Is there a place for place in educational attainment policy?

This paper aims to examine the case for a focus on place-based drivers of inequalities in educational attainment among secondary school students in Scotland. Using desk-based sources, it provides an account of the post-2015 policy episode around improving educational attainment among children from disadvantaged areas. This started with the Scottish Government claiming that its ‘defining mission’ was to ‘close the gap’ but the place-based focus of policy was soon dissipated and the legislation that intended to be the flagship of reform was shelved. The paper shows that international evidence prompts a need for the impact of disadvantage based on place to be factored into approaches to schooling and provides a regretful account of its insecure traction in Scottish policy. It argues that a serious weakness of the case for place in Scotland is the underlying evidence base and concludes by suggesting how existing data sources could be used more effectively and by outlining some alternative policy approaches

Troublesome youth groups, gangs and knife carrying in Scotland

"... the research reported here set out to: Provide an overview of what is known about the nature and extent of youth gang activity and knife carrying in a set of case study locations; Provide an in-depth account of the structures and activities of youth gangs in these settings; Provide an in-depth account of the knife carrying in these settings; Offer a series of recommendations for interventions in these behaviours based on this evidence." - exec. summary

The (re)making of polycentricity in China’s planning discourse: the case of Tianjin

Polycentricity is promoted as an ideal urban form to achieve sustainable and balanced development, and it has been widely adopted by planners in China, especially in large cities. However, the rhetoric about polycentricity has rarely been interrogated in planning research in terms of scales, contextuality, power and rationality. To fill this gap, we carried out a Foucauldian discourse analysis in our research to interpret the nature of polycentric practice in City Master Plans, using Tianjin as a case study. Through an analysis of how the discourse of polycentricity is being deployed in planning documents, we develop two principal arguments in this article. First, the conceptual substance of polycentricity evolved alongside the urban transition process in China, and its discursive practice involved multiple scales and spatial elements. Secondly, rather than being mere technocratic practice, the production and legitimation of distinct discourses of polycentricity is an articulation of multi‐scalar power involving various stakeholders, which is disguised and justified by the planning profession

Urban expansion and land use changes in Asia and Africa

No abstract available

Sustainable, healthy and learning cities and neighbourhoods

This prologue establishes the case for comparative study of urban neighbourhoods in cities in the developing countries in Asia and Africa to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We first outline the debates about sustainable development and sustainable cities. We then discuss the urgent nee for comparative and multi-disciplinary research on the internal physical and socio-economic structures of cities and sustainable issues at the neighbourhood level

They're ignoring tenants' success

No abstract available

Community-based housing renewal in Glasgow: achievements and limitations

No abstract available

The social consequences of the allocation process: evidence from Glasgow

No abstract available

Socio-Spatial Segregation in UK Cities: Causes, Consequences and Ways Forward

William Julius Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged (1987) put forward the idea that concentrations of poverty in US inner cities was not all structural, deriving from the labour market, nor all the result of racial discrimination, but also it arose out of social forces in neighbourhoods where people were predominately poor. Simply put, living in a poor neighbourhood was said by Wilson on the basis of his Chicago evidence to increase an individual’s chances of poverty. Since then the idea of ‘ne..