Windows Upon Planning History

Windows Upon Planning History delves into a wide range of perspectives on urbanism from Europe, Australia and the USA to investigate the effects of changing perceptions and different ways of seeing cities and urban regions. Fischer, Altrock and a team of 13 distinguished authors examine how and why the ideologies and the processes of city making changed in modern and post-modern times. Illustrated with over 45 images, the themes addressed in the book range from the changing outlook on Berlin’s historic apartment districts and their demolition, salvation and gentrification to how planning was deployed to support dictatorship; from the shattering of myths like democracies totally departing from preceding dictatorships to the model of the post-war modern city and its fate towards the end of the twentieth century. The volume combines case studies of cities on three continents with reflections on the historiography and the state of planning history. With a foreword by Stephen V. Ward, this book will appeal to a wide readership interested in the histories of planning, architecture and cities.

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction 1. Windows Upon Planning History: General Introduction Part 2: Planning history and the windows metaphor: legacies and current challenges Editorial Comments 2. Windows Through a Window: A Philosophical View 3. The Janus Principle 4. How Many Histories: Notes on the Tradition of Urban History and the Reasons that Force Us to Change 5. Changing Windows in European Planning History in the Twentieth Century 6. Examining Long-range Trajectories in Planning History: Windows of Research in Germany Part 3: Eye-Openers and Long-Range Perspectives: Case Studies Editorial Comments 7. Coventry: a Model of Modernist Reconstruction 8. Kassel: Ruptures and Recoveries 9. Transportation Planning in Boston: A Paradigm of Progress, Opposition, and Reversals 10. Berlin: Identities of the Urban Region: ‘Copernican Turnarounds’? 11. Behind the Curtains: The ‘Zero Hour’ Myth After the Fall of the Wall Part 4: Presentations and Paradigms Editorial Comments 12. The Window of Planning Exhibitions in an International Perspective 13. Harald Bodenschatz: Urbanism and Dictatorship: Overcoming Tunnel Vision Three Exhibitions in Salazar's Lisbon: 1940, 1941 and 1952 14. Heritage, Community Activism and Urban Development: a Window on the Personification of Planning History 15. Signs and Signification in Planning Processes (1975-1995) 16. The Regeneration of Darling Harbour, Sydney, Through Three Planning Windows Part 5: Conclusions 17. Perspectives of Planning History: Where Do We Stand Today? And Where Do We Want to Go?

About the Author :
Karl Friedhelm Fischer studied urban design and worked at the universities of Aachen, Berkeley and Canberra. He also has a degree in English/American Literature (Aachen). At the HafenCity University, Hamburg, he was Professor of History and Culture of the Metropolis, and at the University of Kassel, he taught planning history and urban regeneration. In 2013, he moved from the University of Kassel to take up a position as acting director of the MUDD program (Master of Urban Development and Design) at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he is a now a visiting professor. Professional affiliations include Progress in Planning (editorial board), AESOP (Council of Representatives while in Europe) and German Werkbund. Following the publication of his PhD thesis, Canberra – Myths & Models, the majority of his publications have been in the field of planning history. Uwe Altrock, urban planner, is Professor for Urban Regeneration and Planning at the University of Kassel, Germany. He is co-editor of the German Yearbook of Urban Regeneration, of Spatial Planning and Urban Development in the new EU Member States (Ashgate 2006) and of Maturing Megacities: The Pearl River Delta in Progressive Transformation (Springer 2014). His fields of interest and research are urban governance, megacities, urban regeneration and planning, planning theory and planning history.