ABSTRACT
As historian James Scott, the great high-modernist episodes of planning qualify as tragedies in at least two respects. First, visionary intellectuals and planners behind them were guilty of hubris, of forgetting that they were mortals and acting as if they were gods. Second, their actions, far from being cynical grabs for power and wealth, were animated by a genuine desire to improve the human condition-a desire with fatal flaws. Philosopher Richard Rorty observes that one quality of humankind that makes us unique, other than having opposable thumbs, is our ability to experience the pain of humiliation amid our own kind. the most powerful form of public humiliation is experienced by those who inhabit the "slums", "favelas", or "bottoms" of our cities. Spirn, Stiphany, and Cole et al. offer methods of democratic participation that lead to the necessary preconditions of solidarity.
