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 report, “Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide,” a PBS documentary, a series of […]

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 to reject this use of technology, focusing instead on more social or political methods, such […]

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 she originally envisioned that this on-line group would discuss the historical dimensions of community organizing, […]

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 midst of a new wave of technological change that started in earnest in the 1970s […]