Overview

In thirty-four provocative and insightful chapters, the nation's leading planners present a definitive assessment of fifty years of city planning and establish a benchmark for the profession for the next fifty years. The book appraises what planners do and how well they do it, how and why their current activities differ from past practices, and how much and in what ways planners have or have not enhanced the quality of urban life and contributed to the intellectual capital of the field.How have the goals, values, and practices of planners changed? What do planners say about their roles and the problems they confront? What is the relevance of their skills, from design capabilities and environmental savvy to intermediate and long-term perspectives and the pragmatics of implementation? The contributors seeking to answer these questions include Anthony Downs, Nathan Glazer, Philip B. Herr, Judith E. Innes, Terry S. Szold, Lawrence J. Vale, and Sam Bass Warner, Jr.The Profession of City Planning contrasts with the main changes in the US over the second half of the twentieth century in city planning. Sector images of the practice and effects of planning on housing, transportation, and the environment, as well as the development of economic tools are also discussed.

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9780882851662

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Reviews

<p> [W]hat does city planning really achieve? To answer this question, we now have a wonderful new book that grew out of a faculty seminar at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning... Focusing on the US, the book's contributors examine what planners do and how well they do it, review changes in the professional practice of city planning over the past half-century and assess how planners' efforts have (or have not) improved the quality of urban life... Academics will find much in this book to inform their research and teaching; practitioners will find much valuable advice to use in their work; and students of city planning will see what sort of profession they are getting into. <p> --Donald Shoup, Urban Studies <p> This book is a comprehensive anthology of essays with rich, diverse, and often conflicting points of view about the practice of city planning. The extraordinary breadth and reputation of its academic and practitioner contributors makes the volume a unique, essential reference resource for every planner's library... This book has much to contribute to those planners who will be deciding the future of the profession. It asks many important questions and provides some answers. It also sets an agenda for the theoretical and practice-based research that is needed to close the gap between theory and practice. <p> --Bruce W. McClendon, APA Journal <p> A very attractive package for researchers and practitioners . . . pro-vocative and inspiring. <p> --I. Wight, Canadian Journal of Urban Research.

[W]hat does city planning really achieve? To answer this question, we now have a wonderful new book that grew out of a faculty seminar at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning... Focusing on the US, the book's contributors examine what planners do and how well they do it, review changes in the professional practice of city planning over the past half-century and assess how planners' efforts have (or have not) improved the quality of urban life... Academics will find much in this book to inform their research and teaching; practitioners will find much valuable advice to use in their work; and students of city planning will see what sort of profession they are getting into. --Donald Shoup, Urban Studies This book is a comprehensive anthology of essays with rich, diverse, and often conflicting points of view about the practice of city planning. The extraordinary breadth and reputation of its academic and practitioner contributors makes the volume a unique, essential reference resource for every planner's library... This book has much to contribute to those planners who will be deciding the future of the profession. It asks many important questions and provides some answers. It also sets an agenda for the theoretical and practice-based research that is needed to close the gap between theory and practice. --Bruce W. McClendon, APA Journal A very attractive package for researchers and practitioners . . . pro-vocative and inspiring. --I. Wight, Canadian Journal of Urban Research.

Author Information

Lloyd Rodwin was Ford International Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He advised governments, international agencies, and nongovernmental and private organiations on issues relating to housing, urban policy, and regional development. His books include The British New Towns Policyand Rethinking the Experience of Development.|| Bishwapriya Sanyal is Ford International Professor of Urban Development and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has advised the Ford Foundation, World Bank, International Labour Organiation, United Nations Center for Human Settlements, and United States Agency for International Development on various aspects of development policies. He is editor of High Technology and Low-Income Communities and Comparative Planning Cultures and is currently heading an effort to create the first private university of urban and regional planning in India.

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