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This new book explores Britain's intensely urban and increasingly global communities as interlocking pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle, which are deeply unequal. How did our major cities become so divided? How do they respond to housing and neighborhood decay? Jigsaw Cities examines these issues using Birmingham, Britain's second largest city and pioneer of the modern urban order, as the strongest model of the drive to create public solutions to private squalor. The book offers a unique insider perspective on policy making and it records the continuing urban flight that traps the poor and pays the rich to move out.
List of contents
Introducing jigsaw cities; Part one: How did we get here? Jigsaws and Lego sets; Breaking up the jigsaw; Building the New Jerusalem: vision and reality; Cities bounce back: piecing communities together again; Part two: Where are we now? Britain's cities today: a progress report; Britain's cities of yesterday and tomorrow; Part three: Where do we go from here? Smart cities work; Future cities: piecing the jigsaw together: Afterword: the urban jungle or urban jigsaw?
About the author
Anne Power is Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Sustainable Development Commissioner responsible for regeneration and sustainable communities; member of the Government's Urban Task Force; author of books on cities, communities and marginal housing areas in the UK and abroad. John Houghton was head of the Communities Division at the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit; a visiting research associate at CASE; and currently a Harkness scholar at the University of Minnesota. John Houghton worked as Anne Power's assistant during 2002-03 while Anne was Chair of the Independent Commission on the Future of Housing in Birmingham.
