Paul Chatterton

Demand the Impossible

Professor of Urban Futures · Scholar-Activist · Radical Geographer

Publications — Paul Chatterton

124+ publications by Professor Paul Chatterton: journal articles, books, reports and comment pieces on sustainable cities, housing and climate action.

Books

2023
Chatterton, P 2023. How to Save the City: A Guide for Emergency Action. Agenda, London.
2019
Chatterton, P 2019. Unlocking Sustainable Cities: A Manifesto for Real Change. Pluto Press, London.
2015
Chatterton P 2015. Low Impact Living: A Field Guide to Ecological Affordable Community Building. Routledge, London.
2012
Castree N; Chatterton P; Heynen N; Larner W; Wright MW (2012) The Point is to Change it: Geographies of Hope and Survival in an Age of Crisis. Blackwell, London.
2007
Chatterton P, Cutler A and Bryan K eds 2007. Do it yourself: A Handbook for Changing our World. Pluto, London.
2004
Chatterton and Gordon 2004. Taking Back Control. University of Leeds.
2003
Chatterton P and Hollands R 2003. Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power. Routledge, London.
2001
Chatterton P and Hollands R 2001. Changing our Toon. University of Newcastle.

Journal Articles

2026
Chatterton, P. et al. (2026) 'Doughnut economics, degrowth and decoloniality. New directions for the Doughnut Portrait method.' Local Environment, pp. 1-21.
2025
Chatterton, P and Birksted-Breen (2025) Transitions to low carbon social futures: Achieving net zero aviation in UK Higher Education (preprint).
2025
Chatterton P, Darby S. 2025. The climate emergency and place-based transformation. The case of Climate Action Leeds, UK. Sustainability. 17(14), 6274.
2024
McKenna, N., Chatterton, P., & Wallace, A. (2024). It is 'more than just about building houses': collaborating towards a housing commons in Leeds. City, 28(5-6), 611-636.
2022
Chambers JM et al., (inc Chatterton) 2022. Co-productive agility and four collaborative pathways to sustainability transformations. Global Environmental Change. 72.
2021
Chambers JM et al., (inc Chatterton) 2021. Six modes of co-production for sustainability. Nature Sustainability. 4, pp. 983-996.
2020
Arbell Y, Middlemiss L, Chatterton P. 2020. Contested Subjectivities in a UK Housing Cooperative: Old Hippies and Thatcher's Children negotiating the commons. Geoforum. 58-66, 110.
2020
Lang R, Chatterton P, Mullins D. 2020. Grassroots innovations in community-led housing in England: the role and evolution of intermediaries. International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development. 12(1), 52-72.
2020
Chatterton, P., & Pusey, A. 2020. Beyond capitalist enclosure, commodification and alienation: Postcapitalist praxis as commons, social production and useful doing. Progress in Human Geography. 44(1), pp. 27-48.
2019
Huxley R; Owen A; Chatterton P (2019) The role of regime-level processes in closing the gap between sustainable city visions and action. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 33, pp. 115-126.
2019
Darby S; Chatterton P (2019) Between and beyond social entrepreneur and activist: Transformative personas for social change. ACME: An International e-Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(3), pp. 724-750.
