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After the Planners
Architecture/Planning.
231 pages, Hardcover
First published January 25, 1972
About the author
Robert Goodman
112 books1 followerRobert N Goodman is Professor of Brain and Behavioural Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, King's College London.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 23, 2012
I read this book in 2006 when I got accepted to urban planning school. I didn't really know anything about urban planning, and I wanted to read up before starting the program. That's funny, because the first line of Goodman's introduction to his book reads, "Five years ago I dropped out of city-planning school." He wrote that in back in 1971. He was studying architecture and city design, a much more top-down affair (especially, I imagine in the 1970s) than the progressive community development concentration that I found myself stepping into (who knows, perhaps in part because of folks like Goodman, though I can't say I've crossed paths with him or his work other than the used bookstore where I picked up "After the Planners").
This book was Goodman's rebellion against the technocratic hopes of both traditional, so-called rational, planning, and the mid-century liberal advocacy planning. Rational planning is the paradigm that pretends that planning is not (and need not be) political—it is simply scientific and objective in its pursuit of the highest and best use of resources in the public interest. Advocacy planning is the reformist response to this flawed tradition, in which planners take into consideration what they determine to be the concerns of marginalized communities. Back in ’71, the rational paradigm already having been critiqued, Goodman chose to take on advocacy planning as well, essentially arguing that liberals with good intentions were still failing the marginalized and, in fact, contributing to their further oppression. In typically bitter words, the cover of my copy of the book reads: “We architects and urban planners aren’t the visible symbols of oppression, like the military and the police. We’re more sophisticated, more educated, and more socially conscious. We’re the soft cops.” Goodman’s critiques of over-professionalization and the related problems of distance from the oppressed, over-reliance on technological solutions, and substance-less symbolic participation of affected communities are solid, but he falls short in proposing a compelling alternative vision.
Of course, not long after Goodman’s book was published, more radical threads of planning did emerge, sometimes referred to as equity planning, combining left politics and a grassroots participatory practice that changed both planning theory and the practical relationship between planner and community. That being said, there are certainly strands of planning’s technocratic tradition in the field, sitting uncomfortably alongside radical strains of equity planning. The Planners Network is the organized element of equity planner types within the filed. This wide-ranging group of planners, educators, nonprofit professionals, and organizers got its start in various formations in the 70s and 80s with a loosely anti-capitalist orientation and continues today. Those interested in contemporary discussions from Goodman’s historical critiques should check out the PN.
If better written and more developed in its prescription for change, this book could have maybe outlived its time. But its emphasis on urban renewal critiques and its antiquated language date Goodman’s work. Worse, the half-baked grasping for a vaguely socialist and federated system of cities fails to offer useful ideas to progressive urban community planners and organizers.
This book was Goodman's rebellion against the technocratic hopes of both traditional, so-called rational, planning, and the mid-century liberal advocacy planning. Rational planning is the paradigm that pretends that planning is not (and need not be) political—it is simply scientific and objective in its pursuit of the highest and best use of resources in the public interest. Advocacy planning is the reformist response to this flawed tradition, in which planners take into consideration what they determine to be the concerns of marginalized communities. Back in ’71, the rational paradigm already having been critiqued, Goodman chose to take on advocacy planning as well, essentially arguing that liberals with good intentions were still failing the marginalized and, in fact, contributing to their further oppression. In typically bitter words, the cover of my copy of the book reads: “We architects and urban planners aren’t the visible symbols of oppression, like the military and the police. We’re more sophisticated, more educated, and more socially conscious. We’re the soft cops.” Goodman’s critiques of over-professionalization and the related problems of distance from the oppressed, over-reliance on technological solutions, and substance-less symbolic participation of affected communities are solid, but he falls short in proposing a compelling alternative vision.
Of course, not long after Goodman’s book was published, more radical threads of planning did emerge, sometimes referred to as equity planning, combining left politics and a grassroots participatory practice that changed both planning theory and the practical relationship between planner and community. That being said, there are certainly strands of planning’s technocratic tradition in the field, sitting uncomfortably alongside radical strains of equity planning. The Planners Network is the organized element of equity planner types within the filed. This wide-ranging group of planners, educators, nonprofit professionals, and organizers got its start in various formations in the 70s and 80s with a loosely anti-capitalist orientation and continues today. Those interested in contemporary discussions from Goodman’s historical critiques should check out the PN.
