The questions he addresses are fundamental in the true philosophical sense: Why exactly should we want to act and believe 0rationally? Why should we formulate principles of action and try to stick to them? The question are not moral but explicitly. He is not out to argue that unprincipled or irrational behavior is immoral; rather, he invites to consider what we are trying to do, and what the justifications for such behavior is.

The Good Society: A personal account of its struggle with the world of social planning and a dialectical inquiry into the roots of radical practice

Politics & Social Sciences

Friedmann, John

Philosophy

The MIT Press

"Friedmann presents his readers with separate sentences and paragraphs to ponder. These are liberally punctuated with a very personalized anthology of quotations ranging from Martin Buber to Heraclitus, T. S. Eliot to Mao Tse-Tong, and many other no less surprising juxtapositions in this kaleidoscope of the intellect .... This book confronts the reader with many dazzling provocations."—APA Journal

The Good Society: A personal account of its struggle with the world of social planning and a dialectical inquiry into the roots of radical practice (MIT Press Classics)

Arts & Photography

Architecture

MIT Press]

This is a book about planning, or how to link knowledge to action. Describing the crises affecting planning in the United States today – a crisis of valuing and knowing, the author proceeds to outline a new style of planning appropriate to the conditions in post-industrial America. This style – transactive planning – proceeds essentially by a process of mutual learning between expert and client groups, in which interpersonal relations acquire central importance. The dominant mode of communication in transactive planning is dialogue; it is through dialogue that knowledge becomes morally engaged and embedded in a matrix of ongoing actions.

Retracking America;: A theory of transactive planning

Anchor Press

Insurgencies: Essays in Planning Theory (RTPI Library Series)

For nearly fifty years John Friedmann's writings have not just led the academic study of the discipline, but have given shape and direction to the planning profession itself. Covering transactive planning, radical planning, the concept of the Good City, civil society, rethinking poverty and the diversity of planning cultures, this collection of Friedmann's most important and influential essays tells a coherent and compelling story about how the evolution of thinking about planning over several decades has helped to shape its practice. With each essay given a new introduction to establish its context and importance, this is an ideal text for the study of planning theory and history.

Reference

Routledge

Territory and Function

Univ. Of California Pr.

John Friedmann addresses a central question of Western political theory: how, and to what extent, history can be guided by reason. In this comprehensive treatment of the relation of knowledge to action, which he calls planning, he traces the major intellectual traditions of planning thought and practice. Three of these--social reform, policy analysis, and social learning--are primarily concerned with public management. The fourth, social mobilization, draws on utopianism, anarchism, historical materialism, and other radical thought and looks to the structural transformation of society "from below." After developing a basic vocabulary in Part One, the author proceeds in Part Two to a critical history of each of the four planning traditions. The story begins with the prophetic visions of Saint-Simon and assesses the contributions of such diverse thinkers as Comte, Marx, Dewey, Mannheim, Tugwell, Mumford, Simon, and Habermas. It is carried forward in Part Three by Friedmann's own nontechnocratic, dialectical approach to planning as a method for recovering political community.

Planning in the Public Domain

Sociology

Princeton University Press

Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action

Politics & Government

Friedmann perceives a global crisis which he traces to the dissolution of territorial relations. This he believes results from penetration of the global system of markets into the remotest corners of the world, undermining tradition cultures and ways of life. The consequence is incipient breakdown, he asserts, and we need to repoliticize space and subordinate the power of capital to the collective will of people organized to work toward common ends. This deliberately provocative collection of essays includes an autobiographical fragment providing contextual information about the author.

Life Space and Economic Space

Business & Money

Economics

In essays as engaging as they are informative, a leading figure in urban planning and geography broadly surveys the complex terrain of global urbanization. Unique in its scope and its prospective view of city-regions as substantially autonomous "quasi-city-states," this book offers an unprecedented look at the global urban future, focusing on models of development, transnational migration, citizenship, representation, and the good city as a utopian construct. 
Beginning with an overview of global urbanization patterns-particularly the entropic forces that deepen poverty, increase violence, and discourage democratic life in peripheral areas-The Prospect of Cities goes on to address specific contemporary issues. These range in subject and scale from the impact of transnational migration on global cities whose populations are at least thirty percent of foreign origin to the critical importance of everyday life, as it is experienced on the streets and in neighborhoods, for a full understanding of urban planning. An autobiographical exploration, tracing the author's evolution as one of the world's foremost theorists of city-regional development and planning, deepens the perspective mapped out over the course of the volume and provides new insight into the study of the urban landscape in a global environment. 
Whether arguing for a new approach to sustainable development, finding the moral focus of nonterritorial citizenship, or mounting a spirited, pragmatic defense of utopian thinking in urban planning, Friedmann offers an informed, workable, and hopeful prospect for the cities of our time, and of the future. 
John Friedmann is professor emeritus of the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was the founding chair of the Department of Urban Planning. He is also an honorary professor at the University of British Columbia. His recent books include Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development (1992) and, as coeditor, Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age (1998).

Prospect Of Cities

Social Sciences

Univ. of Minnesota Press

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