By Katharine N. Rankin I welcomed the invitation to join this dialogue on planning education because I have had my own experiences of being defined at the margins of “real” planning. I relish those experiences because they remind me of…
By Barbara Rahder Who is a “real” planner? What makes one person a “real” planner and another person not a “real” planner? How is this decided and by whom? What are the common expectations of students entering planning programs (or…
By Gerda R. Wekerle The idea for this dialogue was formed at the ACSP luncheon last year in Atlanta. Two colleagues, one senior-level and well-established, the other newly hired to a planning program after a long and successful career in…
By Kiara L. Nagel It’s late Saturday night and the conference is winding down, the planners are exhausted from a long day of workshops, presentations, and cultural events, and some have even headed to their cars in search of sleep…
From a talk delivered by Agustin Lao-Montes, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, on Saturday June 15th, 2002 at the Planners Network National Conference, “New Visions For Historic Cities: Bridging Divides, Building Futures,” in Holyoke, Massachusetts.…
Table of Contents The Narrow Base of the New Urbanists By Michael Pyatok Seventh Generation By Richard Milgrom Placemaking as a Critique of New Urbanism By Robert G. Shibley From “Sugar Cookies” to “Gingerbread Men”: Conformity in Suburban Design By…
By Janet L. Smith Chicago’s public housing is testimony to a long history of struggle between poor people and politicians. The latest contest is over the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Plan for Transformation, which aims to reduce the existing…
By Jennifer Hurley I became interested in planning because I wanted to fight poverty, and I saw that poverty and the physical environment were tied together. I was also concerned with protecting the natural environment and preserving quality architecture. I…
By Jill Grant New urbanist-inspired approaches to suburban development are common in contemporary Canada. Suburbs influenced by new urbanism and featuring modified grid layouts, narrow streets, small lots and limited street setbacks are increasingly common. “Traditional” houses with front porches…
By Michael Pyatok New urbanism has been aggressively marketed within the last decade by “boomers” who came of age professionally in the 1990s, disenchanted with the negative physical and social consequences of the sprawl and urban renewal they had witnessed…
Special Issue on Youth and Planning Involving Youth in Planning: The Progressive Challenge By Ann Forsyth Seventh Generation Chester Hartman and Tom Angotti Townview, Texas: A High School Adoption Program By M. Teresa Vázquez-Castillo Teenagers Show Planners How It’s Done: Build Your…
By Fernando Marti Perhaps you remember hanging out after school, searching out those empty lots, abandoned parks, or downtown plazas with their concrete benches? They were the real playgrounds and obstacle courses of our adventurous minds. Perhaps now, as urban…
By M. Teresa Vázquez-Castillo (This is a story about a group of planning students whose semester-long project became a powerful tool for change when they organized a dynamic one-day program involving young people in a gentrifying neighborhood in Texas.) When…
by Tom Angotti I agree with Chester Hartman that Planners Network’s development in recent years has been healthy. PN is increasingly recognized as a progressive voice in planning. The newsletter has evolved into a magazine with lots of contributions that…
By Ann Forsyth How can children and youth have a voice in planning? What are the responsibilities of planners to incorporate children and youth in their activities? This issue of Planners Network features a number of articles about these issues…
By Peter Marcuse The following paper was drafted as the basis for discussion at a series of meetings planned by New York City Planners Network. It reflects the concerns expressed by Planners Network members who have been involved with some…
Selected Feature Urban Life Will Change By Peter Marcuse Planning to Rebuild By Tom Angotti Seventh Generation By : Saskia Sassen, Ariel Dorfman, Noam Chomsky, Eyad el Sarraj, Yale Rabin, Dick Platkin, Michael Moore, Eduardo Galeano Towards a New Community…
By Jonathan Michael Feldman and Jessica Gordon Nembhard This special section is devoted to an analysis and discussion of democratic economic development as the foundation for a new way to organize communities. We hope to provide planners with inspiration, new…
The September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington brought horror and death and there is no moral or political justification for them. We are concerned that the cries for war arising in the U.S. will lead to more…
By Tom Angotti The attacks on the World Trade Center brought horror, fear, death and anger to many New Yorkers. In the weeks after the attacks, government at all levels and many brave volunteers took care of the urgent tasks…
