For nearly fifty years John Friedmann's writings have not just led the academic study of the discipline, but have given shape and direction to the planning profession itself.

Covering transactive planning, radical planning, the concept of the Good City, civil society, rethinking poverty and the diversity of planning cultures, this collection of Friedmann's most important and influential essays tells a coherent and compelling story about how the evolution of thinking about planning over several decades has helped to shape its practice.

With each essay given a new introduction to establish its context and importance, this is an ideal text for the study of planning theory and history.

John Friedmann is internationally known for his pathbreaking work in urban and regional development planning theory. Life Space and Economic Space contains some of his most original and controversial essays on spatial and territorial development in the low-income countries of the world. The essays focus on a conflict he considers fundamental to human existence: that conflict between life space and economic space. By "life space" Friedmann means the bounded territories over which we strive to exert some degree of self-governance and which constitute the human habitat. By "economic space" he means the ubiquitous global space of market relations.

Friedman demonstrates the implications of his theoretical position in a number of ways: he examines development in Southeast Asia, introduces the notion of "world cities, " and presents a politico-territorial model of rural development which he calls agropolitan. The analysis extends in wide-ranging fashion from the space of global relations to the most intimate space of the household economy which, when linked to other households, constitutes the economy of the barrio or neighborhood. In a chapter proposing a dual-track model of development, he sketches a model of the barrio economy drawn from Latin American experience and based on social mobilization, collective self-empowerment and political action.

Friedmann perceives a global crisis which he traces to the dissolution of territorial relations. This he believes results from penetration of the global system of markets into the remotest corners of the world, undermining traditional cultures and ways of life. The consequence is incipient breakdown, he asserts, and we need to repoliticize spaceand subordinate the power of capital to the collective will of people organized to work toward common ends. This deliberately provocative collection of essays includes an autobiographical fragment providing contextual information about the author.

The work of Harvey S. Perloff stands as a landmark in the evolution of Anglo American planning doctrine. It is impossible to fully capture the essence of the published work in a paragraph, page, or even an entire essay. Yet its highpoints can be identified. His work was innovative, reformist, comprehensive, and ori ented toward the future. In emphasizing the greater importance of people com pared to things, Perloff repeatedly prodded planners to be concerned with human needs and values. He was critical of the past. But inasmuch as he de voted more effort to envisioning what could lie ahead than in recalling the past, his work was markedly optimistic. He once admitted in writing to his "built-in weakness for expecting rational, socially oriented solutions ultimately to win out, no matter what the objective situation seems to be. " To some the expecta tion may be seen as naive; to others, as a faith in the wisdom of humankind to take the best course. However received, Perloff's optimism served as a powerful stimulant to keep moving ahead for the best that would come of it. Institutions and the ways they should be shaped and reshaped were of central concern, for institutions (though he rarely used the term) were the in struments through which "knowledge was translated into action."

For nearly fifty years John Friedmann's writings have not just led the academic study of the discipline, but have given shape and direction to the planning profession itself.

Covering transactive planning, radical planning, the concept of the Good City, civil society, rethinking poverty and the diversity of planning cultures, this collection of Friedmann's most important and influential essays tells a coherent and compelling story about how the evolution of thinking about planning over several decades has helped to shape its practice.

With each essay given a new introduction to establish its context and importance, this is an ideal text for the study of planning theory and history.

Though China's urban history reaches back over five thousand years, it is only in the last quarter century that urbanization has emerged as a force of widespread social transformation while a massive population shift from country to city has brought about a dramatic revolution in China's culture, politics, and economy. Employing a historical perspective, John Friedmann presents a succinct, readable account and interpretation of how this transition - one of the most momentous phenomena in contemporary history - has occurred. China's Urban Transition synthesizes a broad array of research to provide the first integrated treatment of the many processes that encompass the multi-layered meaning of urbanization: regional policy, the upsurge of rural industries, migration, expanding spheres of personal autonomy, and the governance of city building. John Friedmann's detailed analysis suggests that the nation's economic development has been driven more by social forces from within than by global capital. This leads directly to the epic story of rural migration to major urban regions, the policies used to restrain and direct this "avalanche" of humanity on the move, and the return of many migrants to their home communities, where the process of urbanization continues. Focusing on everyday life in cities, he also shows how this social transformation extends to the most intimate spheres of people's lives. In conclusion, the author raises the question of a "sustainable" urban development and its relation with China's own past, values, and institutions. Friedmann predicts that within ten years China - already the most powerful country in East Asia - will have become a major power in the world. With historical depth, interpretive insight, and interdisciplinary breadth, this book offers an unparalleled introduction to China's transformation.

John Friedmann addresses a central question of Western political theory: how, and to what extent, history can be guided by reason. In this comprehensive treatment of the relation of knowledge to action, which he calls planning, he traces the major intellectual traditions of planning thought and practice. Three of these--social reform, policy analysis, and social learning--are primarily concerned with public management. The fourth, social mobilization, draws on utopianism, anarchism, historical materialism, and other radical thought and looks to the structural transformation of society "from below." After developing a basic vocabulary in Part One, the author proceeds in Part Two to a critical history of each of the four planning traditions. The story begins with the prophetic visions of Saint-Simon and assesses the contributions of such diverse thinkers as Comte, Marx, Dewey, Mannheim, Tugwell, Mumford, Simon, and Habermas. It is carried forward in Part Three by Friedmann's own nontechnocratic, dialectical approach to planning as a method for recovering political community.

Revised edition of Regional Development and Planning: A ReaderSince 1964, when Regional Development and Planning: A Reader was first published, the book has become established as perhaps the most useful collection of source material in its field, and it has served as the basis of numerous courses in regional studies and economic development. Encouraged by this reception, its editors have prepared this revised edition, meant to replace the earlier work.The editors have searched the literature with care and selected those contributions that will give the student a firm understanding of the fundamentals and the recent developments of the subject, broadly defined.The first four parts of the book present readings on the concepts of space and development (broken down into sections on location and spatial structure, spatial systems in economic development, and growth in subnational regions), the role of cities in national development, issues in regional planning. Part V consists of a bibliographical essay detailing the progress of a decade in regional development planning.

The authors present alternative environmental actions that integrate the needs of local people and interact with political and economic institutions at regional, national, and global levels.