What makes a great city? Why do people and businesses still value urban life and buildings over a quiet life in the suburbs or countryside? Now might seem a difficult time to make the case for social contact in urban areas - so why is face-to-face contact still considered crucial to many 21st-century economies? In a look back over a century's-worth of thinking about cities, business and office locations, this accessible book explains their ongoing importance as places that thrive on face-to-face meetings, and in negotiating uncertainty and 'sealing the deal'. Using interviews with business leaders and staff from knowledge-intensive, innovation-rich industries, it argues for the continuing value of the 'right' location despite the information revolution, the penetration of artificial intelligence (AI), and the COVID-19 pandemic. It also explores why digital systems have transformed businesses in cities and towns, but in fact have changed surprisingly little about the challenges of business life. This timely book gives readers, including developers, investors, policy-makers and students of planning or geography, essential tools for thinking about the future of places ranging from market towns to great World Cities.

Faced with acute housing shortages, the idea of new garden cities and suburbs is on the UK planning agenda once again, but what of the garden suburbs that already exist? Over the first six decades of the twentieth century, councils across Britain created a new and optimistic form of housing - the cottage estates of 'corporation suburbia'. By the early 1960s these estates provided homes with gardens for some 3 million mainly working-class households. It was a mammoth achievement. But, because of what then happened to council housing over the later years of the century, this is not very often appreciated. In Garden Suburbs of Tomorrow, Martin Crookston suggests that making the most of the assets which this housing offers is a positive story - it can be positive for housing policy; for councils and their 'place-making' endeavours; and for the residents of the estates. This is especially important when all housing market and development options are so constrained, and likely to remain so for the next decade or more. Following an examination of what the estates of 'corporation suburbia' are and what they are like, there follow chapters on specific examples from different parts of the country, on how they are affected by the workings of the housing market, and then - not unconnectedly - on how attitudes to this socially-built stock have evolved. Then the final chapters try to draw out the potentials, and to suggest what future we might look for in corporation suburbia in the twenty-first century.

Named one of the Top 10 books about council housing - the Guardian online Faced with acute housing shortages, the idea of new garden cities and suburbs is on the UK planning agenda once again, but what of the garden suburbs that already exist? Over the first six decades of the twentieth century, councils across Britain created a new and optimistic form of housing - the cottage estates of 'corporation suburbia'. By the early 1960s these estates provided homes with gardens for some 3 million mainly working-class households. It was a mammoth achievement. But, because of what then happened to council housing over the later years of the century, this is not very often appreciated. In Garden Suburbs of Tomorrow, Martin Crookston suggests that making the most of the assets which this housing offers is a positive story - it can be positive for housing policy; for councils and their 'place-making' endeavours; and for the residents of the estates. This is especially important when all housing market and development options are so constrained, and likely to remain so for the next decade or more. Following an examination of what the estates of 'corporation suburbia' are and what they are like, there follow chapters on specific examples from different parts of the country, on how they are affected by the workings of the housing market, and then - not unconnectedly - on how attitudes to this socially-built stock have evolved. Then the final chapters try to draw out the potentials, and to suggest what future we might look for in corporation suburbia in the twenty-first century.

What makes a great city? Why do people and businesses still value urban life and buildings over a quiet life in the suburbs or countryside? Now might seem a difficult time to make the case for social contact in urban areas - so why is face-to-face contact still considered crucial to many 21st-century economies? In a look back over a century's-worth of thinking about cities, business and office locations, this accessible book explains their ongoing importance as places that thrive on face-to-face meetings, and in negotiating uncertainty and 'sealing the deal'. Using interviews with business leaders and staff from knowledge-intensive, innovation-rich industries, it argues for the continuing value of the 'right' location despite the information revolution, the penetration of artificial intelligence (AI), and the COVID-19 pandemic. It also explores why digital systems have transformed businesses in cities and towns, but in fact have changed surprisingly little about the challenges of business life. This timely book gives readers, including developers, investors, policy-makers and students of planning or geography, essential tools for thinking about the future of places ranging from market towns to great World Cities.