landscape public policy
Ken Worpole
Ken Worpole is a writer and social historian, whose work includes many books on architecture, landscape and public policy. He is married to photographer Larraine Worpole with whom he has collaborated on book projects internationally, as well as in Hackney, London, where they have lived and worked since 1969.
His principal interests concern the planning and design of new landscapes and public institutions, whether parks, playgrounds, libraries - as well as in townscape renewal and new urban green networks - and learning the lessons of 20th century urban democracy and the rise of the environmental movement.
Ken is Emeritus Professor, Cities Institute London Metropolitan University, and has served on the UK government’s Urban Green Spaces Task Force, on the Expert Panel of the Heritage Lottery Fund, and as an adviser to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.
For many years, Ken Worpole has been one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape.
New publications
New Jerusalem: the good city and the good society
by Ken WorpoleThis book-length essay traces the journey from the religious and political energies in late 19th century social movements, from utopian ideals of town planning – most famously Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City – through both small and large-scale social experiments in the planning of model communities up to the present day.
The Swedenborg Society, October 2015. £6.95
Order New Jerusalem from www.swedenborg.org.uk
Hackney Propaganda: Working Class Club Life and Politics in Hackney 1870–1900
By Barry Burke & Ken Worpole. £5First published in 1980, this facsimile reprint tells the story of the vibrant culture of working class club life and politics which existed in Hackney in the late 19th century, providing details of club affiliations, names and addresses, lecture lists, poetry readings, outings, brass bands, bunfights and demonstrations, which made the borough ‘the most heretical…in the metropolis’.