Lead supervisor:
Prof Mark Whitehead 
Other supervisor(s):
- Prof Michael Woods
Start date: October 2025 (Full time)
Award: General
Subject Pathway:
Environmental Planning
Thematic Cluster:
Place, Environment and Development Cluster
Sustainable Urban Development Practices in the UK, Fighting back against the Growth Machine with a focus on Urban Justice
My research focuses on the way we develop in the UK. Specifically, in terms of 'The Growth Machine'. This is a concept that suggests that development in urban contexts in always fundamentally in service of growth. Not just directly through economic development, but indirectly through social and environmental development.
My goal is to use cases of injustice in urban spaces to demonstrate how this concept functions in UK urban development, the impact it is having on our society, and how we could reframe development to be more sustainable.
The idealistic end point is to devise framework to present how to avoid the pitfalls of the urban growth machine, and influence UK policymakers to develop sustainably for the good of people. However, this is also a pragmatic approach. Although this end point is idealistic, it doesn't aim to reduce and restructure our entire capitalist system, it aims to work in tandem with it and produce tangible results based on real world injustices. A compromise.