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Urban Policy and Research

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Planning Ideas that Matter: Livability,

Territoriality, Governance, and
Reflective Practice
a
Michael Neuman
a
Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South
Wales, Australia
Published online: 25 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Michael Neuman (2013) Planning Ideas that Matter: Livability, Territoriality,
Governance, and Reflective Practice, Urban Policy and Research, 31:4, 500-502, DOI:
10.1080/08111146.2013.845077

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08111146.2013.845077

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 500 Book Reviews

practitioners, seeking perspective in the system they are working within or wanting
reinforcement in their belief that democratic planning is both desirable and achievable.

Joanna Ross
Resource and Environmental Planning Programme,
Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
J.M.Ross@massey.ac.nz
q 2013 Joanna Ross
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08111146.2013.846248
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Planning Ideas that Matter: Livability, Territoriality, Governance, and Reflective

Practice
Bishwapriya Sanyal, Lawrence Vale & Christine Rosan (Eds)
Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2012, 422 pp., ISBN 978 0 262 51768 3

This book lives up to its title and deserves to be read by students, academics and
practitioners alike. It is written by leaders in their fields and provides as definitive a review
of the key ideas that animate the field of urban planning as can be expected of a one-
volume compendium. It differs from most edited texts in planning theory that compile
previously published writings of others, which have the consequence of being an orthodox
indoctrination to the field. Here each chapter author tackles a key substantive idea that
actively shapes thought and practice in urban planning. In so doing, they trace its
intellectual and practice contours in a variety of contexts, some US only, others spanning
North American and European countries, and some truly international.
The editors’ introduction provides a masterful analysis and synthesis of the contents of
the volume that gives shape and meaning to the argument of the entire book. They
structure their essay along the lines of the book itself and call the four themes indicated by
the subtitle “four conversations” (p. 1). Their intent is that these conversations be carried
forward in the debates surrounding our profession. Their essay is everything that an
editors’ introduction should be.
Theme/conversation number one, liveability, sits right as a prime animating idea for
urban planning. Gary Hack opens with his chapter on urban form, entrenching a long line
of thinking and practice, epitomised by his mentor Kevin Lynch. He provides a strong
justification of the what, why and how of the shaping of urban form, even as he accepts the
traditional notion of public infrastructure and private property development. The thesis
advances around ideas applied at the metropolitan periphery: “control the perimeter” (p.
39) and “greenbelts” (p. 45). Thus, this part of the chapter is about growth management,
that is, urban structure rather than urban form. He concludes with pointers toward the
future, especially low carbon approaches. This review is international in scope with
instructive details and case studies.
In Chapter 3, Robert Fishman’s informed and sensitive treatment of new urbanism is a
history of ideas in practice. The analysis contends that the US variant of new urbanism is
an “unexpected synthesis” of Jane Jacobs and Ebenezer Howard (p. 71). It posits East and
West Coast (of the USA) variants of new urbanism on the basis of theory, values and
 Book Reviews 501

