The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration Book Launch and Conference

Conference Theme:Globalized Urban Regeneration: Opportunities for Aspirational Regeneration

Book Launch: The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration

Urban regeneration has been transformed in recent years from being a concern primarily of the Global North, to a world-wide phenomenon. Governments of all political shades pursue regeneration strategies and projects that impact on investment decisions and the lives of millions of people world-wide. This conference and book launch, in association with Routledge, provides a timely forum for the elaboration and discussion of the latest research, debates and controversies in urban regeneration.  Come along and hear from eminent experts in the field and join in with the panel discussion. 

You will have the opportunity to hear from:

Prof Dave Phoenix, Vice-Chancellor, LSBU (from January 2014)

Prof Nick Bailey, Westminster University

Prof John Gold, Oxford Brookes University

Prof Michael Keith, Oxford University

Michelle Moore, Moore Development Consultancy

Prof Peter Tyler, Cambridge University 

Dr Yasminah Beebeejaun, University College London

Dr Michael Leary, LSBU

Registration 3.30pm

Conference 4.00pm to 7.30pm

Refreshments will be provided at the start of the event and in association with the book launch.

We suggest you register early to avoid disappointment.

Please follow link to website:

Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration - click here for contents and reviews/

Brief Biographies

Nick Bailey
is Professor of Urban Regeneration at the University of Westminster and also the Director of Postgraduate Studies and Research in the School of Architecture and the Built Environment. Nick is a regular contributor to academic journals and also carries out funded consultancy research. His particular research interests include local governance, community engagement, social enterprise and partnership working in regeneration strategies. Nick was a member of the BURA Awards Panel for Community-Inspired Regeneration and he is on the editorial board of, and is reviews editor for the Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal. He is Chair of the RTPI Partnership Board for Sheffield Hallam University. Nick is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Yasminah Beebeejaun
with a background in urban planning, Yasminah is a Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. Prior to joining UCL she held lecturerships at the University of Manchester and the University of the West of England. She has been an international visiting scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, University of Illinois, Chicago and the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on three key themes: the way in which representations of race, including national debates about identity, lead to the territorialisation of certain spaces as ethnic, and the impact that this has on modes and methods of community participation, and ultimately on urban regeneration and city development; the integration of different forms of knowledge in decision-making, and the opportunities that this creates for new ways of engaging with communities. This work engages with advocacy and community organising, investigating the coproduction of knowledge with communities; an exploration of the creation of inequalities both within historical and contemporary debates about nationhood, colonialism, and postcolonial society in post-war Britain and North America. Yasminah has built up an enviable track record in academic publications including exploring ethos and method in co-producing research with communities.

John R Gold
is Professor of Urban Historical Geography at Oxford Brookes University. He has published 19 books and has written more than 200 journal articles and essays on topics relating to urban and architectural history. Over the last 20 years, he has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, the University of Surrey, the University of Birmingham and Queen Mary, University of London. He has organised symposia, undertaken frequent work for the broadcasting media, given guest lectures and keynote addresses at many international conferences in Britain, North America, Scandinavia and Western Europe. A major aspect of his work concerns the relationship between architectural modernism and the city. Over the last ten years, he has published a series of books on the urban impacts of Olympic Games, of which the most recent are: Cities of Culture: Staging International Festivals and the Urban Agenda, 1851-2000 (Ashgate, 2005); Olympic Cities: City Agendas, Planning, and the World’s Games, 1896-2016 (Routledge 2011). Other recent projects involve a forthcoming volume entitled, Festival Cities: Culture, Planning and Urban Life since 1918.

Michael Keith
has a personal chair in the School of Anthropology at the University of Oxford and has been the Director of COMPAS since 2008. He is working on projects in the Labour Markets, Citizenship and Belonging, Urban Change and Settlement, and Welfare clusters. His research interests focus on the interface between culture, urbanism and migration. His current work develops past projects on the dynamics of urbanism, the study of cultural difference and the impact of migration on structures and processes of governance. One strand of this considers the politics of migration, integration, cohesion and everyday life in the UK. A second strand considers the dynamics of migration, city transformation and emergent markets in contemporary China.He is the co-director of the University of Oxford Future of Cities programme. Michael was formerly Professor of Sociology, Head of Department and Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR) at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has also been a politician in the East End of London for twenty years and was at various times leader of the Council in Tower Hamlets, chair of the Thames Gateway London Partnership (2000-2006) and Commissioner on the National Commission on Integration and Cohesion.

Michael E Leary
was born and raised in inner city Manchester, so has personal experience of the impacts of urban regeneration since the 1960s. He is the co-author of The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration, a book which he conceived along with Andrew Mould of Routledge. Michael is the course director for the MA Planning Policy and Practice and for the MA Urban Regeneration at LSBU. He worked as a professional town planner in the public and consultancy sectors before establishing a presence in the academic world of urban regeneration teaching, research and publication. His latest empirical research relates to a, ‘Lefebvrian analysis of the production of glorious, gruesome public space in Manchester, and was published in the journal Progress in Planning’. Michael participates frequently in major international planning and regeneration conferences and has a number of articles in peer reviewed journals, acts as a peer reviewer and is on the board of the journal Urban, Planning and Transport Research. His recent research seeks to synthesise ideas about the production of urban public space and the right to the city. Visual representations and archives play major parts in this research. He has agreed a contract with a leading academic publisher for a book based on an international comparison of the recent regeneration histories of Manchester, Vancouver and Lowell MA.

Michelle Moore
is an independent Development Consultant and is passionate about using sport as a tool for social change, empowerment and community development. Her consultancy, Moore Development specialises in sport, equality and education. She works with national governing bodies of sport, corporate and equality organisations to bring about social change. Michelle has held a range of posts with academic, and vocational responsibilities, has worked in a premiership football club, in primary and secondary education and has years of experience as a senior education advisor in local government. She is currently a trustee for the Runnymede Trust. Michelle has been at the forefront of identifying solutions to promote equality in sport through the production of a series of extraordinary symposiums. They have involved leading academic scholars and influential leaders in sport and politics to problem solve around sport that’s never been seen before in the UK. Michelle played a key role in the London 2012 Olympic Games; developing strategy and creating engagement opportunities for young people. Michelle is recognised for her vision and creation of new and innovative ways of working to support change in schools, corporate and community organisations and anti-racism initiatives in sport; where she has received awards for outstanding work.

Peter Tyler
is Professor, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge; an urban and regional economist with an extensive track record in consulting for the public and private sectors. He has an established reputation in the field of urban and regional economics with a particular emphasis on the evaluation of policy. He has been a Project Director for over 60 major research projects for Government which has resulted in the publication of forty research monographs of which twenty-four have been of book length. He has published in all the major academic journals in the field and is an editor of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society which publishes multi-disciplinary international research on the spatial dimensions of contemporary socio-economic-political change. Besides his work in the United Kingdom he has also undertaken research for the European Commission and the OECD on urban, regional and industrial policy. He has been responsible for evaluating a range of regeneration measures across the UK and directed the national evaluation of the Single Regeneration Budget for DCLG. The programme lasted ten years and assembled a considerable research platform from which to assess the achievements of regeneration policy. Most recently he has been team leader on a major research initiative funded by HM Government entitled Creating Places for Enterprising Development - the Geography of Innovation. This project is a collaboration between the Department of Land Economy and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and investigates why new and growing enterprises, particularly with a technology edge, thrive in certain places and not in others and what may be the role for policy intervention.