Research Design in Urban Planning

“This excellent book fills a significant gap in the literature supporting planning education by providing clear, succinct advice on the design and implementation of small-scale student research projects.“ – Chris Couch, Professor of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool

“A perfect text for supervisors to give students so that they plan their research projects carefully rather than leap headlong into data collection.“ – Jean Hillier, Emeritus Professor of Sustainability and Urban Planning, RMIT University, Melbourne “Highly recommended… Ranging across topics such as planning a research programme and data management and the handling of ethical issues, the book will be very helpful to those embarking on a thesis or dissertation in the field.“ – Peter Fidler, President of the University of Sunderland Research Design in Urban Planning: A Student’s Guide is a brilliantly accessible guide to designing research for that all-important dissertation. Aimed at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, this text will:

• discuss research design, outlining the stages of the research process in clear detail and the key decisions which need to be taken at each stage

• explain to students how to re-interpret policy issues as researchable questions, appropriate for investigation

• look in detail at how researchers make their choice of methods, helping students to justify their own decisions

• reveal the ethical dimension to such decisions in the context of a growing requirement for the ethical approval of student projects

• review the issues for comparative studies – important not least because of student involvement in Erasmus programs and AESOP workshops

Packed with case studies, exercises, illustrations and summaries, Research Design in Urban Planning is an invaluable resource for students undertaking their first substantial, individual investigations.

Author Biography

Stuart Farthing was Principal Lecturer in the Department of Planning & Architecture, at UWE, Bristol and spent most of his working life in Bristol though he had an international reputation, having been a Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Melbourne, Curtin and Murdoch in Australia, the University of Tours in France and University of Hannover in Germany. He was also a member of the Conseil Scientifique of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme ‘Villes et Territoires’ at the University of Tours.

His research interests in recent years  have included understanding how planning affects the nature of housing development but also how national housing policies shape changes in planning policy; investigating the changing role of small towns in rural regeneration; and analysing policy-oriented learning in the context of European spatial planning.

Stuart has supervised hundreds of dissertations in planning over the years, supervised many PhD students and he played a leading role in the training and supervision of social science doctoral students at UWE Bristol, developing and running the cross-disciplinary Masters in Applied Social Research.