ABSTRACT
This book represents an inspiring piece of oral history. It tells a compelling story about how planning ideas evolved, developed, circulated and moved through time and space over the last half-century. The 16 key thinkers in the fi eld of spatial planning who contributed to this book have, over the course of their careers, made signifi cant contributions to spatial planning discourses around the nature, purposes and processes of spatial planning. Together they have built a sizeable body of writings, on which the education of thousands of contemporary spatial planning scholars, students and practitioners is and was based. Most of the book’s authors have elaborated and implemented programmes of study for spatial planning at their home universities. They helped to establish spatial planning as a distinctive discipline within the social sciences. In this book these distinguished spatial planners unpack the secrets of what they have done, why, and when, as they matured and built their ideas in an autobiographical way. None of this personal information has previously been published in such a compact and accessible way. With this book the reader gains new insights into classic planning thoughts, which do not come from only reading scientifi c articles. The intrinsic quality of autobiographical essays allows the reader to delve comprehensively and with ease into the issues concerned. It is this background information which enables us to better understand planning ideas and consequently some of today’s established spatial planning concepts and theories. But, most importantly, it provides us with a means to understand how planning ideas can be adopted meaningfully in a different time, context and situation.
