Textbooks
Explore our diverse range of digital textbooks designed for course adoption and recommended reading at universities and colleges. We publish over 140 textbooks across the social sciences, and an annual subscription to digital textbooks is possible via BUP Digital.
Our content is fully searchable and can be accessed on and off-campus through Shibboleth, OpenAthens or an institutional authenticated IP. For any questions on digital textbook pricing and subscription information, please contact simon.bell@bristol.ac.uk.
We are happy to provide digital samples of any of our coursebooks by completing this form. To see the full collection of all our core textbooks, browse our main website.
Books: Textbooks
The fully updated Short Guide to Town and Country Planning provides an concise introductory overview of the practice of planning for those with little or no prior knowledge. This second edition considers who planners are and what they do, showing how planning - as an art, science and system - has evolved as an organised action of the state.
The book discusses the planning system, processes, legal constructs and approaches, taking into account the recent regulatory changes within the UK nations. Restructured to improve readability, it explores the interactions of government and society with the planning system, and the relationship between urban planning, the environment, and placemaking. It encourages the reader to adopt a reflective and inquisitive outlook, and features:
• case study boxes;
• further reading and resources;
• guidance on the recent policy and system updates, including those through devolution.
Rural Places and Planning provides a compact analysis for students and early-career practitioners of the critical connections between place capitals and the broader ideas and practices of planning, seeded within rural communities. It looks across twelve international cases, examining the values that guide the pursuit of the ‘good countryside’.
The book presents rural planning – rooted in imagination and reflecting key values – as being embedded in the life of particular places, dealing with critical challenges across housing, services, economy, natural systems, climate action and community wellbeing in ways that are integrated and recognise broader place-making needs. It introduces the breadth of the discipline, presenting examples of what planning means and what it can achieve in different rural places.
The 3rd edition of this bestselling textbook has been completely revised to address the range of socio-economic factors that have influenced UK housing policy in the years since the previous edition was published. The issues explored include the austerity agenda, the impact of the Coalition government’s housing policies, the 2015 Conservative government’s policy direction, the evolving devolution agenda and the recent focus on housing supply.
The concluding chapter examines new policy ideas in the context of theoretical approaches to understanding housing policy: laissez-faire economics; social reformism; Marxist political economy; behavioural perspectives and social constructionism. Throughout the textbook, substantive themes are illustrated by boxed examples and case studies.
The author focuses on principles and theory and their application in the process of constructing housing policy, ensuring that the book will be a vital resource for undergraduate and postgraduate level students of housing and planning and related social policy modules.
This comprehensive yet concise textbook is the first to provide a focused, subject specific guide to planning practice and law. Giving students essential background and contextual information to planning’s statutory basis, the information is supported by practical and applied discussion to help students understand planning in the real world. The book is written in an accessible style, enabling students with little or no planning law knowledge to engage in the subject and develop the necessary level of understanding required for both professionally accredited and non-accredited courses in built environment subjects. The book will be of value to students on a range of built environment courses, particularly urban planning, architecture, environmental management and property-related programmes, as well as law and practice-orientated modules.
This important text book is the first to be written about infrastructure planning in Britain. Written by an experienced author, the book reviews the rapid rise in the use of infrastructure delivery planning at national and neighbourhood level. The key components of infrastructure delivery are set out and analysed, including the development of government policy, planning regulation, funding, environmental processes and legal challenges. Situating this within international, European and domestic economic, territorial and social policy, the author draws on a variety of practical examples to discuss the role of different institutions in the delivery of infrastructure and to illustrate the various issues and merits of each approach. This is a key text for those engaged in the study and application of infrastructure delivery planning including planners, engineers, public administrators and policy advisers.
Planning is central to economic, social and environmental life but its practice is frequently criticised by all who engage in it. Seen as too restrictive by those who promote development and too weak by those opposing it, planners who advise on proposals cannot sit on the fence. Is it the planning system that is problematic or is it the planners who work within it? This valuable book examines these issues at the continuing professional development level and discusses the ways in which management theories, tools and techniques can be applied to planning practice and used by all who engage in it.
Written by an experienced author and widely respected academic, the book includes case studies and question and answer sections, and will be valuable through both initial and continuous professional education, helping candidates prepare for examinations and subsequent management.
The global financial crisis of 2007-08 was triggered by sub-prime mortgage mis-selling in the US and the global sale of these debts as new bonds.
Austerity programmes are designed to reduce the borrowing that governments undertook to stabilise failing banking systems but the UK’s Coalition government is using ‘austerity’ as a cover to dismantle the welfare state. Housing is at the forefront of these changes. Mortgages and rental costs are rising as ‘the market’ dictates them, while people with low incomes now receive substantially less financial help from the welfare state.
In this much-needed text by an experienced author with a policy background, current housing finance issues (and their history) are linked with broader social policy and political themes. It covers the finance of building and refurbishment, managing and maintaining property for all the different tenures (owner occupation, council housing, housing association and private renting), and discusses whether current arrangements are sustainable. Written for housing, social policy and politics students and staff, it is also accessible to anyone concerned about housing in Britain today.
Urban Reflections looks at how places change, the role of planners in bringing about urban change, and the public’s attitudes to that change. Drawing on geographical, cinematic and photographic readings, the book offers a fresh incisive story of urban change, one that evokes both real and imagined perspectives of places and planning, and questions what role and purpose urban planning serves in the 21st century. It will interest urban and architectural historians, planners, geographers and all concerned with understanding urban planning and attitudes toward the contemporary city.
