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Staff Profile

Dr Neil Adrian Powe

Reader in Place Based Change

  • Email: n.a.powe@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
    Newcastle University
    Henry Daysh Building
    Claremont Road
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Introduction

Over the last 15 years most of his research has been on small towns with a particular focus on place-based revival. This period has led to the publication of a series of journal articles and two books.  This research has considered processes of transition and change within these towns. His most recent book - Planning for Small Town Change explores issues of place-based revival, business growth, population growth and town centre revival. 

More recently Neil's work has focused in particular on town centres - recent papers -

 1) Seeing struggling town centres as another form of urban shrinkage, our recent paper published in Planning Theory and Practice draws lessons from other types of shrinking places. Findings suggest that adopting “smart-decline”/“rightsizing” concepts provides an important new lens for future town centre research. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649357.2022.2109718?src=

 2) Another recent paper also published in Planning Theory and Practice illustrates the potential within many places for self-reorientation and highlights how key policy choices need to be supportive to these bottom-up and locally distinctive forces for revival.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649357.2020.1749719?src=recsys

For over ten years he researched non-market environmental valuation and specialised in the use of stated preference methods, testing the validity of the approach and determining its applicability to environmental management problems. He has published a book and many papers on this topic. He has also contributed to the literature on revealed preference research through the use of hedonic price methods.  

Roles and Responsibilities

Editor in Chief for the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management

Qualifications

BA(Hons) Economics

MSC Business Information Technology

PhD Environmental Economics

Previous Positions

Research Associate Department of Town and Country Planning, Newcastle University.

Research Associate Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing, Newcastle University.

Teaching

Module Leader

TCP2025 Researching Local Economies

TCP2038 Researching Local Economies (Placement)

TCP2027 Research Skills

TCP3028 Strategies into Action 


Contributing to

TCP3061 Contemporary Planning 

TCP8001 Planning Frameworks 

TCP8958 Mapping Data and Measurement

TCP8911 Research Design


 

Research

Research Interests

His key research interests have focused on place-based change and non-market environmental valuation. 

The place-based change research has significantly enhanced our understanding of how small towns and town centres can reorient themselves in the context of structural and other changes. Conceptually, the focus has been on the key drivers for place-based change and governance approaches to help better manage this change.

 

Place-based change

Seeing places as complex adaptive sub-systems place-based revival has been conceptualised in terms of their potential for self-reorientation and highlights how key policy choices need to be supportive to these bottom-up and locally distinctive forces for revival. This has been explored in terms of town centres - Redesigning town centre planning: from master planning revival to enabling self-reorientation and small towns published in Planning Theory and Practice and - Planning for small town reorientation: Key policy choices within external support published in the Journal of Rural Studies. This research has highlighted the importance of community orientated governance as a key driver for change.

 

Faced with a continual loss of commercial activity, new ideas are required to help understand and support town centre change. Drawing on decades of research on urban shrinkage, concepts of “Smart-decline” and “Rightsizing” were found to be insightful in terms of better appreciating the challenges of town centre shrinkage and the strategies and governance structures required to realise the opportunities arising. These issues were discussed in our paper – Planning for Town Centre “Smart-Decline”/“Rightsizing”: A New Lens for Strategy Development and Research? published in Planning Theory and Practice.

 

Given the focus of much of the small town literature on perhaps the more favoured places in terms of their potential to benefit from tourism and rural gentrification, a paper in the Journal of Rural Studies entitled - Non-amenity business growth and small town revival - explores instead the potential for alternative non-amenity employment generation within the local economy. Drawing on two insightful cases, this paper illustrates that more might be achievable than perhaps initially expected. 

 

Governance approaches

In terms of place-based governance a paper in Town Planning Review entitled - Community enterprises as boundary organisations aiding small town revival: exploring the potential.  Seeing community enterprises as boundary organisations, this was the first regeneration paper to use this conception. 

 

Consistent with the US experience of Community Development Corporations, the paper – Planning for Town Centre “Smart-Decline”/“Rightsizing”: A New Lens for Strategy Development and Research? published in Planning Theory and Practice, has explored the potential for community enterprises to support town centre regeneration. 

 

Non-market valuation 

The non-market valuation research has focused on the development and testing of revealed and stated preferences methods. Coming from a mixed background in economics, information technology and planning, this research has demonstrated his interest in the use of multidisciplinary approach to improve these methods. Bringing together economic and psychology work in this field, the book entitled - Redesigning environmental valuation- mixing methods within stated preference techniques - has encapsulated these efforts. More recent efforts in this field have been in support of others. 

 

Postgraduate Supervision

Have successfully supervised ten PhD students to completion. 

 

Esteem Indicators

Editor in Chief for the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management.

 

Previous funding has been received from:

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Department for Transport

Forestry Commission

Countryside Agency

Natural England

North York Moors National Park Authority

Northumberland National Park Authority

Castle Morpeth Borough Council and Morpeth & District Chamber of Trade

Northumbria Leisure

North East Community Forests

Contributed on an ESRC project

Southern Water

South East Water

The Street Foundation


Publications