By Peter Marcuse We are all of course trying to come to grips with what the events of September 11 mean, and will mean. It has been a terrible disaster, and the immediate loss of life is incredible. But I…
Selected Feature PN 2001 in Rochester: Voices of Change By Ken Reardon Rochester: The Path Less Traveled By William A. Johnson, Jr. Changing the Culture of Planning By Norman Krumholz
By Ken Reardon Nearly four hundred neighborhood leaders, professional planners, planning students and planning academics participated in this year’s national conference, which was held at the University of Rochester in New York on June 21-24. Nine local colleges and universities…
By Mayor William A. Johnson, Jr. Why did Rochester take the path less traveled when we decided to create a partnership with citizens to chart our future? Lewis Mumford put it as well as anyone when he said that “the…
by Norman Krumholz I want to report on my impressions of planning after years of close association with the American Planning Association (APA) and American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), and much conversation with planning practitioners around the U.S. I have…
Selected Feature Community-based Planning: Moving Beyond the Rhetoric By Jocelyne Chait Getting Transportation Priorities Straight By Lisa Schreibman Privatizing Public Space: Saving NYC’s Parks By Dave Lutz
By Dave Lutz In New York City little planning is done to meet the needs for public space. City government has no idea of what the public needs are, or what it would cost to meet them. There are no…
By Lisa Schreibman As New York City grew in the 1990’s so did the demand for transportation. Population grew by 9%, jobs by 10% and personal wealth by 5%. The average number of weekday bus riders grew by 47% between…
By Jocelyne Chait The growth in community-based planning across the United States over the past decade reflects increasing recognition of the value of citizen participation in rebuilding neighborhoods and promoting sustainable community development. New York City, one of the largest…
Selected Feature Queers and Planning By George Cheung and Ann Forsyth Transgendered as Mine Shaft Canaries By Petra L. Doan Deviant History, Defiant Heritage By Gail Dubrow Zoning that Excludes Queers By Gwen Urey
By Gwen Urey In Pomona, California, where I am a planning commissioner, a simple phrase in one sentence of a complex ordinance would have had a discriminatory effect had I not caught it. It could have excluded some low-income queer…
By Petra L. Doan In coal mining country it is common knowledge that canaries are highly sensitive to noxious methane gas sometimes found in mines. Miners used to carry a caged canary into the mine as an early warning device;…
By George Cheung and Ann Forsyth Planners Network has had a commitment to queer issues for some time, but what this means has not been much discussed in the organization. This newsletter issue grew out of our experience, and the…
Selected Feature Federal Urban Renewal Not Dead by Tom Angotti Race and Waste: Options for Equity Planning in New York City by Juliana Maantay
By Chester Hartman In 1970, I moved from the East coast (Cambridge) to the West coast (San Francisco). While it was, for me, a very satisfying change of venue, as a lifelong Easterner (seventeen years in the Bronx, followed by…
By Gail Dubrow While there is no shortage of queer folk in the preservation movement, as volunteers and preservation professionals there are very few positive depictions of GLBT identity at the historic sites and buildings that are our life’s work.…
by Juliana Maantay The concentration of waste transfer stations in New York City’s poorer neighborhoods and communities of color undermines public health, equity, and the environment. For all the calculations that have gone into the city’s latest plan for solid…
by Tom Angotti So you thought Nixon killed federal urban renewal in the 1970s? Did you know that the federal government is currently financing one of the largest urban renewal plans in history? It has displaced tens of thousands of…
Selected Feature Breath of Air in Harlem by Peggy Dye Shedding Light on the Shades of Strategic Planning by Jordi Borja What Planners Don’t Know About Food: Food Planning in New York and Beyond by John Nettleton
by John Nettleton In recent Planners Network articles on alternative plans for New York City, there was no discussion about the natural resource base for the city or region and no ideas for economic development that build on such a…
by Jordi Borja [In the last issue of PN, Fabricio Leal de Oliveira criticized the theory and practice of strategic planning in Latin America, in his article “Strategic Planning and Urban Competition: The Agenda of Multilateral Agencies in Brazil.” Leal…
by Peggy Dye In the 1930s, Robert Moses, master planner for New York, stripped Harlem of potential park along the Hudson River where, further down the river, his engineers preserved land for white Manhattan communities. In Harlem, planners laid a…
