Dr Andy Inch

Room number: D11d
Telephone (internal): 26926
Telephone (UK): 0114 222 6926
Telephone (International): +44 114 222 6926
Email: a.inch@sheffield.ac.uk

Academic profile

My first degree was in English Literature and Modern History at the University of St Andrews (1995-1999).
After teaching English in Japan, Spain and the UK, I completed an MSc and then PhD in Planning at Oxford Brookes University (awarded 2009).
During the academic year 2009-2010 I worked as a Lecturer in planning at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. I joined the Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield in September 2010.

Research Interests

Politics of planning, planning and governance cultures, relations between citizens and the state, and planners’ identities.

Current research

I have broad ranging research interests at the intersections of planning, politics, and public administration. To date my work has focused on two main areas:

1. The ideology and politics of planning

This stems from interests in the political analysis of planning thought, how ‘planning’ can be articulated differently to contribute to a range of political projects, and the kinds of planning theory and practice that this entails. It links to concerns about how the role of the state is understood, and the values inherent in public control of land use and development.
I have explored this empirically through analysis of both the rhetoric of national level planning reform and the politics of local planning practice in England, trying to assess how the scope of planning as an idea is defined through argumentation that reflects wider ideological positions about what constitutes success and failure, good and bad, right and wrong in planning and public policy.

2. Governance cultures, planning practices, and planners

This aspect of my work reflects an interest in how planning systems work as part of the state, particularly at the local level. I am interested in the cultural dimensions of policy-making and implementation, the values, actors, settings, and power relations that shape how policy is practiced, and how these influence processes of organisational and governance change. This includes a focus on how various actors understand and shape the purposes of public intervention through their interactions, the changing nature of professional identities, and relations between ‘the public’ and ‘the state’.

Teaching

My teaching is underpinned by a strong belief that learning is an active process, and that one of the most interesting things about planning as a discipline is the opportunity for students to engage with real places, people and practices, critically questioning both ‘real world’ issues and different ideas and theories about how they can and should be understood.

I currently teach on the following modules:

TRP132 Planning Project

TRP450 Critical Perspectives on Planning Practices

TRP323/ 6303 Planning Law and Control

Key publications

• Inch. A Creating “a generation of NIMBYs”? Interpreting the role of the state in managing the politics of urban development, Environment and Planning C (forthcoming)
• Inch. A Deconstructing spatial planning: reinterpreting the articulation of a new ethos for English local planning. European Planning Studies (forthcoming)
• Inch. A ‘Cultural work’, spatial planning and the politics of renewing public sector planning professionalism in England Town Planning Review (accepted subject to minor amendments)
• Inch. A Culture change as identity regulation: the complex politics of producing spatial planners in England, Planning Theory and Practice 11 (3), 359-374
• Inch. A Planning at the crossroads again: re-evaluating street level regulation of the contradictions in New Labour’s planning reforms, Planning Practice and Research 24 (1), 83-101

Other information

I am actively engaged in two organisations through which I try to promote critical thinking about the politics of contemporary planning:

Planners’ Network UK (pnuk.org.uk) is a is a collective of practitioners, students, academics and activists that wants to develop and support critical thinking about the current state of planning in the UK.
Planning Democracy (planningdemocracy.org.uk) is an organisation that campaigns for a fair and democratic planning system in Scotland.
Details about various initiatives that I am involved in through these organisations can be found on their websites via the links above.