Planning The Capitalist City

Starting with the colonial period, but focusing especially on the Progressive era, Richard Foglesong offers both a narrative account and a theoretical interpretation of urban planning in the United States. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

“This superbly succinct and incisive book couldn’t be more timely or urgent.” —Michael Sorkin, author of All Over the Map Our cities are changing. Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a $217 trillion dollar industry, worth thirty-six times the value of all the gold ever mined. It forms sixty percent of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the world—the president of the United States—made his name as a landlord and developer. Samuel Stein shows that this explosive transformation of urban life and politics has been driven not only by the tastes of wealthy newcomers, but by the state-driven process of urban planning. Planning agencies provide a unique window into the ways the state uses and is used by capital, and the means by which urban renovations are translated into rising real estate values and rising rents. Capital City explains the role of planners in the real estate state, as well as the remarkable power of planning to reclaim urban life.

Originally published in 1981, Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society, is a comprehensive collection of papers addressing urban crises. Through a synthesis of current discussions around various critical approaches to the urban question, the book defines a general theory of urbanization and urban planning in capitalist society. It examines the conceptual preliminaries necessary for the establishment of capitalist theory and provides a theoretical exposition of the fundamental logic of urbanization and urban planning. It also provides a detailed discussion of commodity production and its effects on urban development.

Originally published in 1980, Urban Planning in a Capitalist Society addresses land use planning as both a technical and a political activity, involving the distribution of scarce resources – land and capital. The book reviews and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of several theoretical perspectives, and pluralist, bureaucratic, reformist and Marxist approaches to the distribution of power, and hence resources in a capitalist society. It concentrates on the role played by planning professionals, the opportunity for the public to influence land use planning decision making, and the scope for political action concerning planning.

Taylor describes the development of urban planning ideas since the end of the Second World War, outlining the main theories from the traditional view of planning as an exercise in physical design to recent views of planning as 'communicative action'.

To date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the disperse research on the squatters’ movement in Europe. In Squatters in the Capitalist City, Miguel A. Martínez López presents a critical review of the current research on squatting and of the historical development of the movements in European cities according to their major social, political and spatial dimensions. Comparing cities, contexts, and the achievements of the squatters’ movements, this book presents the view that squatting is not simply a set of isolated, illegal and marginal practices, but is a long-lasting urban and transnational movement with significant and broad implications. While intersecting with different housing struggles, squatters face various aspects of urban politics and enhance the content of the movements claiming for a ‘right to the city.’ Squatters in the Capitalist City seeks to understand both the socio-spatial and political conditions favourable to the emergence and development of squatting, and the nature of the interactions between squatters, authorities and property owners by discussing the trajectory, features and limitations of squatting as a potential radicalisation of urban democracy.

A new book by influential urbanist Jane Jacobs, released in Jacobs' centenary, and showing her evolution as a writer and thinker. Vital Little Plans will bring together for the first time a selection of essays, articles, speeches and interviews by the late Jane Jacobs. These works shed light on the development of the ideas she made famous in her best-known works, The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities, while expanding upon familiar themes with new insights. Some works also explore topics rarely directly addressed in her major works, from skyscrapers to feminism to universal health care to gentrification. Readers will find classics like her breakout article "Downtown Is for People" and a host of previously unpublished or obscure articles, speeches, and lectures that follow her entire career, from her early journalistic investigations into the specialty industries of New York City and the neighbourhoods that harboured them, to her critiques of the urban renewal regime, to her iconoclastic takes on economics, separatism, regulation, and the environment. Most importantly, it will reveal Jacobs as she herself wished to be understood: as a writer who tried to observe human life as closely as she could. The book showcases the rhythm of Jacobs' career. "A City Naturalist" collects articles from her early years in New York, where she honed her distinctive style and her interest in the commercial and everyday life of cities. "City Building" critiques contemporary architecture, city planning and urban renewal. In "How New Work Begins," she explores the economic foundations of flourishing city life, and the environmental and political implications of city growth. "The Ecology of Cities" weaves ethics, government regulation and social justice into her system of thought, and gives her integrated approach a name: "the ecology of cities." In "The Unfinished Business of Jane Jacobs," she revisits ideas from throughout her career in the context of current challenges, and turns her gaze to the uncertain future of human life.

Dreaming the Rational City is both a history of the city planning profession in the United States and a major polemical statement about the effort to plan and reform the American city. Boyer shows why city planning, which had so much promise at the outset for making cities more liveable, largely failed. She reveals planning's real responsibilities and goals, including the kind of "rational order" that was actually forseen by the planning mentality, and concludes that the planners have continuously served the needs of the dominant capitalist economy.