Dr Sarah Payne

Teaching Associate

Room number: F14
Telephone (internal): 26939
Telephone (UK): 0114 222 6939
Telephone (International): +44 114 222 6939
Email: s.payne@sheffield.ac.uk

Academic profile

I was awarded an MA (hons) in Geography in 2003 followed by an MRes in Land Economy in 2004 from the University of Aberdeen. I completed my PhD in the Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow in 2009. During the final year of my doctoral research, I took up a role in the private sector as a residential land buyer for a volume housebuilder before returning to academia in 2010 as a Research and Teaching Associate in the Centre for Urban Policy Studies, University of Manchester. During my time at Manchester, I maintained my professional link with the development industry by undertaking regular property consultancy for private sector developers and landowners. I joined the Department of Town and Regional Planning as a Teaching Associate in September 2012.

Research interests

My research interests focus on behavioural understandings of real estate development processes and specifically the interaction between public policy and private sector behaviour in land and housing market activity. I’m particularly interested in the interdisciplinary issues of environmental performance and business strategy and also in broader debates concerning urban growth and urban sustainability. My work is conceptually underpinned by the emerging state-market relations and institutional analysis literature in British property research.

Current research

My current research work focuses on two key issues:
1) Exploring how the environment fits into the property development process and specifically how developers view and interpret their responsibility in the broader environmental agenda facing planning for housing. My work in this regard focuses on exploring housebuilder attitudes towards green infrastructure delivery and examining how developers interpret and strategise environmental performance within a largely pro-growth policy agenda.
2) Understanding housing supply constraints through a qualitative research agenda. Here my work seeks to examine current housing supply issues by exploring how and why housebuilders are responding to the recent planning policy and housing reforms within the broader context of ongoing macro-economic instability. In doing so, this research agenda seeks to challenge the more quantitative held assumptions surrounding the planning system acting as a blockage to growth.

Teaching

My teaching explores the interface between the planning system and the development process and seeks to investigate two key elements: first, how planning policy influences the investment decisions and behavioural strategies of property developers; and second, how the development and growth promoted and administered through the planning system is interpreted, negotiated and implemented by the development industry. I’m keen for my students to think critically both about the extent to which planners should intervene in market processes to achieve sustainable development goals and the ways in which planners can actively shape market processes to direct development to the right locations. The intention is to equip our planning graduates with an understanding and awareness of the market processes in which they will operate and influence. I currently teach on the following modules:

TRP235 The Development Process
TRP6405 Integrated Project
TRP6414 Integrated Planning and Development Project
TRP6417 Property Development

Key publications

Payne, S. (2013) ‘Pioneers, Pragmatists & Sceptics: Speculative Housebuilders and Brownfield Development in the Early 21st Century’, Town Planning Review, 84, pp. 37- 62

Payne, S. (2012) 'Can the Volume Housebuilding Model Survive?' Town and Country Planning, December 2012 pp. 546-550 

Adams, D. & Payne, S. (2011) ‘Business as usual? - Exploring the design response of UK speculative housebuilders to the brownfield development challenge’ in Tiesdell, S. & Adams, D. (eds.) Urban Design in the Real Estate Development Process, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 199-218

Adams, D., Payne, S. & Watkins, C. (2008) ‘Corporate social responsibility and the UK housebuilding industry’, in Murray, M. & Dainty, A. (eds.) Corporate Social Responsibility in the Construction Industry, Spon, London. pp. 235-258

Other information

My administrative tasks in the Department focus on enhancing the employability of our undergraduate and postgraduate planning and property students. This involves coordinating and developing our placement programme, in addition to a series of targeted events, both of which are integral to the curricula and provide our students with a valuable connection to the profession before they graduate. I am also responsible for the Department’s outreach activities and coordinate a series of events with local schools and communities throughout the academic year.