobilization, and the rise of consumer movements in housing, it is one of the first cross-cultural, historical analyses of tenants’ organizations’ roles in housing policy. The Tenants' Movement shows both the past and future of tenant mobilization. The book’s approach applies social movement theory to housing studies, and bridges gaps between research in urban sociology, urban studies, and the built environment, and provides a challenging study of the ability of contemporary social movements, community campaigns and urban struggles to shape the debate around public services and engage with the unfinished project of welfare reform.

Strategies of localism have constituted the community as a metaphor for democracy and empowerment as part of a wider reordering of state institutions and state power. In conflating the smallest scale with increased participation, however, community localism provides a framework through which the power of sociospatial positioning might be made vulnerable to resistance and change. This paper identifies four spatial practices through which marginalised communities apply the technology of localism to challenge the limitations of their positioning and imprint promises of empowerment and democracy on space. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, the paper theorises these practices as the incursion into the public realm of regulatory norms related to domestic and private spaces, rendering political space familiar and malleable, and suggesting that power and decision making can be brought within reach. It is argued that these spatial practices of community rehearse a more fundamental transformation of the political ordering of space than that authorised by the state strategies of localism. © 2014 Pion and its Licensors.

The rise of neighbourhood planning has been characterised as another step in a remorseless de-politicisation of the public sphere. A policy initiated by the Coalition Government in England to create the conditions for local communities to support housing growth, neighbourhood planning appears to evidence a continuing retreat from political debate and contestation. Clear boundaries are established for the holistic integration of participatory democracy into the strategic plan-making of the local authority. These boundaries seek to take politics out of development decisions and exclude all issues of contention from discussion. They achieve this goal at the cost of arming participatory democracy with a collective identity around which new antagonisms may develop. Drawing on the post-political theories of Chantal Mouffe this paper identifies the return of antagonism and conflict to participation in spatial planning. Key to its argument is the concept of the boundary or frontier that in Mouffe’s theoretical framework institutionalises conflict between political entities. Drawing on primary research with neighbourhood development plans in England the paper explores how boundary conditions and boundary designations generate antagonism and necessitate political action. The paper charts the development of the collective identities that result from these boundary lines and argues for the potential for neighbourhood planning to restore political conflict to the politics of housing development.

The localism strategies of the UK government provide a suite of ‘rights’ for community organisations that licence place-based political imaginaries with the intent to construct the community as a proxy for a smaller state. Conflating place with participation and promising to devolve power, localism authorises a performative enactment of democracy, citizenship and the ‘public’ through the lived experience of space. In constituting the local as a metaphor for democracy and empowerment, however, community localism foregrounds the pivotal role played by place and scale in cementing social differentiation and in naturalising hierarchical power relations. This paper explores the subaltern strategies of localism that may emerge when the rights of localism are exercised by residents’ organisations in marginalised communities of social housing. Drawing on research with community-led housing organisations it demonstrates how the spatial imaginations and spatial practices of localism can be implemented to assert new claims on democracy and citizenship. In particular it identifies four spatial practices – the extension of domestic space, the invocation of locality, the construction of domestic scale, and the scalar reimagining of democracy – that subvert the reordering of political space that is localism’s regulatory intent.

This paper concerns the impact of social constructions of place and community identity on plans for housebuilding. It discusses the policy of neighbourhood planning in England in which statutory powers were devolved to place-based communities in exchange for their support for housing growth. Originating the analytical concept of place identity frames, the paper explores how attachments to place were scripted into planning policy by neighbourhood plans to regulate the size, location and delivery of housebuilding. It argues that analysis of neighbourhood plans can provide significant insight into the role of place attachment in winning community support for new housing supply.

Governments around the world are seeing the locality as a key arena for effecting changes in governance, restructuring state/civil society relations and achieving sustainable growth. This is the first book to critically analyse this shift towards localism in planning through exploring neighbourhood planning; one of the fastest growing, most popular and most contentious contemporary planning initiatives. Bringing together original empirical research with critical perspectives on governance and planning, the book engages with broader debates on the purposes of planning, the construction of active citizenship, the uneven geographies of localism and the extent to which power is actually being devolved. Setting this within an international context with cases from the US, Australia and France the book reflects on the possibilities for the emergence of a more progressive form of localism.

