Urban Crisis, Urban Hope: Anthem Environment and Sustainability Initiative (AESI)

Urban Crisis, Urban Hope resurrects the concept of the city and its neighbourhoods as a crucible for new ideas and a site of innovative action when cities in the UK are struggling with an unfolding crisis, exacerbated by a policy vacuum and lack of strategic vision about how to resolve a series of growing divisions, social problems and injustices. It celebrates what is being achieved against the odds. But it also recognises the desperate need for support, resources and complementary visions at urban and national scales, and sets out an agenda to meet this need.

The collection of essays brings together leading thinkers and doers from across the spectrum of policy and practice to present both critical analysis and an agenda for action. It seeks to reinvigorate a sense of the city as a space where more progressive and fairer futures can be imagined, planned and realised. It aims to challenge stultifying discourses of incremental bureaucratic devolution that frame and delimit current urban debates. It alerts policymakers and the public to the unfolding crisis that has been allowed to develop in our cities and rehumanises the debate on urban futures to focus on citizenship and wellbeing in an age of precarity.