Spatial Planning and City Environments – (Ph.D.)

As a top-rated research school with the ambition to play a leading role in academic and policy debates at national and international levels, it aims to recruit committed research students for the pursuit of innovative, cutting-edge research at PhD level. With its international linkages and research profile, the School provides a rich and lively scholarly environment in which to conduct doctoral research work. At present there are around 30 full-time PhD students in the School. A series of shared offices are available for PhD students and each full-time student has access to computer facilities. Research in the School is structured around the following broad themes:

* Sustainable consumption and production systems
* Poverty, social justice and entitlement
* Regional, city-region and neighbourhood governance
* Innovation and regeneration
* Complexity, urban evolution and environmental systems
* Pedagogy, knowledge and the built environment

These themes are explored at multiple scales (supra-national, national, regional and local), in urban and rural spaces, and across different sectors (such as housing, environment, labour markets). Research work at the School of City and Regional Planning is organised into five main groups with a number of crosscutting research centres. Some of these focus work within research groups and others operate across research group boundaries.

Research areas of the Spatial Planning and City Environments group include:
* Improving Design Quality in the Built Environment
* The Application of Planning Theories and Concepts
* The Implementation and Effectiveness of Planning Policies
* Planning and Built Environment Education
* Planning and the Attainment of Social Justice
* Planning and Language
* The Characters and Traits of the Planning Profession