Perspective
What Counts as 'Real' City Planning?
The traditional canon of urban planning excludes people and practices that could greatly benefit it—and society. That needs to change.
In Cities of Tomorrow, a textbook commonly used to teach the history of urban planning, Peter Hall espoused the contributions of Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and other heroic male figures of urbanism. As for women, he told the reader: “There were, alas, almost no founding mothers.”
It would be more accurate to say that women are and always have been part of urbanism, but their contributions have disappeared from planning and architectural history.