Attracting considerable publicity and coverage in the media on publication, Jigsaw Cities reflects in part the view that government policies advocating a massive growth in housing and urban development in the South East of England in particular will lead to ‘over-development’, are unsustainable and will lead to greater fragmentation between different communities. Relaxing planning controls, building on green belts and other suburban areas contributes only to ‘urban sprawl’ and associated problems of car-generated pollution, traffic management and a declining sense of community and neighbourliness.

To those familiar with periodic outbursts of concern about the state of British cities, such claims will come as little surprise. Since the inter-war period ‘urban sprawl’ in particular has been repeatedly identified as a major affliction that scars the landscape of Britain. However, for Power and Houghton what gives this debate renewed importance is the massive increases in house-building in recent times – as well as the projected growth for the next two decades or so.

Urban sprawl and overdevelopment, it is argued, contribute to the growing feeling of disconnection that many people and communities experience in the city today. Using the idea of a jigsaw puzzle to highlight the fragmented nature of many of Britain's cities and urban areas, Power and Houghton argue that the interlocking pieces that once comprised the urban jigsaw are being stretched and broken by the pressure for further development on the urban periphery. As a result, cities are becoming increasingly ‘chaotic’, ‘disorderly’ and unmanageable.

Jigsaw Cities provides an accessible historical overview of some of the key planning and urban developments over the past two hundred years, from Robert Owen's planned community at New Lanark Mills, the Model Villages at Bournville, Port Sunlight and Saltaire, the activities of Octavia Hill and early housing management through to garden cities, the expansion of council housing, new towns, high-rise, urban redevelopments, demolition and housing stock transfer. The city of Birmingham occupies centre stage as the key case study to illustrate and explain wider processes and patterns of urban growth, change and decline. From its Victorian heyday through to the controversy around housing stock transfer in 2001, Birmingham's history of urban management, planning and reform offers the opportunity for the central themes of the book to be brought together. Much of this exploration covers what is a well-trodden path, but nonetheless it is wide ranging and offers the opportunity for some thoughtful reflections on past housing, planning and urban development policies and initiatives.

The thrust of this historical overview and the examination of current and planned reforms and redevelopments across urban Britain today is to lay the ground for Power and Houghton to argue against further unsustainable urban sprawl, such as the Thames Gateway, in Kent and in Essex, and to make a case for ‘smart growth’. This involves curtailing uncontrolled city growth by the provision of fixed urban boundaries and the ‘intensive’ regeneration of the existing urban neighbourhoods. Higher housing densities, reusing derelict and infill sites and making better use of available land in the cities will provide the basis for more sustainable services. Alongside this community engagement, better tenure mix, ‘mixed communities’, improved neighbourhood management and more investment in green spaces will work to create more liveable communities, thereby encouraging more people to live in cities. Smart growth for cities, they argue, will lead to more recycling, less environmental damage and in the longer term more sustainablity.

Many readers will share with Power and Houghton a concern with some of the planned developments that the government has proposed for different parts of the country, and I am sure some hostility towards the relaxation of planning regulations. Few would disagree that we need to make cities more sustainable, reduce the dependency on cars and tackle pollution and other environmental issues. Investment in communities, better quality housing and transport provision are all to be welcomed. And we no doubt all share a view that cities should become better places in which to live and work.

Despite sharing some of the sentiments and ideas expressed by Power and Houghton, this book was very frustrating in a number of ways. In part this is because of my aversion to buzz phrases such as ‘smart growth’ and ‘organic cities’ and perhaps also to the idea of ‘jigsaw cities’ itself. More significantly, however, this book represents at best naïve idealism; at worst it offers a sticking plaster approach to the problems that affect many people in cities. Throughout this book there is a neglect of the fact that cities develop, change or decline as part of a complex interrelationship of global and local economic, social, demographic, cultural, geographical and political factors. In particular, there is little notion of an economy presented here, or of the ways in which deindustrialisation and other economic changes have ravaged large swathes of urban Britain throughout the post-1945 era. In their suggestion that a ‘new urban economy’ can be built on the back of a new service economy and the activities of ‘urban pioneers’ (shades of Richard Florida here), there is little understanding that in many of Britain's cities many of the jobs that have been created over the past few decades are poor quality, casual, temporary and therefore highly insecure. Social engineering through ‘smart growth’ is no answer to such inequalities.

There was other ways that I had difficulties with this book. Throughout there is a reification of the city which abstracts it from its social context. One example will suffice here, commenting on Glasgow's economic ‘development’ in the 1990s, the authors claim that ‘Glasgow gained because of its innovative cultural environment and its dynamic focus on renovation and community based initiative’ (pp. 205–6). There are many in Glasgow that would dispute this by arguing that some people in Glasgow gained – but ‘Glasgow’ did not gain in the way suggested here. Similar points can be made in relation to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2003 – with Manchester presented as one of the ‘comeback cities’ (p. 109). While there is some recognition that cities are divided places, this is given scant attention.

The overall outcome is a hugely uncritical and superficial discussion that neglects the ways in which class and other social divisions and inequalities come to be reproduced in the landscape and fabric of cities. The neo-liberal onslaught that is eroding local and public services, closing community amenities, contributing to increasing gentrification; the abuse of existing planning rules by supermarkets, private developers and PFI schemes as well as to the steady growth of harsher and more punitive forms of policing and urban securitisation – are all beyond the understandings of the contemporary British city that are offered here. However, if the kinds of cities that Power and Houghton advocate here are to be created, these are the very issues that need to be explored – and challenged.