The aim of this paper is to review government strategies for sustainable communities in England and particularly the programme of neighbourhood planning introduced from 2011 in which responsibility for achieving sustainable development was devolved to local communities. It explores the definition of sustainability that emerged from these neighbourhood plans, one in which the priorities of environmental quality and the welfare needs of social reproduction were constrained through a choice of economic growth or self-reliance. The paper reports on research with urban and rural communities seeking sustainability through neighbourhood planning and it reveals the starkly unequal geography of sustainable development that is emerging. The paper concludes that hopes of sustainability in England are now heavily dependent on the geographical whims of the property market.

The policy intention behind the state launch of neighbourhood planning in England was to overcome community opposition to house-building. It was anticipated that neighbourhood plans would increase the number of sites allocated for housing by giving communities more influence over the shape of development in exchange for their compliance with a pro-growth agenda. By the end of 2015, with over 100 neighbourhood plans in place and a further 1700 underway, the government announced the success of the policy in increasing housing allocations by more than 10 per cent. Far from ending a system that pitted communities against developers, however, the policy of neighbourhood planning had, if anything, exasperated this conflict. The volume house-builders and their agents characterised neighbourhood plans as protectionist and mounted a series of legal challenges against them. This paper explores the antagonism between neighbourhood plans and developers. Drawing on a range of case studies, it argues that neighbourhood planning is emerging as a political lobby for systems change in the English housing market; one diametrically opposed to the speculative approach of the volume house-builders.

In the contemporary landscape of social housing in Britain, the role of tenants on the governing boards of housing companies continues to be seen as deeply problematic. While tenant directors are recruited to bring a market-like influence to social housing governance, they appear to be approaching their positions as directors in a way that is contrary to the drive towards management efficiency. This paper adopts a social constructionist approach in order to recast the institutions of housing governance as contested articulations of ideology and the ‘problem’ of tenant board members as a hegemonic clash between discourses of governance. It concludes that tenant directors act as a significant dynamic in the political construction of social housing today.

The launch of a National Tenants Voice for the English social housing sector rekindles a contentious debate among housing scholars over the role played by class and material interest in the mobilisation of collective action. The clear suggestion in the declaration of a National Tenants Voice is that tenants in the fragmented and residualised social housing sector share certain common interests that can be mobilised around, represented and promoted and that there exists a tenants’ movement that is effective to some degree in negotiating at national policy level. The contention that common interests rooted in class or sectoral divisions engender political conflict was the dominant theme in the application of Marxist and Weberian theory to the struggles of social housing tenants in the 1970s and early 1980s. This thesis was debunked in the 1990s when the restructuring of the social housing sector made the assumption of shared interests and common cause between tenants impossible to maintain. The return of the concept of shared interests applied to a tenants’ movement makes it necessary to re-examine the treatment of tenant collective action in academic studies. This paper explores the concept of material interest as applied to housing struggles and provides a new analysis of the mobilisation of tenant collective action. It concludes in setting out an interpretive framework based on social movement theory to guide further study into the mobilisation, aims and effectiveness of the tenants’ movement and its role in English housing policy.

Property, Planning and Protest is a compelling new investigation into public opposition to housing and real estate development. Its innovative materialist approach is grounded in the political economy of land value, and it recognises the conflict between communities and real estate capital as a struggle over land and property rights. Property, Planning and Protest is about a social movement struggling for democratic representation in land-use decisions. The amenity groups it describes champion a democratic plan-led system that allocates land for social and environmental goals. Situating this movement in a history of land reform and common rights, this book sets out a persuasive new vision of democratic planning and affordable housing for all.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the connections between place and participation in the context of the devolution of statutory governance to local neighbourhoods. The chapter tests the key assumption underpinning the state rationality of localism that the smallest geographical unit of governance – the local neighbourhood or place – provides the greatest opportunities for citizens to participate in decisions. Examining the role of place within an international division of labour between private and public, the chapter maintains that localism provides the statutory framework in which a domestic economy of reciprocity can be practiced as democratic governance. It advances the innovative concept of community identity frames to explain how neighbourly relations can be transformed into more formal processes of participative democracy. In this way, the chapter argues, places can be more democratic simply because they are more local.