2018
Chatterton P., Owen A., Cutter J., Dymski G. and Unsworth R. 2018. Recasting Urban Governance through Leeds City Lab: Developing Alternatives to Neoliberal Urban Austerity in Co-production Laboratories. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 42, 226-243.
2016
Chatterton P (2016) Building transitions to post-capitalist urban commons. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41, pp. 403-415.
2016
Stevenson F; Baborska-Narozny M; Chatterton P (2016) Resilience, redundancy and low-carbon living: co-producing individual and community learning. Building Research and Information, 44(7), pp. 789-803.
2016
Baborska-Narozny M; Stevenson F; Chatterton P (2016) Temperature in housing: stratification and contextual factors. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Engineering Sustainability, 169(4), pp. 125-137.
2014
Baborska-Narozny M, Stevenson F and Chatterton P 2014. A Social Learning Tool: barriers and opportunities for collective occupant learning in low carbon housing. Energy Procedia, 62, 492-501.
2013
Chatterton P 2013. Towards an Agenda for Post-Carbon Cities: Lessons from Lilac, the UK's First Ecological, Affordable Cohousing Community. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Volume 37, Issue 5, pages 1654-1674.
2013
Chari, S., Chatterton, P., et al. (2013). What Does it Mean to Win? On Keeping Antipode's Radical Spirit Alive. Antipode, 45(2), 243-247.
2012
Chatterton P, Featherstone D, Routledge P 2012. Articulating Climate Justice in Copenhagen: Antagonism, the Commons and Solidarity. Antipode, 45(3), 602-620.
2012
Castree N; Chatterton P; Heynen N; Larner W; Wright MW (2012) Introduction: The Point is to Change it. In The Point is to Change It: Geographies of Hope and Survival in an Age of Crisis, pp. 1-9.
2011
Unsworth R, Ball S, Bauman I, Chatterton P, Goldring A, Hill K and Julier G 2011. Building resilience and well-being in the Margins within the City: Changing perceptions, making connections, realising potential, plugging resources leaks. City, 15(2), 181-200.
2011
Chatterton P; Gidwani V; Heynen N; Kent A; Larner W; Pain R (2011) Antipode in an Antithetical Era. Antipode, 43(2), pp. 181-189.
2010
Chatterton P and Pickerill J 2010. Everyday activism and transitions towards post-capitalist worlds. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 35, 475-490.
2010
Chatterton P 2010. So what does it mean to be anti-capitalist? Conversations with activists from urban social centres. Urban Studies, 47(6), 1205-1224.
2010
Chatterton P, Hodkinson S and Pickerill J 2010. Beyond scholar activism: making strategic interventions inside and outside the neoliberal university. ACME, 9, 245-275.
2010
Chatterton P 2010. Seeking the urban common: Furthering the debate on spatial justice. City, 14(6), pp. 625-628.
2010
Chatterton P 2010. Autonomy: The Struggle for Survival, Self-Management and the Common - Introduction. Antipode, 42(4), pp. 897-908.
2010
Chatterton P 2010. The urban impossible: A eulogy for the unfinished city. City, 14(3), pp. 234-244.
2010
Chatterton P 2010. The student city: an ongoing story of neoliberalism, gentrification, and commodification. Environment and Planning A, 42(3), pp. 509-514.
2009

