Gavin Parker

Gavin is interested in the relationship between land and people and considerations of property rights and conflict over land use. This interest spans the urban and rural divide and a number of policy fields. He has maintained a thread of research that is concerned with interactions and tensions between actors involved in planning and development throughout his research career. This has been manifest in the body of work he has produced on participation in planning, community action and neighbourhood planning in England.

Gavin has been actively researching community and neighbourhood planning with numerous reports and publications that have been shaping policy agendas in this area. He has also been exploring the changing nature of planning and the profession, including the shifting roles of the public, private and third sector. He has a keen interest in the application of theory to practice and seeks to demonstrate the value of theory in his research and teaching.

In 2020 he was elected as Chair of the New Forest National Park Authority and between 2012-14 he was an executive director of the Royal Town Planning Institute. He is Chair of the RTPI London Southbank University Partnership board and external examiner at Cardiff University. Gavin is also a board member and vice chair of Action for Communities in Rural England (ACRE) and he chaired the Community Council for Berkshire from 2006 to 2011. Internationally Gavin has developed a particular interest in land use, community and planning policy in Japan and he has been a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo and held JSPS funded visiting fellow posts there as well as at Tsukuba and Seikei Universities over the past 20 years.

Amongst numerous academic and policy oriented publications Gavin has authored seven books: ‘Citizenships, Contingency and the Countryside’ (Routledge, 2002); ‘Key Concepts in Planning’ (Sage, 2012) with Joe Doak; ‘Enabling Participatory Planning’ (Policy Press, 2018) with Emma Street; and ‘Neighbourhood Planning in Practice’ (Lund Humphries, 2019) with Kat Salter and Matt Wargent - which won the 2019 RTPI Sir Peter Hall research excellence award and is aimed at those involved in Community Planning. His fifth book is ‘Contemporary Planning Practice: skills, specialisms and knowledges’ (Macmillan, 2021) edited with Emma Street and, written with Mark Dobson Slow Planning? Timescapes, power and democracy (Policy Press, 2024) and lastly, the edited work Rural Planning Futures (Routledge, 2025).

Gavin is keen to work with potential doctoral researchers wishing to pursue any of the themes expressed above, and in particular planning temporalities, participation in planning and neighbourhood planning topics

Qualifications

• PhD - Land, Citizenship and Property Rights (Bristol)
• MPhil - Town Planning (London)
• BSc (Hons) - Land Economy (London)
• Chartered Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute (FRTPI)
• Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS)
• Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS)
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Current and recent PhD students

Joe Doak: Five Hundred Years of Non-Linear History: Exploring Land-Ownership, Property Development and its Social Regulation in Central Reading 1500-2000. First supervisor

Tessa Lynn: The Social Relations of Property: Motives, Means and Outcomes of the Community Right to Bid. First supervisor

Esteban Rocha: Participatory Initiatives in Urban Planning: Conceptual Integration and Empirical Evidence from Emerging and Developed Countries. First supervisor

Katherine Salter: Assembling localism: the role and response(s) of local planning authorities to neighbourhood planning in England. First supervisor

Sarah Wood: Green finance and the commodification of nature: impact on rural land and development. First supervisor

Key Publications

• Parker, G. and Maidment, C. (in press). Planning education and the field of practice: a Bourdieusian analysis. Town Planning Review.
• Scott, M., Sturzaker, J., Gallent, N., Parker, G., Burnett, A. and Mell, I. (eds.) (2025). Rural Planning Futures. Principles, Policy and Practice in the UK & Ireland. London: Routledge.
• Parker, G. and Dobson, M. (2025). Examining the discourse of ‘delay’ in urban governance: project speed and the politicisation of time in the English Planning System. Cities, 158, p.105709.

• Dobson, M. and Parker, G. (2024). Slow Planning? Timescapes, power and democracy. Bristol: Policy Press, pp.181.
  
• Dobson, M. and Parker, G. (2024). The Temporal Governance of Planning in England: Planning Reform, Uchronia and ‘Proper Time’, Planning Theory, pp1-22 https//doi.org/10.1177/14730952241226570
  
• Parker, G. and Maidment, C. (2024). In defence of good planning: planning practice, the learned profession and unifying action through reflexive lifelong learning. Town Planning Review, 95(3), pp.249-257.
  
• Scott, M., Parker, G., Juntti, M., Castellino, J., Forero, O., Mell, I., Jerome, G., Amati, M., Hernandez, C., Buntine, C., Dodd, A., Hamiduddin, I., O'Brien, C., Lucocq, H., Lennon, M. and Blyth, R. (2024). The biodiversity crisis – planning for nature recovery? Planning Theory & Practice, 25(1), pp. 103-140.
• Parker, G. and Dobson, M. (2023). The moral economy of localism in England: neighbourhood planning as neoliberal ‘apprentice piece’. Territory Politics Governance. Online pp.1-17 https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2023.2184856
  
• Bragaglia, F. and Parker, G. (2023). The role and significance of planning consultants as intermediary-actors: Between and amongst government, civic society and the market, International Planning Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563475.2023.2290471
  
• Parker, G., Wargent, M., Salter, K. and Yuille, A. (2023). Neighbourhood planning in England: A decade of institutional learning. Progress in Planning, Online pp.1-26 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2023.100749
  
• Salter, K., Parker, G. and Wargent, M. (2022). Localism and the will to housing: neighbourhood development plans and their role in local housing site delivery in England. Planning Practice and Research. Online pp.1-21 https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2022.2145032
  
• Maidment, C. and Parker, G. (2022). An understanding gap? Planning education in a time of change: a response to Taylor and Close. Town Planning Review Online pp.1-16 https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2023.2
  
• Dobson, M. and Parker, G. (2022). Words (in)action: the orchestration of participation in planning through Statements of Community Involvement in England. Town Planning Review. Online pp.1-22 https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2023.6
  
• Parker, G., Dobson, M. and Lynn, T. (2022). Governmental Logics in Commercialised Planning Practices. The Case of Local Authority Pre-Application Negotiations in the English Planning System. Planning Theory and Practice, 23(1): 60-80