(Note: Bio from UCL Website)
Chris Webster - BSc (Wales), MSc (Wales), DipTP (Wales), PhD (Hull), DSc(Econ) (Cardiff) - is Professor of Urban Planning in the School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, UK, where he is also Director of Research, overseeing 50 active researchers in 5 research groups.
He leads the Cardiff University Spatial Analysis Research Group; is Director of the UK Centre for Education in the Built Environment (CEBE); and has an Honorary Chair in the Department of Real Estate and Construction, Hong Kong University.
He is co-editor of the journal Environment and Planning B and founding editor of the journal CEBE Transactions. His work has been widely published in journals such as Environment and Planning A and B, Urban Studies, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Computers Environment and Urban Systems, GeoJournal and Town Planning Review. His work has been supported by the ESRC, UNESCAP, UNDP, UNESCO, DFID and the UK Higher Educational Funding Councils.
Since 1990 he has been awarded grants totalling approximately £6 million. His recent research focuses on (a) property rights, planning and development and (b) complexity in urban dynamics. He has published over 120 scholarly papers and books. Recent books include Property Rights, Planning and Markets: managing spontaneous cities (Edward Elgar) and Private Cities (Routledge). He currently has an ESRC/DFID grant to investigate urban poverty and property rights in China.
Chris Webster works with property rights and new institutional economics researchers throughout the world in several networks. His interest in this EPSRC-funded project is in exploring new institutional developments in China that will provide more effective coordination of development and a more efficient spatial economy. He also researches in spatial economics and economic geography, particularly simulation models and would like to explore the boundary between models of planning in a rapidly growing transitional economy and models of urban and regional dynamics. The focus of multi-level plans is of great interest here, since it points to ideas about institutional design and also to spatial process – both of which involve complex interactions and feedback in space, in time and between spatial scales.
Contact details:
Professor Chris Webster Cardiff University
School of City and Regional Planning Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue
Cardiff CF10 3WA
UK
Email: webster@cf.ac.uk
