The Humanities in City Planning: Culture, Uncertainty, and Visuality

This book by preeminent planning theorist Martin H. Krieger explores how cities are much more than their economies, demographies, or geographies. Planning today is dominated by social science, but Kreiger takes a different approach, thinking of city planning in terms of Culture, Uncertainty, and Visuality. The chapters explore planners and their role as protagonist in the humanities of literature and history; the inevitability of uncertainty in planning and how to face it; and how to attend to the physical, visual, and aural environment of the city. Through a series of essays, Krieger shows that cities are cultural and meaningful, that they are contingent and so filled with opportunity, and that they are concrete, particular, and encountered. The Humanities in City Planning will be of interest to students and scholars of the humanities and planning looking for alternative ways of viewing the city.

Martin H. Krieger is professor, emeritus, at the Sol Price School of Public Policy of the University of Southern California. He has taught at Berkeley, Minnesota, MIT, and Michigan, and has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.