Professor Rowland Atkinson

School of Geography and Planning

Research Chair in Inclusive Societies

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rowland.atkinson@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Professor Rowland Atkinson
School of Geography and Planning
D26b
Geography and Planning Building
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND
Profile

Rowland is Chair in Inclusive Societies. His work focuses on urban inequalities, addressing issues of exclusion and social injustice. This work is approached in a distinctive way, by examining the relationship between affluent groups and social outcomes more broadly in city settings. This framing of social inequality as both an urban-spatial and political issue has underpinned his pioneering working on gentrification and displacement, gated communities, social mix and public housing estates, and the impact of the super-rich on urban life. The thread connecting this body of work is an important question - how do social inequalities find spatial expression in cities? This work is situated sociologically, with an eye to the kinds of globalised, capitalist and financialised societies that are today producing new winners, and complex forms of spatial inequality and exclusion in cities. 

Rowland’s books include Alpha City: How the Super-Rich Captured London (Verso), Urban Criminology (with Gareth Millington) and Domestic Fortress: Fear and the New Home Front (with Sarah Blandy) and a large series of edited collections in the areas of housing studies, urban studies and criminology. His most recent books are Elite Spaces: Social prestige, spatial obscurity and political risk, and How to be An Anticapitalist City (with Beth Perry and Jon Silver) which looks at small efforts that might help cities to be more liveable, less alienating and less driven by profit and accumulation. 

From 1997 Rowland began work as a researcher in the Department of Urban Studies, at the University of Glasgow, where he looked at issues of housing conditions and so-called ‘area effects’ (the compounding force of disadvantage faced by poorer residents in poorer areas). It was while conducting research on deprived public housing estates that he began to develop an interest in elite spaces and groups, and to consider how certain social classes and spaces might be related to housing poverty and exclusion. This interest led to the first UK study of gated communities which began a more detailed consideration of how middle-class and higher income households were shaping social outcomes across cities. 

Since starting work at the University of Sheffield in 2014 (after working in the departments of sociology at both the University of Tasmania, Australia, and then the University of York) his work has involved a linked suite of research projects under the title of the Global Alpha NETwork, or GANET. This has included funded projects on alpha territoriality in London, and Hong Kong, empty homes in the UK (working with Action on Empty Homes), projects on offshore investment and illicit finance in urban spaces and its links to crime (focused on in his book Alpha City: How London was captured by the super-rich), and an emerging analysis of the historical contribution of wealth elites in the urban north of England. He is currently working on a book on social fragmentation and decline.

Professor Rowland Atkinson talks about teaching in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield
Qualifications

From 2005 I directed the Housing and Community Research Unit, University of Tasmania, Australia, where a very different urban context and issues of indigenous health and housing influenced my thinking. My work here continued to focus on issues of gentrification, public housing and state-led strategies of social mixing to create more sustainable communities and I worked on a series of initiatives designed to generate more interest in these issues from policy-makers nationally.

From 2009 I moved back to the UK to the University of York where I became Reader in Urban Studies and Criminology and my work became more focused on questions of social harm and crime in urban contexts (a book on Urban Criminology, with Gareth Millington, is now in print with Routledge).

Research interests
  • Gentrification and displacement
  • Cities and crime
  • Wealth
  • Poverty and exclusion
  • Segregation and urban security
  • Gated communities and fortress homes

Research projects

Professor Rowland Atkinson talks about his research
Publications

Books

  • Atkinson R (2020) FOREWORD: CLIMAX CULTURE. RIS download Bibtex download
  • (2017) Building better societies. Bristol University Press. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R & Blandy S (2016) Domestic fortress: Fear and the new home front. Manchester: Manchester University Press. View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R & Jacobs K (2016) House, Home and Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan. RIS download Bibtex download

Edited books

Journal articles

Book chapters

Book reviews

Conference proceedings

Reports

  • Atkinson R, Lima R, Bourne J & Bailey C (2024) Executive Summary: Low-use homes in rural and coastal areas of the UK: Geography, impact and responses View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R, Simas Lima R, Bourne J & Bailey C (2024) Low-use homes in rural and coastal areas of the UK: Geography, impact and responses View this article in WRRO RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R, Wulff M, Reynolds M & Spinney A (2011) Gentrification and displacement: The household impacts of neighbourhood change RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R (2008) Housing policies, social mix and community outcomes RIS download Bibtex download

Dictionary or encyclopaedia entries

  • Atkinson R (2012) Gentrification. In International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home Elsevier. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R & Blandy S (2012) Gated communities. In International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home Elsevier. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R (2012) Domicide. In International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home Elsevier. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R & Blandy S (2011) Gated Communities. In International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home. RIS download Bibtex download
  • (2004) Snowball Sampling Sage Publications, Inc.. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Atkinson R & Flint J (2003) Snowball Sampling. In The A to Z of Social Research. London: Sage. RIS download Bibtex download

Other

  • Thomson H, Atkinson R, Petticrew M & Kearns A (2005) Do national urban regeneration programmes impact on health and the socio-economic determinants of health? A systematic review of UK regeneration programmes (1980-2004). EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, 15, 119-119. RIS download Bibtex download

Preprints

Research group

PhD supervision

I am primary supervisor for the following students:

  • Dario Ferrazzi, Crime, criminality and urban space
  • Yixin Liu, Gated communities in China

Interested in PhD study?

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who have interests in the following areas:

  • urban patterns of wealth, inequality and segregation
  • crime and disorder
  • gated communities
Teaching activities

I currently teach on the following modules: