An examination of new urban approaches both in theory and in practice. Taking a critical look at how new urbanism has lived up to its ideals, the author asks whether new urban approaches offer a viable path to creating good communities. With examples drawn principally from North America, Europe and Japan, Planning the Good Community explores new urban approaches in a wide range of settings. It compares the movement for urban renaissance in Europe with the New Urbanism of the United States and Canada, and asks whether the concerns that drive today's planning theory - issues like power, democracy, spatial patterns and globalisation- receive adequate attention in new urban approaches. The issue of aesthetics is also raised, as the author questions whether communities must be more than just attractive in order to be good. With the benefit of twenty years' hindsight and a world-wide perspective, this book offers the reader unparalleled insight as well as a rigorous and considered critical analysis.
This book is recommended reading for planners preparing to take the AICP exam. In this new book, the author bridges the gap between theory and practice. The author describes an original approach-Feedback Strategy-that builds on the strengths of previous planning theories with one big difference: it not only acknowledges but welcomes politics-the bogeyman of real-world planning. Don't hold your nose or look the other way, the author advises planners, but use politics to your own advantage. The author admits that most of the time planning theory doesn't have much to do with planning practice. These ideas rooted in the planner's real world are different. This strategy employs everyday poltiical processes to advance planning, trusts planners' personal values and professional ethics, and depends on their ability to help clients articulate a vision. This volume will encourage not only veteran planners searching for a fresh approach, but also students and recent graduates dismayed by the gap between academic theory and actual practice.
Following the Second World War, modern systems of urban and regional planning were established in Britain and most other developed countries. In this book, Nigel Taylor describes the changes in planning thought which have taken place since then. He outlines the main theories of planning, from the traditional view of urban planning as an exercise in physical design, to the systems and rational process views of planning of the 1960s; from Marxist accounts of the role of planning in capitalist society in the 1970s, to theories about planning implementation, and more recent views of planning as a form of `communicative action′.
Taylor describes the development of urban planning ideas since the end of the Second World War, outlining the main theories from the traditional view of planning as an exercise in physical design to recent views of planning as 'communicative action'.
Reflective Planning Practice: Theory, Cases, and Methods uses structured, first-person reflection to reveal the artistry of planning practice. The value of professional reflection is widely recognized, but there is a difference between acknowledging it and doing it. This book takes up that challenge, providing planners’ reflections on past practice as well as prompts for reflecting in the midst of planning episodes. It explains a reflection framework and employs it in seven case studies written by planning educators who also practice. The cases reveal practical judgments made during the planning episode and takeaways for practice, as the planners used logic and emotion, and applied convention and invention. The practical judgments are explained from the perspective of the authors’ personal experiences, purposes, and professional style, and their interpretation of the rich context that underpins the cases including theories, sociopolitical aspects, workplace setting, and roles. The book seeks to awaken students and practitioners to the opportunities of a pragmatic, reflective approach to planning practice.
The purpose of the book is to elaborate a planning theory which departs from the plethora of theories which reflect the conditions of developed countries of the North-West. The empirical material of this effort is derived from a country, Greece, which sits on the edge between North-West and South-East, at the corner of Europe. No doubt, there is extensive international literature on planning theory in general from a bewildering variety of viewpoints. The interested professional or student of urban and regional planning is certainly aware of the dizzying flood of books, articles and research reports on planning theory and of their never-ending borrowing of obscure concepts from more respectable scientific disciplines, from mathematics to philosophy and from physics to economics, human geography and sociology. He or she probably observed that there is a growing interest in theoretical approaches from the viewpoint of the so-called “Global South”. The author of the present book has for many decades faced the impasse of attempting to transplant theories founded on the experience of the North-West to countries with a totally different historical, political, social and geographical background. He learned that the reality that planners face is unpredictable, patchy, and responsive to social processes, frequently of a very pedestrian nature. Planning strives to deal with private interests which planners are keen to envelop in a single “public interest”, which is extremely hard to define. The behaviour of the average citizen, far from being that of the neoclassical model of the homo economicus, is that of an individual, a kind of homo individualis, who interacts with the state and the public administration within a complex web of mutual dependence and negotiation. The state and its administrative apparatus, i.e., the key-determinants and fixers of urban and regional planning policy, bargain with this individual, offer inducements, exemptions, derogations and privileges, deviate unhesitatingly from their grand policy pronouncements, but still defend the rationality and comprehensiveness of the planning system they have legislated and operationalized. It is by and large a successful modus vivendi, but only thanks to a constant practice of compromise. Hence, the term compromise planning, which the author coined as an alternative to all the existing theoretical forms of planning. This is the sort of planning, and of the accompanying theory, with which he deals in this book. It is the outcome of experience and knowledge accumulated in a long personal journey of academic teaching in England and Greece, research, and professional involvement.
