The future of planning
So my big exam has been postponed a couple of days and I have to change the questions. It turns out that this second exam is intended to be more practical and applied. So I have to retool. I’m not sure if this makes it easier or harder. That’s the future of my planning.
For the program, however, we’ve got a really exciting event coming up. In light of Susan Fainstein’s imminent departure, some of us have decided to take the opportunity to address the question it raises: What is the future of planning as a practice and as a discipline? And guess who we have coming? Great lineup. First Ann Forsyth, who taught at Columbia once long ago, trained first as an architect, runs a design lab at University of Minnesota, and works quite left. Second, Ken Reardon, who is an ebullient, charismatic man who teaches at Cornell and heads the Planner’s Network. He has been very much an advocate planner working for poor communities (though some of my colleagues have their reservations about his capacity for his adherence to participatory approaches). He’s probably furthest left of the group. Third, Ray Gastil, about whom I know nothing except that he was director of the Van Alen Institute before becoming head of the Manhattan office of the Dept. of City Planning and that architects seem to know and like him. And finally, but by no means lastly, one of the great figures of planning, Norm Krumholz, the father of equity planning and former head of the AICP. And the icing on the cake is that Reinhold Martin, an architecture professor who I know little about but is heading the search committee for Susan’s replacement and other future hires, is going to moderate. So we have a person from outside the discipline but currently engaged in the future of planning asking the questions and stimulating the debate. It’s going to be a booming discussion. (January 30th, 6:30-8:00pm, Columbia University, Avery Hall, Wood Auditorium)
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