Planning Matter

Acting with Things

Beauregard Robert A.

City and regional planners talk constantly about the things of the world – from highway interchanges and retention ponds to zoning documents and conference rooms – yet most seem to have a poor understanding of the materiality of the world in which they're immersed. Too often planners treat built forms, weather patterns, plants, animals, or regulatory technologies as passively awaiting commands rather than actively involved in the workings of cities and regions. In the ambitious and provocative "Planning Matter", Robert A. Beauregard sets out to offer a new materialist perspective on planning practice that reveals the many ways in which the nonhuman things of the world mediate what planners say and do. Drawing on actor-network theory and science and technology studies, Beauregard lays out a framework that acknowledges the inevitable insufficiency of our representations of reality while also engaging more holistically with the world in all of its diversity – including human and nonhuman actors alike.

About the Author

Robert A. Beauregard is professor of urban planning in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. He is the author of "When America Became Suburban" and "Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U. S. Cities".

Reviews

"This is a brilliant book. 'Planning Matter' is carefully crafted, rigorously argued, and truly original, poised to become a seminal component of planning literature for decades to come. Beauregard has rethought the debates that have been central to planning theory for decades, and his book will open up new pathways for scholarly investigation – and perhaps even creative action by practitioners" – James A. Throgmorton, author of "Planning as Persuasive Storytelling"

"In this extraordinary work Beauregard makes a strikingly original contribution to planning thought. Embracing a new materialism, he examines the interplay between the physical and human world, avoiding both Marxian determinism and a vision of the world as existing wholly through perception. Filled with brilliant insights, this book can be read as planning theory, philosophy, and sociology" – Susan S. Fainstein, Harvard Graduate School of Design and author of "The Just City"

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