Selected Feature Public Space and Crime: The Cultural Meaning of Violence by Herbert Glasauer Strategic Planning and Urban Competition: The Agenda of Multilateral Agencies in Brazil by Fabricio Leal de Oliveira The Role of Technnical/Professional Workers in Progressive Social Change …
by Carlos B. Vainer Professor at the Institute for Urban and Regional Planning and Research, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro — IPPUR/UFRJ “In the criticisms from Brazil against strategic planning and the influence of urban planning from Barcelona, which…
by Bob Heifetz During the 1930s and 1940s, members of the left-led Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians (FAECT) helped build a radical political agenda. The experiences of this group of technical and professional workers offer lessons for progressive…
by Fabricio Leal de Oliveira In Brazil today, the same solutions for cities come up in almost all forums, debates, and institutions: sustainability and competition. Competition, which is expressed through strategic urban planning, affects all local policy, including environmental policy.…
by Herbert Glasauer In Germany, as in most European countries, there has been a dramatic increase in people’s concerns about insecurity in the past thirty years. In particular, people living in big cities are afraid of using public urban space…
Selected Feature What You Always Knew About Globalization but Were Afraid to Tell: Five Basic Lessons by Kanishka Goonewardena Mexico’s Pioneer Experiences in Participatory Planning by Gustavo Romero Fernöndez Civil Society: A Challenge to Planners by Gerda R. Wekerle
by Gerda R. Wekerle Planning is generally identified with the state or private sector. ‘Citizens’ are often relegated to discussions of citizen participation, which is token and marginal to the real action. Or they are described as “special interests,” one…
By Gustavo Romero Fernšndez In the early 1970s, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) began to get involved in urban planning. They were invited to get involved because they weren’t “urban planning professionals” but technicians linked to the social processes of popular urban…
By Kanishka Goonewardena Globalization is a code word for something else. That is why David Harvey has the good habit of reminding his audiences that by globalization he means “the latest stage in the development of capitalism.” If he were…
May/June 2000 The Electronic Frontier Selected Feature Information Technologies and Progressive Planning by Ann Forsyth Online for Organizing: The Story of COMM-ORG by Randy Stoeker NKLA: Neighborhood Improvement and Recovery is Not Just for the Experts! by Bill Pitkin The…
by Gwen Urey For progressive planners, the “digital divide” should be thought of as a “digital wedge.” Technology-based strategies to improve the flow of information at the local level may have perverse effects if we don’t really understand the needs…
by Blanca Gordo In the last six months, the “digital divide” has attracted a lot of public attention from corporate leaders, politicians, and scholars. The growing interest is in part a response to the release of the Department of Commerce’s…
by Bill Pitkin Within planning, the computer has long been associated with images of the rational, technocratic planner who plugs data into a model that magically analyzes the information and proposes optimal solutions. Planners within a ‘progressive planning’ tradition tend…
by Randy Stoeker In 1994 Wendy Plotkin, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, started an e-mail discussion list on the history of community organizing. She had lined up a nice set of papers to present on-line. But while…
by Ann Forsyth For two centuries technological changes in production, transportation, and communications have been reshaping cities and regions; and for around a century people recognizable as planners have been trying to manage those changes. We are currently in the…
March/April 2000 Election 2000 Selected Feature Election 2000: Is It Time for Urban Policy? Participatory Budgeting In Porto Alegre, Brazil by William W. Goldsmith Proposal for PEO History Project By Ken Reardon
By Ken Reardon On October 15 and 16, 1999, approximately fifty former members of Planners for Equal Opportunity (PEO) gathered for a 25th Reunion Celebration at Pratt Institute’s Manhattan Center. Following a short set of remarks by Lew Lubka and…
by William W. Goldsmith In December 1999, seven PNers went to Porto Alegre and São Paulo, Brazil for nine days of conferences, meetings, and tours to exchange information about progressive alternatives for local government. In Porto Alegre, we made presentations…
Could it be urban policy time again? As Bush and Gore square off, is there a chance the idea of having a national policy governing urban development ð something most other industrialized nations have could catch their attention? Election…
