Connections : exploring contemporary planning theory and practice with Patsy Healey

The professional practice as well as the academic discipline of planning has been fundamentally re-invented all over the world in recent decades.

In this astonishing transition, the thinking and scholarship of Patsy Healey appears as a constantly recurring influence and inspiration around the globe.

The purpose of this book is to present, discuss and celebrate Healey’s seminal contributions to the development of the theory and practice of spatial planning.

The volume contains a selection of 13 less readily available, but nevertheless, key texts by Healey, which have been selected to represent the trajectory of Patsy’s work across the several decades of her research career. 12 original chapters by a wide range of invited contributors take the ideas in the reprinted papers as points of departure for their own work, tracing out their continuing relevance for contemporary and future directions in planning scholarship.

In doing so, these chapters tease out the themes and interests in Healey’s work which are still highly relevant to the planning project.

The title - Connections - symbolises relationality, possibly the most outstanding element linking Patsy’s ideas.

The book showcases the wide international influence of Patsy’s work and celebrates the whole trajectory of work to show how many of her ideas on for instance the role of theory in planning, processes of change, networking as a mode of governance, how ideas spread, and ways of thinking planning democratically were ahead of their time and are still of importance.