Webster, Christopher John

Biography

Prof. Chris Webster has degrees in urban planning, computer science, economics and economic geography and is a leading urban theorist and spatial economic modeller. He has published over 150 scholarly papers on the idea of spontaneous urban order and received over US$20M grants for research and teaching and learning projects. He was co-editor of Environment and Planning B for ten years. Books include Webster and Lai (2003) Property Rights, Planning and Markets, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar; Glasze, Webster and Frantz, (2006) Private Cities, London, Routledge; Wu, Webster, He and Liu, (2010) Urban Poverty in China, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar; and Wu and Webster (Editors) Marginalisation in Urban China. London: Palgrave McMillan; and Sarkar, Webster and Gallacher (2014) Healthy Cities: Public Health Through Urban Planning. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Professor Webster has five prize-winning academic papers on urban theory. His present professional mission is to change the way cities are planned in China and his current research agenda is to establish systematic evidence for the relationship between urban configuration (planned and spontaneous) and individual health. He is currently PI on a UK ESRC-funded ‘Transformative Research’ project that is creating 700 built environment morphometrics for each of the 500,000 members of the UK Biobank, the country’s flagship epidemiological study.

Research Interest

Urban Planning and Development Economics