January/February 2000 Self Determination and Planning Selected Feature The Seventh Generation By Eve Baron Self Determination and Planning by Eve Baron Indigenous Planning and Tribal Community Development by Ted Jojola São Paulo Squat by Barbara Lynch
By Barbara Lynch A highlight of the Planner’s Network trip to Brazil was our December 11 visit to a squat on a lively commercial street in São Paulo’s downtown, close to the streets where mass demonstrations assembled in the 1980s to…
by Ted Jojola What we ask of America is not charity, not paternalism, even when benevolent. We ask only that the nature of our situation be recognized and made the basis of policy and action. ›Declaration of Indian Purpose, American…
by Eve Baron During the winter of 1990 an Associated Press photograph of a young Mohawk man dressed in camouflage fatigues appeared in the New York Times. He was on his belly commando-style, brandishing an assault rifle at some unseen…
By Eve Baron Native Americans have been in the news quite a bit in the last few years›striking it rich with casinos; making hefty political campaign contributions; prompting inquiries into the affairs of cabinet members; bringing Las Vegas to its…
Selected Feature How Smarth Growth Can Save Growth By Tom Angotti Oregon: Where’s the Growth Control? by Kevin Adams Who Benefits From Smart Growth? By Faisal Roble
By Faisal Roble Politicians all over are hawking smart growth as a formula for enlightened urban development. They include everyone from President Clinton and Vice-President Gore to Mayors in Oregon and Texas. The smart growth movement endorses development strategies that…
by Kevin Adams In September of 1998 I had a wonderful opportunity to serve another year in AmeriCorps National Service (“domestic Peace Corps”). The Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) Program provided me a great opportunity to work as an…
By Tom Angotti I saw Lewis Mumford the other day. He was the beneficiary of a technological revolution in embalming (how ironic, he so distrusted technological revolutions). He said he heard all the chatter about Smart Growth and Growth Control and…
Selected Feature The Growth Machine Goes to the Inner City By Dwayne Wyatt The Seventh Generation: Alternatives to the Growth Machine By Dick Platkin and Ben Rosenbloom, Guest Editors The Auto Drives the Growth Machine By Aaron Golub Profit Drives…
By Catherine Diaz Possible Urban Worlds: Urban Strategies at the End of the 20th Century Edited by Richard Wolff, Andreas Schneider, Christian Schmid, Philip Klaus, Andreas Hofer, and Hansruedi Hitz. 1998. Available from Birkhauser Verlag, PO Box 133, CH-40010, Basel,…
By Rodney D. Green Profit maximization is at the heart of the Growth Machine. But the Growth Machine isn’t strictly a local or regional phenomenon, as suggested by urban planners who rely on the Growth Machine model. It operates according…
By Aaron Golub Nothing defines and shapes post-war urban transportation in the United States more than the automobile. The strong links between transportation, land use, and urban development affect nearly every aspect of the urban environment. Planners now find that…
By Dick Platkin and Ben Rosenbloom, Guest Editors This issue of Planners Network is on the Urban Growth Machine, a popular model for understanding the development of land under capitalism. As presented by William Fulton in The Reluctant Metropolis, the growth machine…
By Dwayne Wyatt The Growth Machine that gave us suburban sprawl is going to the inner city. But the benefits of the new urban megaprojects are bypassing most central city residents. And the costs are falling on urban taxpayers, making…
Selected Feature Transnationalism not Assimilation By Arturo Sanchez PN 99 At Lowell: Labor and Community Meet By Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly Contesting Mythic America: Community-based Citizenship Education for Immigrants By Laura Y. Liu Transnational and Local Communities: How Mexican…
By Robert Smith Migration has both local and transnational dimensions. Many of the problems that immigrants face ð for example, disruption of family and social life and exploitation at work are experienced both in their country of origin and their…
By Laura Y. Liu Community-based organizations have long served immigrant groups in urban areas. They organize around labor issues, deal with domestic violence, and help immigrants negotiate the naturalization process. In many ways, community groups mediate between government and the…
By Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly “WHO’S IN THE HOUSE?” Participants at the Planners Network 1999 conference got used to hearing conference co-coordinator Ty DePass calling out this invitation to stand up and be counted. At this first-ever PN meeting…
By Arturo Sanchez The contemporary urban landscape is rapidly being transformed by massive waves of non-European immigration. This movement of Third World peoples to the “American City” is viewed by many influential decisionmakers as problematic. In the popular mind, large-scale…
