ABSTRACT

A major reason for the neglect of the study of land and property development processes by researchers in the United Kingdom (UK) was peripheral to the interests of the established academic disciplines. This chapter begins with a review of research on the processes of the production of the built environment. The objective is to draw out the theories being used and the way in which the relations between structure and agency are established. The chapter reviews contemporary tendencies in the processes. It argues that the relation between context and specific events may approached by building on existing research work informed by an agency, and linking this to conceptions of economic and political structure via A. Giddens's approach to the relation between structure and agency. This emphasises the interrelation between the two, rather than a deterministic relation between context and agency.