Table Of Contenta Pelican Original
After
the
Planners
Robert Goodman
Pelican Books
After the Planners
Architecture Environment and Planning
Robert Goodman is an Associate Professor of
Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He has been involved for some considerable
time in planning environments for those in the lower
income brackets. He is a founder of Urban Planning
Aid, and helped to organize The Architect’s Resistance.
He has been the critic on architecture for the Boston
Globe and his designs and articles have been widely
exhibited and published. He is currently researching a
project under the patronage of the John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation.
John A. D. Palmer is a Town Planner who, after
experience in London and Hampshire, left local
government to join a small group of professionals
forming the Notting Hill Housing Service which works
in close association with a number of community
groups. He is now a lecturer in the Department of
Planning, Polytechnic of Central London, where he is
attempting to link the education of planners with the
creation of a pool of expertise and information for
community groups to draw on.
AFTER THE
PLANNERS
ROBERT GOODMAN
PENGUIN BOOKS
To Sarah and Julia
AND ALL THOSE BRAVE PEOPLE
WHO WON’T PUT UP WITH IT
Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia
First published in the U.S.A. by Simon & Schuster
and in Great Britain by Pelican Books 1972
Copyright © Robert Goodman, 1972
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Compton Printing Ltd, Aylesbury
This book is sold subject to the condition that
it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without
the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction to the British edition
Introduction
chapter i • With a Little Help from the Experts
The promise and failure of advocacy planning—a per
sonal search. The “urban crisis”: watching an old
movie. Liberal and conservative reforms for the "dis
eases” of the poor.
chapter ii • The Urban-Industrial Complex :
PART ONE
Converting the military-industrial corporations, the
current vision of urban reform. Record of the urban-
industrial complex in the cities. Law and order, educa
tion, and job training.
chapter hi • The Urban-Industrial Complex :
PART TWO
Muscle from Washington—housing, urban renewal,
and the highway gravy train. The corporate crystal
ball—models for the future.
chapter iv • The Architecture of Repression
Architecture as cultural coating for exploitation—cur
rent examples and the nineteenth-century “factory
camp city.” Daniel Burnham, the "White City” and the
origins of city design. The metaphors of fascism.
chapter v • Excess Baggage :
Professionalism and Alienation
The expert and the people—the professional self-
image. An architecture for architects. The architecture
CONTENTS
of counter-revolution—concepts of Robert Venturi and
Edward T. Hall.
chapter vi • The Scientific Method :
Salvation from Politics 183
The conservative bias of city-planning reforms. Mak
ing it legal—zoning and city-planning commissions.
Liberal programs for integration through zoning and
education foster racism. Enter the technocrats and
pseudo-science—Rexford Tugwell makes a classic case.
Daniel P. Moynihan and the urban medicine men.
chapter vii • Toward Liberation 211
Advocacy planning, pluralism and capitalism—the con
tradictions. Community-socialism, "just outputs” and
cultural revolution. Revolutionary demands and guer
rilla architecture. Some lessons from “primitive" cul
tures. New forms and a new commitment.
Notes 252
Photo Credits 262
Index 264
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Often agreeing with the content of my arguments, some
readers of the manuscript of this book have been concerned
about the style of my presentation. They would have hoped
for a less “bitter” analysis. Perhaps for another subject and
another time in history, a gentler form would have been in
order. But if this book reveals my contempt for the inequity
and injustice that traditional planning helps promote in this
country, then let that rage stand at least to symbolize that
some of us will not be content to allow it to continue. If some
part of why that contempt exists and what we can do about
it can be felt by the reader, then perhaps in some way this
writing will move us closer to a time when our acts turn
from anger and frustration to a life of living in peace with
one another.
In writing this book I have had help from many people.
Most especially for reviewing the critical ideas, providing
new insights and suggesting material, I thank my good
friend Yanni Pyriotis. To make possible the ponderous task
of gathering material on numerous planning proposals,
projects and theories of urban experts, I had the intelligent
help of Joan Fleischnick, Hannah Kaltman, Nathan Rome
and Suzanne Weinberg. For their ideas, editorial help and
encouragement I owe more than gratitude to Diane Berman,
Rosalind Krauss, Anita Landa, Rhea Wilson, and Gillie
Terry. Pamela Bedrosian, Nancy Jones and Ellen Berman I
really don’t know how to thank—they’ve put up with a multi
tude of changes and rewrites in their typing work; I ask
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
their forgiveness. For their assistance in financing part of
this study I express my gratitude to the Community Proj
ects Laboratory of the Architecture Department at the Mas
sachusetts Institute of Technology. Thanks, if any, to my
father and mother, without whose help the world would have
been spared one more book, will have to be accorded by the
reader. My apologies and gratitude to all those people whose
help was crucial and whose names I haven’t mentioned.
Finally, like everyone else, I thank you all, but I take re
sponsibility for what follows.
Robert Goodman
Cambridge, Massachusetts
