City Planning in America: Between Promise and Despair

(Hardback)

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This sure-to-be-controversial work examines the failure of city planning in America, the results of that failure as seen in the day-to-day lives of our cities, and the reasons behind that failure. Hommann contends that, although desperately needed, by and large city planning has no effect on urban development in this country where developers are supreme. For the most part, local planners must deal with a daily fiction regarding their involvement in developmental decisions, a fiction that ultimately drives many into alternate pursuits. After tracing the history of American development and planning, the author argues that greed settled this country and continues to control economic and developmental decisions, accompanied in this century by criminal conspiracy. The result is the civic deprivation that debilitates millions of Americans culturally, socially, and economically. This study will be of interest to scholars, students, and professionals in planning, urban studies, architecture, public administration, sociology, political science, housing, civil engineering, traffic engineering, transportation planning, city management, and environment; legislators, local politicians, civic leaders, lawyers dealing in public policy and land development, as well as enlightened citizens from the business world.

Reviews

"City Planning in America: Between Promise and Despair comes right at you with extraordinary candor and with the validity that can only be bestowed by an experienced city planner who refuses to assume the biases of the profession. . . . The book is expressed with idealistic fervor, concern, dedication, and humor. It entreats sociopolitical America to establish the kind of legal policies that empower planners in certain European countries and to establish the kind of governmental and non-profit housing policies these countries have successfully implemented for decades."- Thomas Appleby President, United Nations Development Corporation Executive Director, District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency, 1965-1969
"This is a thoughtful book, filled with common sense pragmatism, fierce optimism, unadulterated outrage, and gentle humor. It should be read, not just by planners, but by everyone interested in our metropolitan areas."-Melvin J. Adams Development Administrator, City of New Haven, 1965-1970 President of NAHRO, 1985-1987

Author Bio

MARY HOMMANN's forty-year career has included positions as Assistant Professor and Assistant Chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at Pratt Institute, Development Planning Director for the City of Yonkers, Planning Director for the City of Long Beach, New York, and Director of the acclaimed Wooster Square urban renewal project in New Haven, Connecticut. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and the American Planning Association, and she is licensed to practice as a professional planner in New Jersey.