PLANNERS NETWORK

PLANNERS NETWORK

Progressive City: Radical Alternatives is a project of Planners Network. 

 

You can find more information about PN here: www.plannersnetwork.org

 

From the Planners Network site:

Planners Network is an association of progressive planning. Our members are professionals, activists, academics, and students involved in physical, social, economic, and environmental planning in urban and rural areas. We serve as a voice for social, economic, and environmental justice through planning.

 

In addition to Progressive City, PN connects progressive planners in the following ways:

  • A monthly e-newsletter, with member updates, job listings, event announcements, and other resources.

  • A resource-rich website, with all of the back issues of Progressive Planning Magazine.

  • Conferences, driven by community-led tours and participatory workshops.

  • Local chapters, which organize events and discussions around hot local issues.

As Co-Chair of the Planners Network Steering Committee and a former member of the Progressive Planning Magazine editorial board, I am thrilled to be part of this milestone in Planners Network's history – the launch of a new digital magazine, Progressive City: Radical Alternatives.

 

The new digital magazine builds on a long tradition within Planners Network (PN) to connect our commitment to justice with concrete actions to achieve justice (economic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, social, environmental) by developing support networks and a forum for exchange. Planners Network first emerged in 1975, when founder Chester Hartman put out the following call in what would become a bi-monthly newsletter: "This is the first mailing of a new communications/action networks of leftist planners in the U.S. and Canada. At the first level, the idea simply is to put the few hundred North American 'radical planners' in regular touch with one another, to share ideas and experiences, discuss their work and lives, develop some sense of community and mutual support". PN sought to build on its predecessor organization, Planners for Equal Opportunity, a group of radical planners who were concerned about the entanglement of planning – and planners – in 1960s urban renewal schemes that led to the displacement of low-income and minority populations. By the 1980s, PN was vocal about cuts in social spending, aggressive U.S. foreign policy and the nuclear arms race and about the role of planners in directly contesting these issues and fighting for justice in their home settings. And by the 1990s, PN was hosting regular conferences and would see the emergence of numerous local chapters across the U.S., Canada and beyond. In the 2000s, under the direction of Tom Angotti and Ann Forsyth, the bi-monthly newsletter morphed into a quarterly magazine, Progressive Planning, which would subsequently be edited by Tom Angotti and Marie Kennedy and featured regular articles on progressive practices.   

 

Today, in a context of widening economic and social disparities and a heightened militarization of space (both at home and abroad), PN continues to advocate for new ideas and practices to eliminate inequalities (or what Peter Marcuse terms '"Progressive Planning", see this issue). Progressive City is part of this legacy, and it is an honor to be part of a dynamic and committed team, including community organizers, educators, practitioners and activists, who are seeking to broaden access and engagement in these critical discussions and share articles, podcasts and art works that speak to the ongoing struggles for equity today.

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~Norma Rantisi, Co-Chair of the Planners Network Steering Committee

A MESSAGE FROM PLANNERS NETWORK

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