has two chief aims. Firstly, it analyses and explains a century of the production and reproduction of the urban environment in which most of us live. Secondly, the book focuses on recent changes in the control of these processes and the ideology that has brought these changes about. Immense disparities exist between the "best" and the "worst" urban areas in Britain. Why do these differences arise and how are they perpetuated? The author argues that the growth of such inequality is linked to questions of accountability and the increasing erosion of a democratic principle in the urban process.