overall approach. The former is more formal in its architectonic roots and the latter more
environmental in its origin, evolving to metropolitan and regional urbanism.
Timothy Beatley in Chapter 4 argues that “sustainability, then, has largely been about
how to wisely use natural resources” (p. 92), eliding the economic and social sides of the
sustainability triangle in planning (Campbell, 1996). The chapter proceeds to list and
briefly describe a grab bag of fashionable terms such as green architecture, biophilic cities,
green infrastructure, biomimicry, city metabolism, resilience, among others. He curiously
characterises Arcosanti in Arizona as sustainable and offers Houston in Texas as an
“example of the overlapping of sustainability and resilience agendas in planning” (p. 117).
Part II, “Territoriality”, begins with Mike Teitz’s chapter on regional development
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planning. He organises his matter into four eras: utopian (1850 – 1930), heroic (1930 –45),
development (1945 –85) and global (1985 onwards). Largely relying on the analyses of
Hall, Friedmann and Weaver, he conveys a decidedly North American and European
focus, except for the fourth era. Teitz usefully distinguishes regional planning from
metropolitan planning, a topic taken up by Robert Yaro in the next chapter.
Metropolitanism as a planning idea is presented exclusively through the lens of New
York’s Regional Plan Association, a non-profit organisation, thus not exploiting Yaro’s
vast knowledge of metropolitan planning history, theory and practice throughout the
world.
In a chapter titled “Territorial Competitiveness”, Neil Brenner and David Wachsmuth
critique this new concept and practice that has come to dominate the field since about
1980. They expose the paradoxes involved in pursuing this approach to urban
development, organising their masterful analysis according to “forms”, “fields” and
“geographies” of territorial competition (pp. 187– 189), and how to measure territorial
competitiveness. They dissect regulatory failures stemming from it and the “competi-
tiveness trap” (p. 200).
Part III, “Governance”, opens with Mohammad Qadeer’s chapter on urban
development, whose contribution is helpfully elucidated by the editors as “Western
ideas have controlled development discourse” across the globe (p. 13). The first and third
worlds are not described or explained, but rather taken for granted, an assumption which
discounts the fact that most large cities exhibit phenomena and populations that embody
significant amounts of both first and third worlds. Notably, the exposition omits the second
world and places the heterodox if not unclassifiable China in the Third.
In Chapter 9, Lynn Sagalyn covers public – private engagement and is very critical of
typical practices of partnerships between the two sectors. She identifies a “troublesome
gap” between the promise and the practice of public-private partnerships (p. 234) since
1980, basing the analysis on the US experience, with allusions to Canadian and UK
practices.
In Chapter 10, Merilee Grindle tackles good governance, correctly arguing its
normative basis. Her international perspective is illuminating and she talks around the
ideas of good governance since the 1980s. She parallels the rise of governance with new
institutionalism in the 1980s and 1990s, relying on the top intellectual contributors in both
fields to bolster her argument.
Chapter 11 by Peter Ward, “Self-Help Housing in the Americas”, traces the origin to the
1940s, the building of serious momentum in the 1960s in the USA and ventures to Latin
America, using, among other illuminating cases, the classic example of Ciudad Guyana in
Venezuela that has been analysed by Lisa Peattie in numerous works. The analysis, which
 502 Book Reviews

borders on a personal narrative due to the vast experience of the author, is helpfully placed
in broader international context—including the roles of the United Nations, World Bank
and international development agencies generally.
Part IV, “Reflective” Practice, makes explicit the theme of the entire volume. Rafael
Fischler opens an otherwise superb reflection on reflective thinking on/in action
(dominated by his mentor Donald Schön) by mischaracterising both Meyerson and
Banfield’s and Altshuler’s seminal books (1955, 1965) as “not on individual behavior or
cognition” (p. 314). In fact, both books base their theoretical expositions on exhaustively
detailed descriptions and analyses of the complex inter-relations of political and planning
behaviours, not incidentally setting the stage for the explosion of rich case studies that
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became the fodder of the litany of scholars that Fischler masterfully summarises.
Banfield’s concluding chapter, in part defining the agenda of planning theory on both sides
of the Atlantic for decades, was itself a rich reflection on practice.
Patsy Healey in Chapter 13 tackles her métier, communicative planning. This chapter,
which could have equally fitted in the “Governance” section, focuses on what she knows
best, Europe and North America. It is a superb review and at the same time reflection after
the fact, of a key episode in the robust planning theory enterprise since the 1980s that was
spawned by post-modern Continental thinkers in a range of disciplines.
June Manning Thomas closes with social justice, long a fundamental theme of urban
planning. She limits her chapter to the USA since the 1950s and 1960s, taking her cue from
the civil rights movement.
Each chapter differs in its geographic focus, the time span it considers, and the balance
between scholarship and practice. Most contributors attain a balanced perspective,
contributing effectively to the conversational theme of the book. Almost every chapter
looks to the future prospects and each has a useful bibliography. Despite the inevitable
unevenness of the contributions in a wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary compilation such
as this, the editors brought the whole enterprise together coherently. This top crop of solid
thinkers on the key topics of city planning gives the reader much to contemplate as s/he
reflects on practice and scholarship, and how they intertwine to help shape our urban
futures.
In terms of overall perspective, one wonders what such a volume would look like if it
were not so MIT centric—which is within the right of the editors to be so. Nonetheless, the
volume deals with the most significant issues confronting planning, now and well into the
future.

Reference
Campbell, S. (1996) Green cities, growing cities, just cities?: urban planning and the contradictions of sustainable
development, Journal of the American Planning Association, 62(3), pp. 296–312.

Michael Neuman
Faculty of the Built Environment
University of New South Wales, Australia
m.neuman@unsw.edu.au
q 2013 Michael Neuman
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08111146.2013.845077