What Town Planners Do: Exploring Planning Practices and the Public Interest through Workplace Ethnographies

What Town Planners Do: Exploring Planning Practices and the Public Interest through Workplace Ethnographies, was written by Abigail Schoneboom, Jason Slade, Malcolm Tait and Geoff Vigar, and published on May 21, 2024 by Policy Press.

The book focuses on the complexities of doing planning work, with all its attendant moral and practical dilemmas. This rich ethnographic study analyses how places are made through the stories of four diverse public and private sector working environments.

It provides a unique insight for educators, students and researchers into the everyday lives of planners and those in associated built environment occupations. This exceptional account of the micro-politics of a knowledge-intensive profession also provides an excellent resource for sociologists of contemporary work. The authors use team ethnography to push the methodological frontiers of planning research and to advance organisational ethnography into new areas.

The contents of the book are:

• Introducing Contemporary Planning Practice
• Southwell: the Privatised Local Authority
• Simpsons: the Values-Driven Global Consultancy
• Bakerdale: a ‘Traditional’ Local Authority Commercialising Under Austerity Politics
• OIP: the ‘regular’ planning consultancy
• So, Just What Are Planners Doing?

Authors:

• Abigail Schoneboom is Lecturer in Urban Planning at Newcastle University.
• Jason Slade is Lecturer in Planning at the University of Sheffield.
• Malcolm Tait is Professor of Planning at the University of Sheffield.
• Geoff Vigar is Professor of Urban Planning at Newcastle University.

The book is available from Policy Press at: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/what-town-planners-do

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