Planning Theory has a history of common debates about ideas and practices and is rooted in a critical concern for the 'improvement' of human and environmental well-being, particularly as pursued through interventions which seek to shape environmental conditions and place qualities. The third and final volume in this series covers Contemporary Movements in Planning Theory and topics include communicative practices and the negotiation of meaning, networks, institutions and relations, and the complexity 'turn'. The articles selected represent the most influential and controversial recent work in planning theory and are supplemented by detailed introductions by the editors.
Planning Theory has a history of common debates about ideas and practices and is rooted in a critical concern for the 'improvement' of human and environmental well-being, particularly as pursued through interventions which seek to shape environmental conditions and place qualities.. The first volume in this three volume series, Foundations of the Planning Enterprise, includes articles and papers which offer a unique general introduction to planning theory. The authors review the subject's development, its recurrent themes, its contemporary preoccupation as rational scientific management and its relations to other fields. The editors supplement the collection with an introductory overview as well as detailed introductions to each part. This will be an essential purchase for planning libraries around the world.
"This book covers theoretical, thematic, and country-specific issues of knowledge cities to underline the growing importance of KBUD all around the world, providing substantive research on the decisive lineaments of urban development for knowledge-based production (drawing attention to new planning processes to foster such development), and worldwide best practices and case studies in the field of urban development"--Provided by publisher.
This book offers an extended case study of the urban community of Bushwick, located in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The authors begin with a broad review of the history of Bushwick and Brooklyn, from before the earliest European settlements of the 1600s, through the 18th and 19th centuries and up the 1960s. Chapter Two begins by tracing the steep decline of the community, which culminated in catastrophic fires and looting in the wake of New York’s electrical blackout of 1977 and goes on to describe the beginnings of urban planning and renewal efforts which launched the recovery of Bushwick in the 1980s to early 2000s. Chapter Three steps back from the immediacy of the community to discuss urban change from a theoretical perspective. The authors outline advances in ‘sustainable urban planning’ and describe how these apply to Bushwick and the wider Brooklyn community. Chapter Four offers a detailed examination of the intent and function of New York’s community board planning system, known as the Charter 197-a program. In Chapter Five the authors examine the 197-a planning process and its application in the areas of Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Northeast Brooklyn; Brooklyn Downtown and in Southeast Brooklyn including Coney Island. The following chapter examines a number of innovative Bushwick high schools that offer practical experience in urban planning. Drawing the urban planning experiences together, the book concludes with a look at future directions in city renewal. Emphasis here is placed on ‘sustainable urban planning’ and the lessons to be learned from the experience of Bushwick and Brooklyn. The specifics of urban planning and renewal are illustrated with tables and figures. The details of planning are informed by an overarching sense of history, beginning with the dedication of the book to the memory of six Universalist writers associated with New York: Henry Thoreau, Helena Blavatsky, Henry George, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller and Walt Whitman. A rich trove of historical materials, ranging from family sketches to school rosters to rarely seen photographs, helps to keep the survey and analysis of urban planning grounded in the lives of Bushwick’s residents, past, present and future.
