Shaping Places explains how towns & cities can turn real estate development to their advantage to create the kind of places where people want to live work relax & invest. It contends that the production of quality places which enhance economic prosperity social cohesion & environmental sustainability require a transformation of market outcomes. The core of the book explores why this is essential & how it can be delivered by linking a clear vision for the future with the necessary means to achieve it. Crucially the book argues that public authorities should seek to shape regulate & stimulate real estate development so that developers landowners & funders see real benefit in creating better places. Key to this is seeing planners as market actors whose potential to shape the built environment depends on their capacity to understand & transform the embedded attitudes & practices of other market actors. This requires planners to be skilled in understanding the political economy of real estate development & successful in changing its outcomes through smart intervention. Drawing on a strong theoretical framework the book reveals how the future of places will come to be shaped through constant interaction between State & market power. Filled with international examples essential case studies color diagrams & photographs this is essential reading for undergraduate & graduate students taking planning property real estate or urban design courses as well as for social science students more widely who wish to know how the shaping of place really occurs.