Critical Planning & Design: Roots, pathways, and frames

The field of planning and urban studies is today immense and boundless, and it has widened dramatically in recent decades. It has become more complicated, as researchers have pursued the complexity and variety of subjects that can be studied within the field. Interactions with other fields of study, which now include all the physical, natural, and human sciences, have multiplied. This book, however, does not have a traditional structure; it is not a reading, and it is not built as a systematic collection of essays around a topic or research field. The book is based on the following assumption: every scholar has a favourite book (which is sometimes secret), and every scholar thinks there is an author or a reference figure that is particularly important for a scientific, cultural, or even personal reason. There is (at least) one book that counts for each of us, in the same way as we attribute a specific value to a person (scholar, planner, architect, writer, philosopher, or historian), whose work and whose writings we consider as particularly alive, current, and stimulating, in a way that could be called necessary for our vision of research and our vision of the world.