Synopses & Reviews
After the vast destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faces a rare chance to rebuild, with an unprecedented opportunity to plan what gets built. As the cityand#8217;s director of planning from 1992 until 2000, Kristina Ford is uniquely placed to use these opportunities as a springboard for an eye-opening discussion of the intransigent problems and promising possibilities facing city planners across the nation and beyond.
In The Trouble with City Planning, Ford argues that almost no part of our usual understanding of the phrase and#8220;city planningand#8221; is accurate: not our conception of the plan itself, nor our sense of what city planners do or who plans are made for or how planners determine what citizens want. Most important, our conventional understanding does not tell us how a plan affects what gets built in any city in America.Ford advances several planning innovations that, if adopted, could be crucial for restoring New Orleans, but also transformative wherever citizens are troubled by the results of their cityand#8217;s plan. This keenly intelligent book is destined to become a classic for planners and citizens alike.
Review
and#8220;A thoughtful, engaging, and cautionary account of the interaction of professional planners, politicians, developers, and citizens in contemporary American cities. The message that planning can and must do better with respect to daily decision making, as well as big and recalcitrant but now urgent problems, and that informed citizens are crucial to this, is timely and important.and#8221;and#8212;Alan Plattus, Yale University
Review
and#8220;Kristina Ford makes sense out of the misguided planning efforts that have bedevilled post-Katrina New Orleans, and provides valuable suggestions for how our cities should be planned in the futureand#8212;more democratically and more effectively.and#8221;and#8212;Witold Rybczynski, author of
Last HarvestReview
"Ford practices what she preaches, drawing upon citizen experiences with planning, orienting readers to the principles and practices of a sometimes mystifying field, and empowering readers to ask the right questions of new developments in planning. The Trouble with City Planning , demystifies planning and plans with an accessible and compelling argument."and#8212;
Books and CultureReview
"Kristina Ford has written an interesting and illuminating book on the realities of city planning, and one that speaks to more than just that profession. In The Trouble with City Planning, she uses the experience of rebuilding New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina as a case study on why city planners are in trouble, and what they can do about it."—Globe and Mail Globe and Mail
Review
"An interesting and illuminating book on the realities of city planning."—Joe Berridge, The Globe and Mail Joe Berridge
Review
"Ford's book takes helpful first steps in outlining . . . how the next generation of planners might guide us toward safer, saner, and more sustainable cities."and#8212;Wayne Curtis, Architectural Record
About the Author
Kristina Ford is one of Americas best known urban planners and writers on planning. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Fords thoughtful assessmentsheard on CNN, the BBC, and National Public Radiobecame the first public voice of reason to mediate the great storms human and civic consequences. Her highly regarded study, Planning Small Town America, is used as a text in many graduate urban planning programs. She lives in New Orleans.