Simon Parker

One of the key issues of our time is the question of where power and governance should lie. Should they be centrally controlled, drawing on efficiencies of scale and gathered knowledge? Or should they be more locally distributed, so that they more closely represent the actual needs of people and communities? In Taking Power Back, Simon Parker makes a powerful case for the latter: centralization, he argues, has been largely a failure, breeding distrust among citizens—who, he shows, are beginning to take matters into their own hands. Offering policy recommendations and practical suggestions, Parker argues for a new kind of politics, one that can fully unleash society's creative potential.

Putting People in Charge of Politics

Taking Power Back

Urban Theory and the Urban Experience brings together classic and contemporary approaches to urban research in order to reveal the intellectual origins of urban studies and the often unacknowledged debt that empirical and theoretical perspectives on the city owe one another. From the foundations of modern urban theory in the work of Weber, Simmel, Benjamin and Lefebbvre to the writings of contemporary urban theorists such as David Harvey and Manuel Castells and the Los Angeles school of urbanism, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience traces the key developments in the idea of the city over more than a century. Individual chapters explore investigative studies of the great metropolis from Charles Booth to the contemporary urban research of William J. Wilson, along with alternative approaches to the industrial city, ranging from the Garden City Movement to ‘the new urbanism’. The volume also considers the impact of new information and communication technologies, and the growing trend towards disaggregated urban networks, all of which raise important questions about viability and physical and social identity of the conventional townscape. Urban Theory and the Urban Experience concludes with a rallying cry for a more holistic and integrated approach to the urban question in theory and in practice if the rich potent. For the benefit of students and tutors, frequent question points encourage exploration of key themes, and annotated further readings provide follow-up sources for the issues raised in each chapter. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, practitioners and all those who wish to learn more about why the urban has become the dominant social, economic and cultural form of the twenty-first century

Encountering the City

Urban Theory and the Urban Experience

“A truly inspiring journey that celebrates the healing power of adventure. A must-read.” – Levison Wood The remarkable and inspirational true story of how one man battled grief and anxiety, one pedal stroke at a time, on a 3,500-mile adventure around Britain In March 2020, as Britain entered its first lockdown, Simon Parker’s life fell apart; his travel journalism career vanished overnight and shortly afterwards he received the tragic news that a close friend had died. With a long-suppressed anxiety disorder starting to rear its head, he turned to the only therapies he knew and trusted: travel and exercise. Setting off on his bike from the northernmost point of Shetland with only a sleeping bag and a camping stove, Simon would end up cycling 3,427 miles around Britain. En route, he would meet hundreds of resilient Britons, who were all, in their own way, riding out the storm just like he was. Even in his gloomiest moments he began to see that a chink of light was never too far away. Riding Out is a story of optimism and hope, and a ground-level portrait of Britain as it transforms from a country in crisis to a nation on the mend. From Shetland to the Scillies, Dover to Durness, Simon learns that life’s sharpest corners are best navigated at the gentle pace of a bicycle.

A Journey of Love, Loss and New Beginnings

Riding Out

Dean Windass

Great Northern Books

Dean Windass is one of the real characters of British football. Though never far from controversy, Deano's reputation as an old fashioned centre-forward hitting the target over 200 times in his career, has made him popular with fans and players alike. This is the story of a hardworking pro who stands out as a real man in the modern game.

Deano

In March 2020, as Britain went into lockdown, Simon Parker's life fell apart. With an anxiety disorder starting to rear its head, he turned to two trusted therapies: travel and exercise. On his epic, poignant and ultimately hopeful adventure around Britain, Simon learns that life's sharpest corners are best navigated at the pace of a bicycle.

A Life-Affirming Journey Around the Coast of Britain

Stephen Gundle

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi

The New Italian Republic

This book discusses topical issues in entrepreneurship organized around the various stages of venture creation, development and performance. It is arranged in several parts, dealing with the pre-start stage, followed by venture creation, financing ventures, venture development, and venture performance. Each part contains several chapters written by experts in the relevant field. The multi-disciplinary flavor of the book is complemented by its international evidence base, featuring results from a range of different countries. The book will help researchers and practitioners who want to pinpoint the key points emerging from the latest academic thinking.

The Life Cycle of Entrepreneurial Ventures

Traditionally, the study of ‘power in the city’ was confined to the institutions of urban government and the actors involved in contesting and making political decisions in and for metropolitan societies. Increasingly, however, attention has turned to the function of the city not only as a centre of urban governance but as a major economic, social, cultural and strategic force in its own right. Cities, Politics and Power combines this traditional concern with how the cities in which we live are organized and run with a broader focus on cities and urban regions as multiple sites and agents of power. This book is divided into five sections, with a short introduction outlining the argument and organisation of the text. Part two charts the development of the urban polity and considers the ways in which coercion and force continue to be used to segregate, oppress and annihilate urban populations. Part three critically examines the key collective actors and processes that compete for and organise political power within cities, and how urban governance operates and interacts with lesser and greater scales of government and networks of power. Part four then explores the ways in which ‘the political’ is constituted by urban inhabitants, and how social identity, information and communication networks, and the natural and built environment all comprise intersecting fields of urban power. The conclusion calls for a broader theoretical and thematic approach to the study of urban politics. This book makes extensive use of comparative and historical case studies, providing broad coverage of politics and urban movements in both the Global North and the Global South, with a particular focus on the UK, USA, Canada, Latin America and China. It is written in an accessible and lucid style and provides suggestions for further reading at the end each chapter.

Simon Parker

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