Transformative Planning: Radical Alternatives to Neoliberal Urbanism

by Tom Angotti (Editor)

Though modern urban planning is only a century old, it appears to be facing extinction. Historically, urban planning has been narrowly conceived, ignoring gaping inequalities of race, class, and gender while promoting unbridled growth and environmental injustices. In Transformative Planning , Tom Angotti argues that unless planning is radically transformed and develops serious alternatives to neoliberal urbanism and disaster capitalism it will be irrelevant in this century. This book emerges from decades of urban planners and activists contesting inequalities of class, race, and gender in cities around the world. It compiles the discussions and debates that appeared in the publications of Planners Network, a North American urban planners’ association. Original contributions have been added to the collection so that it serves as both a reflection of past theory and practice and a challenge for a new generation of activists and planners.
 

Genres: Urban Planning, Nonfiction, Urbanism

280 pages, Hardcover

Published January 4, 2020

Reviews

[rabble.ca]

Review by Rachel Bondra:

"I was surprised, in my first week of class as a graduate student in urban planning, to hear the death knell of my chosen field. In an unco-ordinated move, each of my professors at CUNY Hunter College had assigned Thomas J. Campanella's essay "Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning." In the essay, Campanella describes urban planning as a trivial profession that is mired in bureaucratic procedure and lacks disciplinary identity, authority and visionary capacity.

One reason for this, say some contributors to Transformative Planning: Radical Alternatives to Neoliberal Urbanism, is that, as a profession, urban planning has too long been focused on creating products (i.e. housing and roads) rather than imagining cities as places that might sustain humans and the environment. This leaves planners indebted to the "urban growth machine" -- a ruthless inter-urban scheme of competition in which urban residents and the environment are sacrificed to capital gain, and growth is normalized."

Keep reading: https://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2020/...

[brain sanitizer · Rating 3 out of 5]

nothing super new or groundbreaking especially lacking in discussion of actual alternatives if you already know even a little bit about neoliberalism and urban planning