Anna Minton

Anna Minton is a British writer and journalist. Born 19 April 1970, educated at St.Paul's Girls' School, London and Queen's College Oxford. Minton has worked as a foreign correspondent, business reporter and social affairs writer and has won a number of national journalism awards. She is the author of Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City (Penguin, 2009).

Contents

Work

After a decade in journalism, including a period spent as a staff member of the Financial Times, Minton began to focus on larger projects for various think tanks and policy organizations. She has written reports for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), Demos, and Shelter amongst others and she is the author of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Viewpoint publication entitled ‘Why Are Fear and Distrust Spiralling in Twenty-First Century Britain?’ (2009).[1]

Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City (Penguin, 2009)[2][3] is a book which looks at the ownership of various UK cities to investigate the effect and nature of public space.

Minton's interest in public space took root when she wrote a series of reports on the phenomena of city spaces. The first, ‘Building Balanced Communities’, was originally published by the RICS in 2002 and focused on gated communities and ghettos in the United States, questioning to what extent these trends were also being transported to the United Kingdom. The second, ‘Northern Soul' (Demos and the RICS, 2003) looked at polarization and culture in the British city of Newcastle, while Minton’s third and final report, ‘What Kind of World Are We Building?’ (RICS, 2006) investigated the growing privatisation of public space in the United Kingdom.

Anna Minton is a member of the writers’ panel for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and appears regularly on television and radio[4] to discuss her work on urban environments. She is a frequent contributor to The Guardian.

Bibliography

Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City, Penguin, 2009.

References

  1. ^ 'Why are fear and distrust spiralling in twenty-first century Britain? October 2008, Joseph Rowntree Foundation 'Viewpoint' [1]
  2. ^ 'Can we banish fear and loathing from the city?' 27 June 2009, The Times [2]
  3. ^ Telegraph review of Ground Control, 28 July 2009
  4. ^ Start the Week, BBC Radio 4, 22 June 2009

External links