City and regional planners talk constantly about the things of the worldfrom highway interchanges and retention ponds to zoning documents and conference roomsyet most seem to have a poor understanding of the materiality of the world in which theyre immersed. Too often planners treat built forms, weather patterns, plants, animals, or regulatory technologies as passively awaiting commands rather than actively involved in the workings of cities and regions.
In the ambitious and provocative Planning Matter, Robert A. Beauregard sets out to offer a new materialist perspective on planning practice that reveals the many ways in which the nonhuman things of the world mediate what planners say and do. Drawing on actor-network theory and science and technology studies, Beauregard lays out a framework that acknowledges the inevitable insufficiency of our representations of reality while also engaging more holistically with the world in all of its diversityincluding human and nonhuman actors alike.
| Introduction |
|
1 | (13) |
|
|
|
14 | (22) |
|
2 Talk, Action, and Consequences |
|
|
36 | (21) |
|
|
|
57 | (19) |
|
4 Neglected Places of Practice |
|
|
76 | (19) |
|
|
|
95 | (18) |
|
|
|
113 | (20) |
|
7 Planning in an Obdurate World |
|
|
133 | (18) |
|
|
|
151 | (21) |
|
|
|
172 | (20) |
|
10 The Worldliness of Planning Theory |
|
|
192 | (19) |
|
11 Planning Will Always Be Modern |
|
|
211 | (16) |
| Acknowledgments |
|
227 | (2) |
| Works Cited |
|
229 | (24) |
| Index |
|
253 | |
Robert A. Beauregard is professor of urban planning in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. He is the author of When America Became Suburban and Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities.
