The "Trivial Profession" of Urban Planning

In the new book of essays Reconsidering Jane Jacobs, Thomas J. Campanella says that noteworthy to practicing planners in 2011 is the final essay by Thomas J. Campanella wonders if urban planning is at risk of becoming trivial.

1 minute read

June 15, 2011, 5:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


South Bend Planning & Zoning Examiner Ryan Smith has this review of Reconsidering Jane Jacobs.

In his essay from the book, Campanella worries that planners have become "unable or unwilling to effect the changes in the American landscape and culture it explicitly advocates. To this end he notes that, by 1994, Jacobs herself had "grown frustrated with the timidity and the lack of imagination on the part of planners... she lamented theabsence of just the sort of robust plannerly interventionism that she once condemned.""

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