A Planners’ Planner: John Friedmann’s Quest for a General Theory of Planning
Name
Sanyal's A Planners' Planner (2018).pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
254.95 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
bc51fb1745ed4c0a57a83f93817bb66f
Author(s)
Sanyal, Bishwapriya
Date Issued
April 2018
Journal
Journal of the American Planning Association
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Citation
Sanyal, Bish. "A Planners’ Planner: John Friedmann’s Quest for a General Theory of Planning." Journal of the American Planning Association 84, 2 (April 2018): 179-191
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
This paper honors the memory of Professor John Friedmann by reflecting on his professional
contributions in two ways. First, the paper provides an overview of Friedmann’s career as a
planner and planning academic, which spanned six decades and three continents, and
highlights how a confluence of factors led to a paradigm shift in his thinking regarding the
role of planning in social transformation. Second, the paper assesses Friedmann’s position
on three issues of importance for practitioners—namely, problem formulation, the role of
technical knowledge, and organizational learning. The paper concludes that the
establishment of UCLA’s planning program is a testament to Friedmann’s critical view of
planning practice, which posed fundamental challenges to conventional thinking. His
publications were more inspirational than pragmatic, but they will continue to influence
planning deliberations, as normative ideas underpin most planning efforts.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2018.1427616
