This book introduces community planning as practiced in the United States, focusing on the comprehensive plan. Sometimes known by other names—especially master plan or general plan—the type of plan described here is the predominant form of general governmental planning in the U.S. Although many government agencies make plans for their own programs or facilities, the comprehensive plan is the only planning document that considers multiple programs and that accounts for activities on all land located within the planning area, including both public and private property.
Written by a former president of the American Planning Association, Community Planning is thorough, specific, and timely. It addresses such important contemporary issues as sustainability, walkable communities, the role of urban design in public safety, changes in housing needs for a changing population, and multi-modal transportation planning. Unlike competing books, it addresses all of these topics in the context of the local comprehensive plan.
Today, we take for granted the wisdom of renovating old factory buildings into malls or condos, of making once decaying waterfronts into vibrant public spaces, of protecting historic buildings under landmark laws, and of building public housing on a human scale rather than as high-rises. In contemporary cities, it is now common for community groups to plant gardens in empty lots and to buy abandoned apartment buildings from the city for a dollar and fix them up.
But these and other urban planning policies and practices have not always been accepted. Before they became widespread, they were the visionary ideas of the writer and urban commentator Jane Jacobs. Best known in the United States for her path-breaking efforts to preserve the character of Greenwich Village, Jacobs is the author of the classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, one of the most influential works ever published in urban studies. The architectural critic Herbert Muschamp wrote in the New York Times that its publication “was one of twentieth-century architecture’s most traumatic events. Its impact is still felt in cities across the land.”
In this analysis of Jane Jacobs’s ideas and work, Alice Sparberg Alexiou tells the remarkable story of a woman who without any formal training in planning became a prominent spokesperson for sensible urban change. Besides writing the seminal book about contemporary cities, Jacobs organized successful community battles in New York against powerful interests. She resisted urban renewal in the West Village in the 1960s, helped defeat the Lower Manhattan Expressway, advocated the pleasures of street life that she called “sidewalk ballet,” and opposed the original Twin Towers plans. She was also active in the anti–Vietnam War movement, which eventually led her to move to Canada. There she continued her grass-roots activism, including helping to prevent the construction of an expressway that would have cut through several neighborhoods in Toronto.
Based on a rich array of interviews and primary source material, this book brings long-overdue attention to Jacobs’s far-reaching influence as an original thinker and effective activist.
Reinventing Cities emphasizes the extraordinary accomplishments of eleven urban planners who work for the needs of low income and working class people. Through the voices of equity planners who have worked "in the trenches" of city halls, Norman Krumholz and Pierre Clavel explore the inner dimensions of social change, economic development, community organizing, and the dynamics of implementing and producing fair housing. Preceded by "snapshots" that describe the demographics, politics, and economics of each specific city or region, the editors' interviews with these leading progressive planners highlight productive strategies, disquieting failures, and the cities in which the fought for equity.
Included are conversations with Rick Cohen, former director of Jersey City's Department of Housing and Economic Development; Dale F. Bertsch, former first director of the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, Dayton, Ohio; Robert Mier, former commissioner of the Department of Economic Development (DED); Kari J. Moe, former deputy commissioner of Research and Development, DED'; Arturo Vazquez, former director of Mayor Washington's Office of Employment and Training, Chicago; Margaret D. Strachan, former city commissioner, Portland, Oregon; Peter Dreier, former housing director, Boston Redevelopment Authority, and policy aide to Mayor Raymond Flynn; Billie Bramhall, planning staff, Mayor Federico Pena, Denver, Colorado; Howard Stanback, city manager, Hartford, Connecticut; Derek Shearer, former Planning Commission chairman, Santa Monica, California; and Kenneth Grimes, senior planning analyst, San Diego Housing Commission.
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