About the Book
Mapping Possibility traces the intertwined intellectual, professional, and emotional life of Leonie Sandercock. With an impressive career spanning nearly half a century as an educator, researcher, artist, and practitioner, Sandercock is one of the leading figures in community planning, dedicating her life to pursuing social, cultural, and environmental justice through her work.
In this book, Leonie Sandercock reflects on her past writings and films, which played an important role in redefining the field in more progressive directions, both in theory and practice. It includes previously published essays in conjunction with insightful commentaries prefacing each section, and four new essays, two discussing Sandercock’s most recent work on a feature-film project with Indigenous partners. Innovative, visionary, and audacious, Leonie’s community-based scholarship and practice in the fields of urban planning and community development have engaged some of the most intractable issues of our time – inequality, discrimination, and racism. Through award-winning books and films, she has influenced the planning field to become more culturally fluent, addressing diversity and difference through structural change.
This book draws a map of hope for emerging planners dedicated to equity, justice, and sustainability. It will inspire the next generation of community planners, as well as current practitioners and students in planning, cultural studies, urban studies, architecture, and community development.
Table of Contents:
Introduction; PART I Diversifying Planning’s History, Theory, and Epistemology; Commentary: The Los Angeles Years: 1986–1996; 1 Rewriting Planning History: Official and Insurgent Stories (1998); 2 Who Knows?: Exploring Planning’s Knowledges (2003); 3 Voices from the Borderlands: A Meditation on a Metaphor (1995); PART II Imagining Cities of Difference; Commentary: The Cosmopolis Project: From Theory to Practice, 1992–2006; 4 Towards Cosmopolis: A Postmodern Utopia (1998); 5 When Strangers Become Neighbors: Managing Cities of Difference (2000); 6 Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century: Is Multiculturalism the Solution, or the Problem? (2006); PART III Expanding the Language of Planning; Commentary: The Storytelling Project: 1986–2022; 7 Out of the Closet: The Importance of Stories and Storytelling in Planning Practice (2003); 8 Digital Ethnography as Planning Praxis: An Experiment with Film as Social Research, Community Engagement, and Policy Dialogue (2010); 9 Changing the Lens: Film as Action Research and Therapeutic Planning Practice; 10 Edge of the Knife: Film as a Catalyst for Indigenous Cultural Revitalization? (2022); PART IV Navigating Indigenous Worlds: Praxis and Pedagogy; Commentary: The Inner Journey: 2007–2022; 11 Finding My Way: Emotions and Ethics in Community-Based Action Research with Indigenous Communities (2018); 12 Partnership Praxis in a ‘Reconciliation’ Context: What Is Mine to Do? (2022); 13 Beyond Cosmopolis: Dreaming Co-existence as Indigenous Justice (2019); Conclusion: Mapping Possibility: The View from 2022; Commentary: Beneath the Pavement, the Beach?; 14 Once Upon a Planet: Reimagining the Soul of Planning (2022)
About the Author :
Leonie Sandercock is a professor at the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her main research interest is in working with First Nations through collaborative community planning, using the medium of film as a catalyst for dialogue on the possibilities of healing, reconciliation, and partnership. Other research interests include immigration, cultural diversity, and integration; the possibilities of a more therapeutic model of planning; the importance of stories and storytelling in planning theory and practice; and the role of multimedia in planning.
Review :
“[This] book is not just an autobiographical review of one of the most thoughtful and inspiring writers in the planning field. It is also about how to open up possibilities for life enhancing futures in communities at the harsh margins of contemporary anglo-american social order. It is about a search for generating ‘purpose and hope’ in such communities and in doing so, learning about different ways of thinking and acting, and about how those of us trained to offer their ‘expertise’ should ourselves think and act. As a demonstration of what it takes to be a reflective practitioner looking back on her work, Mapping Possibility provides a fine introduction to the work a major scholar in our field and should be high on many a reading list.”
Patsy Healey, Emeritus Professor of Town and Country Planning, Newcastle University, UK; an exerpt from a review in Planning Theory and Practice Journal.
"In this book, one of community planning’s leading thinkers pulls back the curtain on the intellectual and personal journey that has shaped four decades of scholarship. This collection will inspire anew those of us familiar with her work and be a touchstone text for future thinkers and practitioners of community planning."
Libby Porter, Professor, Centre for Urban Research, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia
"In a book of imagination and wonder, Leonie Sandercock has interwoven politics and personal experience to surprise us all, to expand our senses of possibility, to give us an empowering vision of connection and responsibility, intimacy and critical politics too."
John Forester, Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, USA
"Sandercock provides an inside-out account of the ways of being, knowing, and acting that shaped her scholarship and practice, spanning the 1970s to the present. Her rich, reflective commentaries show how experience and academic insight co-evolve, so that the reader can deeply understand the fourteen seminal works included in the volume."
Richard Willson, Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, USA
"Leonie brings to life forty years of debates in planning theory and practice before pointing to the next threshold: reimagining the soul of planning. Using her storytelling skills, this weaving of personal memoir and critical reflection on her own writings and film making is innovative, life affirming, and insightful, recognizing that we are not just talking heads."
Patricia A. Wilson, Professor, Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning, School of Architecture, University of Texas, Austin, USA
"Leonie Sandercock’s latest book speaks to multiple audiences in our community at once: urban studies and planning students curious about the history of our field, early-career scholars charting their research trajectories, and established scholars considering their own impacts and legacies, even as they remain immersed in their work. If you fit into one of these categories, I recommend reading Mapping Possibility, as its format, substance, and tone offer numerous points of entry, regardless of whether you’ve read Sandercock’s work for decades, or if you have not yet read a word by her."
Ward Lyles, Professor, University of Kansas, USA; review for the Journal of the American Planning Association