The aim of this article is to identify the calculative practices that turn urban development planning into the supply-side of land financialisation. My focus is on the statutory planning of housing supply and the accounting procedures, or market devices, that normalise the practices of land speculation in the earliest stage of the urban development process. I provide an analysis of the accountancy regime used by planning authorities in England to evidence a 5-year supply of housing land. Drawing on the work of Michel Callon on market framing, I assess the activities of economic agents in performing or ‘formatting’ this supply, its boundaries, externalities and rules of operation. I evidence the effect of this formatting in normalising the treatment of land as a financial asset and in orienting the statutory regulation of land supply to the provision of opportunities for the capture of increased ground rent at a cost to the delivery of new homes.

Public support for Green Belt in England is legendary but is often dismissed as sentimental attachment. The aim of this paper is to situate public support for Green Belt within a history of common rights and access campaigns and a specific cultural landscape of outdoor recreation. This paper contends that Green Belt in England carries notions of common rights established in struggles against the enclosure and privatisation of open spaces from the early nineteenth century and predicated on an understanding that the policy conveys a communal interest in land and landscape. It argues that contemporary public affection for Green Belts is expressed through practices of ‘commoning’ or the performance of claimed common rights of property. Drawing on field research with a popular campaign in North West England, the paper evidences the deployment of a history of access struggles to preserve Green Belt as recreational amenity and accessible countryside. In the perception of Green Belt as a collective resource the paper posits the continuing relevance of common rights to planning policy. It concludes that a clearer understanding of popular support for Green Belt may provide planning scholarship with new perspectives on notions of public good and the use rights of property.

Affordable housing makes housing unaffordable. The Myth of Affordable Housing is a critique of the abject failure of affordable housing policies to address a global crisis of need. Affordability in housing has proved an excuse for unleashing financial speculation in real estate, channelling subsidies to profit landlords, developers, capital markets, and landowners. It is a regressive strategy to maintain demand without reducing price. The Myth of Affordable Housing is an evaluation of affordability as a policy goal, and it investigates the political economy of housing from a Marxist perspective. The displacement of need by affordability has made market price the standard against which all goals are valued. It is this act of valuation that guides the book’s critique of affordability, and it is the value form of affordable housing, its production, circulation and exchange, that provides its trajectory. Just like any other commodity, so-called affordable housing creates value and surplus value in production to realise value as money in exchange. The Myth of Affordable Housing demonstrates the failure of price to effectively fulfil socially needed goals, and it maps out a revolutionary new strategy to bring decent housing for all. This book will be essential reading for postgraduate and undergraduate students, as well as researchers, working in the areas of housing policy, urban studies, and planning, surveying, construction, and real estate management.

© 2016 IBF, The Institute for Housing and Urban ResearchThe devolution of governance to communities is an integral aspect of the state strategy of localism but may conflict with a spatial restructuring dedicated to the liberalization of economic growth. In England, community opposition to house-building has been cited as one of the key factors in the decline in new housing supply over the last decade. The policy of neighbourhood planning was introduced there in 2011 to overcome this opposition by devolving limited powers to communities to influence development. It was anticipated that giving communities the right to draw up neighbourhood development plans would secure their compliance with a pro-growth agenda and increase the number of sites allocated for housing. This paper explores the impact of neighbourhood planning in England on housing development and analyses its lessons for the state strategy of localism. It argues that neighbourhood planning is emerging as the proponent of sustainability and social purpose in the English housing market, in conflict with the corporate interests of a liberalized housing development market.

The pairing of community and sustainable development has dominated the international policy agenda for at least three decades with its assertion that the imperatives of capital accumulation can be balanced for the needs of social reproduction. As a framework of state strategy, the concept of sustainable communities has come to define a particular mode of governance in which the responsibility for ameliorating the impact of unfettered growth is devolved to place-based voluntary and community associations. The community provides a model of sustainability in which the economics of collective consumption and the politics of community action can be engaged in the planning and stewardship of local development. The strategies of sustainable communities that result combine the market zeal of spatial liberalism with themes of redistributive justice and equality, finding in the concept of community both a model of resilience and self-reliance and conversely a dynamic of mutual aid and co-operation.