Sunburnt Cities: The Great Recession, Depopulation and Urban Planning in the American Sunbelt

In recent years there has been a growing focus on urban and environmental studies, and the skills and techniques needed to address the wider challenges of how to create sustainable communities. Central to that demand is the increasing urgency of addressing the issue of urban decline, and the response has almost always been to pursue growth policies to attempt to reverse that decline. The track record of growth policies has been mixed at best.

Until the first decade of the twenty-first centu...