Introduction
Olmsted created Central Park. This place became an icon of great planning. Yet, to plan the park, an African American community — known as Seneca Village — was destroyed. What does this teach us about planning practice?
In 1972 I started to teach urban design and physical planning. A few years later I was invited to write a chapter on “physical planning” which appeared in a textbook entitled “Introduction to Urban Planning” (Catanese and Snyder). Today, fifty years later, as new generations of students arrive in my classroom, I have reexamined those earlier concepts.
Overall, the fundamentals of planning remain unchanged, but the communities in which planners practice have evolved, as well as the values and skills used by professional planners. What traditional practices have we saved and reinterpreted? What practices should we change? Has technology helped planners or just allowed us to make mistakes more easily, using less time and money to make the same errors made decades ago? The following four essays reflect my views (based on fifty years of observations) regarding the critical tasks facing urban planners as they enter the profession.