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Mahbub Rashid embarks on a fascinating journey through urban space in all of its physical and social aspects, using the theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, Lefebvre, and others to explore how consumer capitalism, colonialism, and power disparity consciously shape cities. Using two Muslim cities as case studies, Algiers (Ottoman/French) and Zanzibar (Ottoman/British), Rashid shows how Western perceptions can only view Muslim cities through the lens of colonization—a lens that distorts both physical and social space. Is it possible, he asks, to find a useable urban past in a timeline broken by colonization? He concludes that political economy may be less relevant in premodern cities, that local variation is central to the understanding of power, that cities engage more actively in social reproduction than in production, that the manipulation of space is the exercise of power, that all urban space is a conscious construct and is therefore not inevitable, and that consumer capitalism is taking over everyday life. Ultimately, we reconstruct a present from a fragmented past through local struggles against the homogenizing power of abstract space.

An unflinching account of how city planning was deployed to enforce white supremacy in Montgomery, Alabama—the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement—and how Black activists fought back, block by neighborhood block.

At the heart of the Civil Rights Movement was a city meticulously designed to enforce inequality. In Planning White Supremacy: Civil Rights and City Planning in Montgomery, Alabama, 1920–1970, Rebecca Coleen Retzlaff traces how city officials used the tools of modern planning—zoning, infrastructure, housing codes, public investment, and highway construction—to suppress political power, economic opportunity, and spatial freedom for Black citizens.

As the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, Montgomery became a battleground where urban planning and direct-action protest collided, shaping the city’s culture in ways that still resonate today. Retzlaff’s analysis exposes the calculated use of municipal power to control land use, displace Black communities, keep schools and neighborhoods segregated, and preserve white political dominance. By placing urban planning at the center of Montgomery’s story, this groundbreaking work reframes the movement not only as a fight for voting rights and legal equality, but as a struggle for space, housing, mobility, education, and the right to live with dignity. Retzlaff also highlights the resilience and joy of the close-knit Black neighborhoods that nurtured the civil rights activists who changed history.

Retzlaff reveals how urban planning decisions systematically targeted Black neighborhoods, reinforcing racial inequality under the guise of modernization. With historical depth and critical insight, Planning White Supremacy situates Montgomery within the broader context of American urban history—offering a vital perspective on the intersection of race, space, and power. Essential for scholars of urban planning, history, and racial justice, this book also provides urgent insight into how these legacies continue to shape cities and Black socioeconomic opportunities today.

In this companion volume to his 2012 book Oregon Plans: The Making of an Unquiet Land-Use Revolution, Sy Adler offers readers a deep analysis of planning Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary. Required by one of Oregon’s nineteen statewide planning goals, a boundary in the Portland metropolitan area was intended to separate urban land and land that would be urbanized from commercially productive farmland. After adopting the goals, approving the Portland growth boundary in 1979 was the most significant decision the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission has ever made, and, more broadly, is a significant milestone in American land-use planning.
 
Planning the Portland Urban Growth Boundary primarily covers the 1970s. Innovative regional planning institutions were established in response to concerns about sprawl, but planners working for those institutions had to confront the reality that various plans being developed and implemented by city and county governments in metro Portland would instead allow sprawl to continue. Regional planners labeled these as “Trend City” plans, and sought to transform them during the 1970s and thereafter.
 
Adler discusses the dynamics of these partially successful efforts and the conflicts that characterized the development of the Portland UGB during the 1970s—between different levels of government, and between public, private, and civic sector advocates. When the regional UGB is periodically reviewed, these conflicts continue, as debates about values and technical issues related to forecasting future amounts of population, economic activity, and the availability of land for urban development over a twenty-year period roil the boundary planning process.
 
Planning the Portland Urban Growth Boundary is an authoritative history and an indispensable resource for anyone actively involved in urban and regional planning—from neighborhood associations and elected officials to organizations working on land use and development issues throughout the state.
 

Since World War II, Houston has become a burgeoning, internationally connected metropolis—and a sprawling, car-dependent city. In 1950, it possessed only one highway, the Gulf Freeway, which ran between Houston and Galveston. Today, Houston and Harris County have more than 1,200 miles of highways, and a third major loop is under construction nearly thirty miles out from the historic core. Highways have driven every aspect of Houston’s postwar development, from the physical layout of the city to the political process that has transformed both the transportation network and the balance of power between governing elites and ordinary citizens.

Power Moves examines debates around the planning, construction, and use of highway and public transportation systems in Houston. Kyle Shelton shows how Houstonians helped shape the city’s growth by attending city council meetings, writing letters to the highway commission, and protesting the destruction of homes to make way for freeways, which happened in both affluent and low-income neighborhoods. He demonstrates that these assertions of what he terms “infrastructural citizenship” opened up the transportation decision-making process to meaningful input from the public and gave many previously marginalized citizens a more powerful voice in civic affairs. Power Moves also reveals the long-lasting results of choosing highway and auto-based infrastructure over other transit options and the resulting challenges that Houstonians currently face as they grapple with how best to move forward from the consequences and opportunities created by past choices.

This book starts from the premise that each community chooses its future every day, through the incremental decisions made by planning and zoning boards and other citizen volunteers, as well as professional staff. The challenge is to ensure that these decisions support the preservation of what is special about the community, while still fostering necessary and appropriate growth.

In this volume, twenty-nine experts from a variety of fields describe in very practical terms the “community preservation” approach to these issues. As opposed to the top-down regulatory mechanisms that are sometimes used to manage growth, the contributors favor a more flexible, locally based approach that has proven successful in Massachusetts and elsewhere. They show how residents can be empowered to become involved in local decision-making, building coalitions and expressing their views on a wide range of issues, such as zoning, water and land protection, transportation, historic preservation, economic diversity, affordable housing, and reuse of brown-fields. When done properly, development can enhance the sense of place and provide needed homes and jobs. Done improperly, it can generate sprawl and a multitude of problems.

Preserving and Enhancing Communities will be particularly useful to members of planning and other regulatory boards, as well as students of community planning. The book covers not just typical ways of doing things, but also the full spectrum of innovative and emerging practices. Each chapter includes illustrations and case studies, some from Massachusetts and many from other states. The volume concludes with a set of indicators that communities can use to track their progress in community preservation and enhancement.