Nick Phelps

Title/Position: Professor and Chair of Urban Planning
Department/Faculty/Institution: Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, Melbourne School of Design
Degree(s)/School(s): BA Honours (Geography) University College London; PhD (Geography) University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne  
E-mail: nicholas.phelps@unimelb.edu.au

MCRI Projects: A2: Governance; C3: Europe Research Cluster (Team Lead).

Background: Nick Phelps has a range of interests that cover economic and urban geography and planning internationally. His recent interests focus on the distinctive development of, politics in and planning challenges facing, post-suburban communities internationally. He has long-standing interests in understanding the evolution of city-region economies. His recent work in the UK has focused on the politics and planning processes underlying the production of urban sprawl. Phelps’ recent publications include An Anatomy of Sprawl: Planning and Politics in Britain (Routledge, 2012) and International Perspectives on Suburbanization: a Post-suburban World? (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2011), co-edited with Fulong Wu.

Research Interests: The Economy of City-Regions; (Sub)urban Politics; The Economics of Urban Agglomeration; The Contribution of Planning Processes to Urban Sprawl.

Selected Publications:

Phelps, N.A (ed.)(2017). Old Europe, New Suburbanization?: Governance, Land, and Infrastructure in European Suburbanization. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Phelps, N.A. (2012). An anatomy of sprawl: Planning and politics in Britain. London: Routledge.

Phelps, N.A. & Wu, F. (eds.)(2011). International Perspectives on Suburbanization: A Post-suburban World? Palgrave-MacMillan, Basingstoke.

Phelps, N.A. (2011). The sub-creative economy of the suburbs in question. International Journal of Cultural Studies.

Golubchikov, O. & Phelps, N.A. (2011). The political economy of place at the post-Socialist metropolitan periphery: governing growth on the edge of Moscow. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

Roitman, S. & Phelps, N.A. (2011). Do gates negate the city? The Recent Growth of gated residential developments in Pilar, Argentina. Urban Studies.

Wu, F. & Phelps, N.A. (2011). (Post)suburban development and state entrepreneurialism in Beijing’s outer suburbs. Environment & Planning A. 43 (2): 410-430.

Phelps, N.A. & Wood, A.M. (2011). The new post-suburban politics? Urban Studies.

Phelps, N.A., Wood, A.M. & Valler, D.C. (2010). A post-suburban world? An outline of a research agenda. Environment & Planning A. 42 (2): 366-383.

Phelps, N.A. (2010). Suburbs for Nations: Some interdisciplinary connections on the suburban economy. Cities. 27 (2): 68-76.

Wu, F. & Phelps, N.A. (2008). From suburbia to post-suburbia in China: Aspects of the transformation of the Beijing and Shanghai global city regions. Built Environment. 34 (4): 464-482.

Phelps, N.A., Parsons, N., Ballas, D. & Dowling, A. (2006). Post-suburban Europe: Planning and Politics at the Margins of Europe’s Capital Cities. Palgrave-MacMillan, Basingstoke.

Phelps, N.A., Parsons, N., Ballas, D. & Dowling, A. (2006). Business at the margins? Business interests in edge urban politics. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 30 (2): 362-383.

Phelps, N.A. (2004). Clusters, dispersion and the spaces in between: for an economic geography of the banal. Urban Studies. 41 (5/6): 971-989.

Phelps, N.A., and Parsons, N. (2003). Edge urban geographies: notes from the margins of Europe’s capital cities. Urban Studies. 40 (9): 1725-1749.