Planning Ideas that Matter | MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning

This experimental series of sessions brings together DUSP faculty and others to debate key issues in applied planning theory, while providing a parallel opportunity for incoming doctoral students to consider a range of ideas and perspectives that cover many aspects of planning and development. Sessions focus on questions of livability, territoriality, governance, and reflective practice. These four overarching ideas form the framework used in the required text, Planning Ideas That Matter, edited by Bishwapriya Sanyal, Lawrence J. Vale, and Christina D. Rosan (MIT Press, 2012). The intent of the debates is to identify some of the “planning ideas that matter” while opening up the question of just what a “planning idea” might actually entail. The debates and associated seminar cannot be either a full “history of planning theory” or, for that matter, a “theory of planning history,” but instead can provide windows into thinking about what such frameworks ought to include. We want to encourage participants to identify the “planning ideas” that matter most to them.

Coordinators: Prof. Larry Vale and Prof. Jinhua Zhao

Fall 2015

Wednesdays 12:30-2:00, MIT 9-450

September 10: What is a “Planning Idea” and How Might it Matter?

Susan Fainstein and Scott Campbell, “Introduction: The Structure and Debates of Planning Theory,” in Readings in Planning Theory (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 1-20.
Bishwapriya Sanyal, Lawrence J. Vale, and Christina D. Rosan, “Four Planning Conversations,” in Sanyal, Vale, and Rosan, eds., Planning Ideas that Matter (2012), pp. 1-29.

September 16: City Design: Are Planners Designers? Are Designers Planners?

Speakers: Brent Ryan; Eran Ben-Joseph; Susan Silberberg; Larry Susskind

Video of the debate; Transcription of the debate; Student Questions; Student Reflections

Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen, Martijn Duineveld, and Harro de Jong , “Co‐evolutions of Planning and Design,” In Susan Fainstein and James DeFillipis, eds., Readings in Planning Theory, 4th edition (Wiley: forthcoming, 2016), 51-74.
Kevin Lynch on “City Design: What It Is and How It Might Be Taught,” in Tridib Banerjee and Michael Southworth, eds., City Sense and City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990) and 652-659.