This year, Dr. Timothy J. Dixon (University of Reading) and Dr. Mark Tewdwr-Jones (University College London) were selected as the recipient of the 2022 Best Book in the Field of Urban Affairs for Urban Futures: Planning for City Foresight and City Visions. Fifty-two books were nominated this year from several different disciplines and a variety of urban topics.
Award Committee Assessment:
“The Urban Affairs Association’s Best Book award committee is please to award the 2022 Best Book in Urban Affairs Award to Tim Dixon and Mark Tewdwr-Jones’ Urban Futures: Planning for City Foresight and City Visions. Urban Futures presents a real challenge for those working at the intersections of urban scholarship and practice, addressing historicism in a novel way. Urban Futures asks leaders and cities to reimagine how we want to live, with an argument that is heavily situated in the present climate crises and recognizes the centrality of urban spaces. The book’s questions and themes are applicable across the bevy of issues cities will face. Urban Futures is a good example of providing theoretically grounded work that offers clear and practical applications and steps in the process that should make it a choice for many future college courses.”
Award Committee:
Eric Van Holm (University of New Orleans), Melody Boyd (State University of New York Brockport), Mark Davidson (Clark University), Tarry Hum (Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York), Drew Westberg (Coe College)
Award Winners:
Dr. Timothy J. Dixon is professor in sustainable futures in the built environment in the School of the Built Environment, University of Reading, UK. With more than 35 years’ experience of research, education and practice in the built environment, his research includes a strong interdisciplinary approach incorporating policy and practice impacts and futures thinking. He has co-led major UK research council research projects on brownfield land and urban retrofit and has also worked with local/regional partners to develop a ‘Reading 2050’ vision, part of UK BIS Future Cities Foresight programme. He was formerly a member of the Steering Group for the ‘Future of Cities’ Programme, based at the James Martin 21st Century School, Oxford University (2010-12) and was a member of the UKGBC Social Value Taskforce (2018-20). He is co-chair of Reading Climate Change Partnership and sits on the climate change advisory board for Wokingham Borough Council and the Thames Valley LEP Net Zero Taskforce. He has also advised Bracknell Forest Council on climate change and has been involved in other funded urban futures research, involving UK cities and towns which include Manchester, Cardiff and Dorchester. He has published more than 200 papers (and books) about the built environment.
Dr. Mark Tewdwr-Jones is Professor of Cities and Regions at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Bartlett School, UCL. With degrees in urban planning, political science and film, Mark is one of the leading planners globally. His expertise covers urban and regional planning, spatial planning, engagement, digital planning and urban futures. He was Chair of Spatial Planning and Governance at UCL (2001-12), Chair of Town Planning and Director of Newcastle City Futures at Newcastle University (2012-20) and has been Chair of Cities and Regions at UCL since 2020. Over 30 years, he has produced 20 books, over 200 peer-reviewed papers and chapters, attracted £25m in research income, and contributed to inter-disciplinary, methodological and outreach fields in the academy, linking social science to science, the visual understanding of urban change, and urban innovation policy. He worked in central government (for UK Chief Scientist, and planning departments as ministerial advisor), and advised cities globally and for OECD and World Bank. Mark has been a visiting professor at Berkeley, Nijmegen, Hong Kong, Western Sydney, New South Wales, Guadalajara, Pretoria, Dublin, and Malta and served on the boards of RTPI, TCPA and Future Cities Catapult and was Chair of the Regional Studies Association 2017-20.
