Team Lead:
Team Members & Area of Study:
Ludger Basten (Ruhr area, Germany)
Sonia Hirt (Sofia, Bulgaria)
Nick Phelps & Alan Mace (London, UK)
Christian Schmid (Zurich, Switzerland)
Per Gunnar Røe (Oslo, Norway)
Ute Lehrer (Montpellier, France)
Amparo Tarazona Vento (Madrid, Spain)
Dimitris Ballas (Athens, Greece)
Wojciech Wagner (Warsaw & Lodz, Poland)
Research Context, Methods & Goals:
Europe represents a vast analytical challenge to unpicking both commonalities and important differences in patterns and processes of suburbanization. Initial discussions of group members in Montreal in 2010 identified a large number of possible common themes for our work to consider. These themes included: (a) situate our local case in an understanding of different broad legal/administrative and or planning ‘families’ in Europe; (b) situate our local case in an understanding of the various tiers of government nationally; (c) consider patterns of governance involving integration across policy sectors like transport, land-use, social services and different actors in participatory decision making modes; (d) situate our local cases with respect to the manner in which suburbanisation has been a product of the distinctive way in which (public) transportation, communication and service infrastructure networks systematically distort the locational accessibility/development potential in city regions; (e) situate our local discussion with regard to the generalities of the mixed economies of Europe; (f) explore the extent to which suburbanisation in Europe is residential or is also employment based; (g) explore any external linkages in terms of the influences on or similarities between suburbanisation in Europe and the other regions; (h) explore the relationship of suburbia to nature; (i) consider the influence of the EU (i.e. supranational scale) on processes of suburbanization.
Research & Dissemination:
Europe team members Sonia Hirt, Nick Phelps and Amparo Tarazona Vento presented papers at the workshop on Suburban Governance that took place in Leipzig between June 30 and July 3.
Participants from the Governance of European Suburbs Workshop in Montpellier
Nick Phelps organized a one day workshop on the May 14, 2012 to discuss the 'Governance of European suburbs'. The workshop took place in the Haldane Room UCL, and was co-funded by the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL.
Ute Lehrer organized a graduate planning course through the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University that took place in Montpellier, France in October 2012. This course ran concurrently with the Land Workshop organized by Ute Lehrer and Emmanuel Negrier.
Nick Phelps and Christian Schmid both were invited to present and produce papers for journal special issues at a two-day workshop on ‘Explaining metropolitan transformation: politics, functions and symbols’ organized by Willem Salet at University of Amsterdam in January 25 and 26, 2013.
In 2017, Old Europe, New Suburbanization?: Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in European Suburbanization was published by the University of Toronto Press as part of the Global Suburbanisms book series. Edited by Nicholas A. Phelps, the book reveals the great variety of patterns and processes of urbanization that make Europe a fruitful ground for furthering the diversity of global suburbanisms.
Presentations & Publications:
Conference and Workshop Presentations
Publications and Other Dissemination