Column The Seventh Generation by Tom Angotti Articles Organizing A Childcare Union In Philadelphia By Peter Pitegoff Worker Coops By Chitra Somayaji Employee Stock Ownership — ESOPS By Corey Rosen The Uncertain Future Of Worker Ownership: Two Decades Of Lessons…
By Tarry Hum Despite its dramatic and continued decline, apparel production remains the largest manufacturing industry in New York City. It is viable, in large part, due to the mass influx of new immigrants “sweating” it out in cramped, poorly…
By Len Krimerman Worker-owned enterprises, sometimes called “worker cooperatives,” have a long history, even in the United States. But they face an uncertain future. In May, 1791, Philadelphia’s Journeyman Carpenters started the nation’s first working-class cooperative. A century or so…
By Corey Rosen If you’ve worn Gore-Tex lately or flown on United Airlines, you’ve patronized a company most of whose stock is owned widely by its workers, through employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs. During the last decade, the number…
By Chitra Somayaji Cooperatives come in several types: producer-owned, consumer-owned, and worker-owned, the last being our focus here. Unlike ESOPs, pure worker coops are 100% controlled by the worker-owners, normally on a one-person one-vote basis (although some coops have hired…
By Peter Pitegoff “What an awesome gathering!” Kim Cook, a union organizer from Seattle, smiled as she looked around the meeting room of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees in Philadelphia in mid-June. Just one month earlier,…
On May 12, the largest union demonstration in years hit New York City streets. Workers from the public sector, services, and construction trades came together to demand that city and state surpluses go to raise worker pay instead of tax…
Column The Seventh Generation by Marie Kennedy Articles URBAN PLANNING IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY: In the Shadows by June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf RESTRICTING OCCUPANCY, HURTING FAMILIES by Ellen Pader THE INVASION OF AZTLÁN AND STRUGGLES FOR LAND …
By Karen Umemoto There is a lot of talk about multiculturalism in planning. Planning programs and agencies often stress the need for planning staff to be able to work in “diverse communities.” Sometimes this simply means placing planners of certain…
by Luis Aponte-ParÞs This is a story of an important “advocacy planning” experience during the late sixties in New York City. Its importance is twofold: to add a missing chapter in the history of “progressive planning,” and to gain a…
By Mel King Where there are no limits to growth visions of plenty abound; where visions of plenty abound growth is unlimited; mind set is critical the 8 straight up sets limits, lazy * on its side is infinite See.…
by Teresa CÜrdova The historical memory and contemporary reality of Chicanos from Aztlšn are of people taking our space. In Aztlšn (the part of the Southwest that the U.S. took through its war with Mexico), there is evidence of the…
by Ellen Pader While much has been written about federal legislation designed to dismantle public housing, relatively little has been written about legislation designed to eviscerate the Fair Housing Act (FHA), which gives legal protections against discrimination in housing choice.…
by June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf If urban planning is to support the equitable distribution of public goods and services, it must recognize and address the dismal conditions of millions of Americans who are poor or people of color.…
by Marie Kennedy Racism continues to present the thorniest of challenges to progressive community development planners. The problems that were on the front burner for decades – residential and school segregation, housing and job discrimination – remain unsolved, and what…
Pedagogy Planning’s Radical Project: What’s the Pedagogy? by Leonie Sandercock Housing Putting Housing on the Unions’ Agenda by Chris Baker, Annica Cooper, Sahyeh Fattahi, Paula Bingham Goldstein, Jimmy Gomez, Daniel Inlender, Jacqueline Leavitt, Erika Licon, and Paula Sirola Post-modernism/Planning The…
[quote] “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” -From the Great Law of the Iriquois Confederacy [/quote] Privatization and Planning The Fall/Winter New York Planners Network Forum featured three…
By Howard Zinn [Immediately after President Clinton announced the bombing of Iraq, Mother Joneswww.mojones.com called Boston University historian Howard Zinn and asked for his take. After a few minutes, he sent this forceful accusation.] President Clinton has just told another lie,…
By Edward W. Said It would be a mistake, I think, to reduce what is happening between Iraq and the United States simply to an assertion of Arab will and sovereignty on the one hand versus American imperialism, which undoubtedly…