ABSTRACT
I am deeply honored by the many essays appearing in this volume. I have always been surprised how the written words we send out into the world are received by potential readers. Often, of course, there is no response at all. At other times, perhaps years later, the author may receive an e-mail from a former student about how this or that word of hers had moved him and changed his life. And always, of course, the author rejoices when by chance she discovers her name attached to a footnote in an academic journal or reads the occasional faint praise in a review by an esteemed colleague. Rarely, however, do we see how our work has actually borne fruit by contributing to the research of our colleagues, thus generating a whole new body of work. This has been my fortune a couple of times throughout my long life, most recently with my essays on the world city hypothesis in the 1980s and now again, with the rich variety of reflections on my work between the covers of this book. Thank you all! In this brief response I hope to accomplish two things. In the first part, I
will briefly recount part of my history as it relates to planning and so establish my positionality within our field. In the longer second part, I will respond to some of the essays published here and how they address urgent issues for our profession under the following headings: social values; communicative action planning; the variety of planning cultures; civil society, territory, and self-empowerment; re/engaging the state; and regionalism. I leave this response without conclusion, because our collective work will never be done, and the present moment is but a marker in the flow of time.