Chatterton P 2009. Alternatives. City, 13(1), pp. 137-138.

2009
Chatterton P; Maxey L (2009) Introduction: Whatever Happened to Ethics and Responsibility in Geography? ACME, 8(2), pp. 1-11.
2008
Chatterton P 2008. Using geography to teach freedom and defiance: Lessons in social change from 'Autonomous Geographies'. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 32(3), pp. 419-440.
2008
Chatterton P 2008. Demand the possible: Journeys in changing our world as a public activist-scholar. Antipode, 40(3), pp. 421-427.
2008
Chatterton P; Ryan R (2008) Ya Basta! The Zapatista struggle for autonomy revisited. City, 12(1), pp. 115-125.
2007
Chatterton P 2007. Banlieues, the hyperghetto and advanced marginality: A symposium on Loic Wacquant's urban outcasts: Introduction. City, 11(3), pp. 357-363.
2007
Chatterton P; Featherstone D (2007) Intervention: Elsevier, critical geography and the arms trade. Political Geography, 26, pp. 3-7.
2006
Pickerill J and Chatterton P 2006. Notes towards autonomous geographies: Creation, resistance and self management as survival tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 30(6), 1-17.
2006
Chatterton P 2006. 'Give up activism' and change the world in unknown ways: Or learning to walk with others on uncommon ground. Antipode, 38(2), 259-282.
2006
Hodkinson S; Chatterton P (2006) Autonomy in the city? City, 10(3), pp. 305-315.
2005
Chatterton P 2005. How to live when the war comes home. City, 9(3), pp. 351-356.
2005
Chatterton P 2005. Making autonomous geographies: Argentina's popular uprising and the 'Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados' (Unemployed Workers Movement). Geoforum, 36(5), pp. 545-561.
2004
Chatterton P; Gordon N (2004) To the streets! Voices from Argentina's popular uprising. City, 8(1), pp. 115-125.
2004
Chatterton P; Unsworth R (2004) Making space for culture(s) in boomtown: some alternative futures for development, ownership and participation in Leeds city centre. Local Economy, 19(4), pp. 361-379.
2003
Hollands R and Chatterton P 2003. Producing nightlife in the new urban entertainment economy: corporatization, branding and market segmentation. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(2), pages 361-385.
2002
Chatterton P 2002. 'Be realistic. Demand the impossible'. Moving towards 'strong' sustainable development in an old industrial region? Regional Studies, 36(5), pp. 552-561.
2002
Hollands R; Chatterton P (2002) Changing times for an old industrial city: Hard times, hedonism and corporate power in Newcastle's nightlife. City, 6(3), pp. 291-317.
2002
Chatterton P; Hollands R (2002) Theorising Urban Playscapes: Producing, Regulating and Consuming Youthful Nightlife City Spaces. Urban Studies, 39(1), pp. 95-116.
2002
Chatterton P 2002. Governing Nightlife: Profit, Fun and (Dis)Order in the Contemporary City. Entertainment Law, 1(2), pp. 23-49.
2002
Chatterton P 2002. 'Squatting is still legal, necessary and free'. A brief intervention in the corporate city. Antipode, 34(1), pp. 1-7.
2001
Chatterton P; Style S (2001) Putting sustainable development into practice? The role of local 'policy partnership networks'. Local Environment, 6(4), pp. 439-452.
2000
Chatterton P; Bradley D (2000) Bringing Britain Together? Local Economy: The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit, 15(2), pp. 98-111.
2000
Chatterton P (2000) The Cultural Role of Universities in the Community: Revisiting the University-Community Debate. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 32(1), pp. 165-181.
2000
Chatterton P; Goddard JB (2000) The Response of Higher Education Institutions to Regional Needs. European Journal of Education, Research, Development and Policies, 35(4), pp. 475.
1999
Goddard JB; Chatterton P (1999) Regional Development Agencies and the Knowledge Economy: Harnessing the Potential of Universities. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 17(6), pp. 685-699.
1999
Chatterton P (1999) University students and city centres: the formation of exclusive geographies. The case of Bristol, UK. Geoforum, 30(2), pp. 117-133.

Reports

2026
Sophie Flinders, Stuart Hodkinson and Paul Chatterton, “Everything Must Go: Local Government Debt and the Public Asset Fire Sale — The Case of Leeds”, Common Wealth, The University of Leeds and Climate Action Leeds, 2026.
2026
Public Common Partnerships.
2023
Climate Action Leeds Mid Point Review 2023.
2023
Leeds Doughnut Economics Portrait.
2008
2006 Autonomy in the City? Reflections on the UK Social Centres Movement.
2000
The Responsive Higher Education Institutions to Regional Needs. OECD.

Comment Pieces

2025
What Will Leeds Look Like in 2030? We Are Child Friendly Leeds.
2025
Beyond Emergency: Lessons from Grassroots Climate Action in Leeds for COP30 in Belem. Urbad Futures Now (Substack).
2024
What's the Solution to Broken Britain? Ideas for the Autumn Budget and Beyond. Urbad Futures Now (Substack).
2024
From Motorway City to Active Travel City. Urbad Futures Now (Substack).
2024
No More #Punchgates. We Need a Safe Country for the Many Not Just the Few. Urbad Futures Now (Substack).
2023
How to Save the City: A Guide for Emergency Action. Stir to Action Magazine.
2022
Community Led Housing. Low Impact.
2020
Coronavirus: We're in a Real-Time Laboratory of a More Sustainable Urban Future. The Conversation.
2020
The Rocky Road to a Real Transition. The Commoner.
2008
Autonomous Spaces and Social Centres. Shift, pp. 7-11.
2007
Chatterton P; Hodkinson S. Leeds: An Affordable, Viable, Sustainable, Democratic City? The Yorkshire and Humber Regional Review, 17(2), pp. 24-26.
2003

Chatterton P. Warning: Your Holiday May Seriously Affect the Anti-Globalisation Struggle. The Big Issue, pp. 22-24.

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