If better written and more developed in its prescription for change, this book could have maybe outlived its time. But its emphasis on urban renewal critiques and its antiquated language date Goodman’s work. Worse, the half-baked grasping for a vaguely socialist and federated system of cities fails to offer useful ideas to progressive urban community planners and organizers.
August 23, 2017
An important period piece (I think), I was more predictably drawn into reading Goodman’s book after a quick perusal yielded the part where he compares the 1960s Governmental architecture of Washington D.C. with that of Albert Speer and his Nazi clients. It turns out that this isn’t quite so snarky overall, but there was enough post-Urban Renewal angst to maintain my attention through this fairly quick read.
Goodman’s attack, per the explicitness of the title, is directed towards the field of pedigreed Urban Planning that really emerged in the US circa 1909 and became the be-all-end-all of “expert” city “modifications” throughout the middle decades of the century. The mileu within which this was written was riddled with continual urban decline, violence, and downright complexes of inferiority despite grand proclamations, “Model City” transformations, and, of course, the accompanying displacement of powerless residences and business concerns. Of course Jane Jacobs, Herbert Gans, and others had already famously zeroed in on this subject, but Goodman’s point is to offer – or reiterate – potential alternatives that were just coming to the fore around this time. Specifically, citizen participation/advocacy for a more grass-roots approach to revitalizing neighborhoods that, to some degree seems standard fare now (at least in Boston where every non-profit has a voice regarding any proposed loading dock configuration and sidewalk tree spacing dimensions, if not valuable input that might prevent yet another heinously wrapped skyscraper). We’ve subsequently witnessed the successes yet ultimate limitations of such bottom-up initiatives throughout the US over the intervening four decades, but Goodman doesn’t necessarily subscribe to this or other actions as the solutions, but only a sensible way to thwart yet more ill-conceived, grand proposals that extirpate the built and social fabric out of any given “slum” district that may have (or almost always) had potential appeal to big private developers.
Ultimately I don’t know if the effects of such books and the rising power of community resistance halted the further spread of such top-down schemes throughout the seventies any more so than the repurcussions that an absurd war, OPEC, inflation, etc. was beginning to have on federal and local coffers. Certainly such period works within a genre I’ll call Military-Industrial Complex Urbanism Critique at least altered the nation’s mindset of what may be deemed acceptable when tampering with urban neighborhoods and citizen’s rights. This is a solid, easily digestible example of that genre.
Goodman’s attack, per the explicitness of the title, is directed towards the field of pedigreed Urban Planning that really emerged in the US circa 1909 and became the be-all-end-all of “expert” city “modifications” throughout the middle decades of the century. The mileu within which this was written was riddled with continual urban decline, violence, and downright complexes of inferiority despite grand proclamations, “Model City” transformations, and, of course, the accompanying displacement of powerless residences and business concerns. Of course Jane Jacobs, Herbert Gans, and others had already famously zeroed in on this subject, but Goodman’s point is to offer – or reiterate – potential alternatives that were just coming to the fore around this time. Specifically, citizen participation/advocacy for a more grass-roots approach to revitalizing neighborhoods that, to some degree seems standard fare now (at least in Boston where every non-profit has a voice regarding any proposed loading dock configuration and sidewalk tree spacing dimensions, if not valuable input that might prevent yet another heinously wrapped skyscraper). We’ve subsequently witnessed the successes yet ultimate limitations of such bottom-up initiatives throughout the US over the intervening four decades, but Goodman doesn’t necessarily subscribe to this or other actions as the solutions, but only a sensible way to thwart yet more ill-conceived, grand proposals that extirpate the built and social fabric out of any given “slum” district that may have (or almost always) had potential appeal to big private developers.
Ultimately I don’t know if the effects of such books and the rising power of community resistance halted the further spread of such top-down schemes throughout the seventies any more so than the repurcussions that an absurd war, OPEC, inflation, etc. was beginning to have on federal and local coffers. Certainly such period works within a genre I’ll call Military-Industrial Complex Urbanism Critique at least altered the nation’s mindset of what may be deemed acceptable when tampering with urban neighborhoods and citizen’s rights. This is a solid, easily digestible example of that genre.
April 14, 2021
This classic influenced my thinking on citizen participation greatly. It's probably outdated by now. But consider how much of his critique may be valid even today?
October 10, 2025
As relevant today as when it was released in 1972. The same issues we face today were being seen then - the commodification of public services, gentrification - but today the scale is bigger and the amount of money being spent is higher. A fascinating argument about capitalism vs socialism, and whether there can be a better alternative to either.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews