This issue contains four papers that look at some issues related to how planning may be, and should be, contributing to the struggle for racial equality. Three of the papers deal with Britain, but most of the issues that are addressed will be familiar to readers in 'the West' (Pestieau & Wallace, 2003). This introduction sketches the changing context for discussions of planning and race equality in Britain. It is structured around four themes: changes in governance, legislative changes, the changing urban policy context, and the changing national planning policy context. Of course, some of these have a distinctively British dimension (such as the nature of devolution of power to elected assemblies in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales). But many aspects are shared with other countries (such as debates over how the cohesion of the polity can be secured while respecting cultural difference; and debates over the significance to be attached to religious identity). This is not surprising; after all, state apparatuses of a broadly similar kind are struggling to react to economic and demographic changes that are global in their reach. It is important that planners understand the distinctive histories of their own regions and countries, and how racial discrimination and racism is bound up with that; but this does not preclude the possibility of being stimulated by discussions of other regions and countries.
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