Andy joined Urban Studies and Social Policy as a Professor of Planning in September 2025. Prior to arriving in Glasgow he was based at the University of Sheffield having previously held appointments in the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS) at the University of Lisbon and Heriot-Watt University.

Andy’s first degree was in English Literature and Modern History. After spending several years teaching English he went on to complete an Msc and then PhD in Planning at Oxford Brookes University.

Andy is an Associate Editor for the journal Planning Theory and Practice, and sits on the editorial board ofPlanning Theory. He continues to hold a visiting position at ICS in Lisbon.

Andy’s research focuses on critically understanding the politics of planning and urban development. His work explores planning as a socially contested activity, with (frequently unrealised) potential to enable democratic transitions towards more socially just and environmentally sustainable futures.

Recent work has focused on three key areas:

Critically understanding how ideological and political agendas influence planning ideas and practices. Through this work he has explored how ideas about the role and purpose of planning and planners are reshaped, particularly by government reforms. This has included being part of the ESRC-funded project Working in the Public Interest (2017-19), the first comprehensive study of the privatisation of planning in the UK, that led to the co-authored book, The Future for Planners (Policy Press).

Understanding democratic participation and civic activism in planning, including the nature of public opposition to development and how community groups struggle to challenge plans and proposals. This includes a long-term collaboration with the campaigning charity Planning Democracy in Scotland and a recent AHRC-funded project, Spaces of Hope (2021-2023), that produced the first sustained historical study of community-led organising and activism in UK planning (see http://www.peoplesplans.org/).

Exploring the temporalities of planning, and how rethinking planning's relations to the past and future can enable creative responses to contemporary crises. Drawing on both archival and participatory futures methods, this strand of work includes a long-standing interest in the ways planning constructs relations to possible futures, including through the utopian tradition in planning thought.

Andy has published widely on each of these themes, working with a range of collaborators in the UK and internationally. He is currently developing further work as a co-investigator on two ESRC-funded research projects exploring the planning response to key contemporary challenges: Urban Retrofit (led by Prof James White), looking at the challenges of reshaping cities to ensure a just transition to net zero, and Planning for Nature (led by Prof Malcolm Tait at Sheffield), assessing how to reverse nature loss from new development.

Research groups

• Socio-Environmental Action
• Place & built environment
• Urban Transformations & Transitions

List by: Type | Date

• Jiang, Yuntong
  Colin Ward’s Gentle Anarchism: Reinvestigating 1970s Radical Planning and the Potential for Citizen Control in Urban Planning

Andy has supervised PhD projects on a range of topics including culture-led regeneration, community planning and storytelling, the public interest, university-community partnerships and neighbourhood planning.

He is particularly interested in supervising students interested in pursuing theoretically-informed work on the politics of planning and land development, and the role of communities and activism in shaping urban change.

Andy convenes the PGT modules URBAN5158 Planning Theory and Values and URBAN5112 Community Empowerment and Engagement. He also contributes to URBAN5157 Planning Systems and Procedures.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-inch-84a91054/