Stephen Ward demonstrates how urban planning can be understood through three categories: ideas - urban planning history as the development of theoretical approaches: from radical and utopian beginnings, to the `new right' thinking of the 1980s, and recent interest in green thought and sustainability; policies - urban planning history as an intensely political process, the text explains the complicated relation between planning theory and political practice; and impacts - urban planning history as the divergence of expectation and outcome, each chapter shows how intended impacts have been modified by economic and social forces.

This Second Edition features an entirely new chapter on the key policy changes that have occurred under the Major and Blair governments, together with a critical review of current policy trends.