Welcome to Just Neighbourhoods?

Understanding under-representation in Community-Led Planning

Community-led planning has the potential to help neighbourhoods shape the places they live, from the built environment to local green spaces. Yet across the UK and Northern Ireland, many communities are still under-represented in these processes, and the support offered to them is often uneven.

Just Neighbourhoods? is a Nuffield Foundation–funded research project exploring why this happens, what communities themselves are doing to overcome it, and what more equitable, meaningful participation could look like in practice.

What this site offers

Here you’ll find:

  • An overview of our research: what we’re studying, where, and why it matters

  • Insights into community-led planning activity across a wide range of neighbourhoods (found across the website)

  • Stories from communities who are navigating opportunities, barriers, and alternatives to formal planning tools (found across the website)

  • Resources and links for anyone interested in community involvement, planning practice, or place-based justice

  • A neighbourhood photo gallery, offering a vivid window into everyday experiences of place, change, and action

Our Focus

We take a broad view of “community-led planning,” looking not only at formal mechanisms but also the creative, informal, and often unrecognised ways that people work to improve their neighbourhoods.

Our central questions include:

  • What encourages or supports communities to shape their local environment?

  • Why are some neighbourhoods, especially those facing multiple forms of disadvantage, less present in these processes?

  • What happens when local energy and effort do not lead to the outcomes people hoped for?

  • How might planning systems, policy, and practice better align with the realities communities experience?

By learning from places where community-led activity is both flourishing and struggling, we hope to illuminate how more just and inclusive approaches can be fostered.

Stay Connected

We will continue to share updates, findings, images, and learning as the project progresses.

Questions or want to know more?
Email: tessa.lynn@henley.reading.ac.uk
You can also visit our About page for details of the research team.