Paul is a Senior Research Fellow at The Young Foundation. He has been awarded a research fellowship by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 for his work on suburbia. The Freedoms of Suburbia, his book based on this research, was released in early November 2009. He contributes regularly to all the quality London press and the BBC. His previous book was a revised edition of Arts in Society (Five Leaves Publications, 2006). He wrote on Michael Young's legacy in The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy, edited by YF fellow Geoff Dench (Blackwell 2006). From 1968-86 he was the Editor of the social affairs journal New Society. He was a chair and trustee of the Institute for Community Studies.

Publications (as author, editor or contributor)

• A Sociological Portrait (1972)
• Arts in Society (1977, new edition 2006)
• The Other Britain (1982)
• Towards a New Landscape (1993)
• Living as Equals(1996)
• Town and Country (1998)
• Non-Plan (2000)
• From Black Economy to Moment of Truth (2004)
• Porcupines in Winter (2006)
• The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy (2007)
• The Freedoms of Suburbia (2009)
• The Banham Lectures: Designing the future (2010)

Paul has contributed an essay to the Banham Lectures collection, edited by Jeremy Aynsley and Harriet Atkinson, and due to be published by Berg (Oxford) in January 2010. Entitled "Non-Plan Revisited, or the Real Way Cities Grow," the essay argues that Non-Plan is often better than Plan. Planning has a very bad record for its social and aesthetic ill-effects, he argues. Most towns and cities grew without planning, very successfully. He suggests we should again turn to these tried and tested methods.

Post material to Paul Barker, Senior Research Fellow, Young Foundation, 18 Victoria Park Square, London E2 9PF, UK - marking envelope “Please forward.”