ABSTRACT
Our host has invited us here, apparently hoping that this mix of minds will somehow generate some clues about next directions for the urban planning movement. I suspect we all share his desire for a new compass, for all of us must be eager to get out of the doldrum that displaced the optimism of the '60s. Images of New Frontiers and Great Societies have been tarnished by reforms that were to have changed the world and didn't, by imaginative programs that boomeranged to hurt the very people they were to have helped, and by formulas for betterment based on theories since abandoned. We worked through several styles of professional reform during those heady days of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. We tested out quite a lot of the accumulated inventory of program plans. For a while there, many of us were pretty sure we knew how to solve the problems of the city and of the city's deprived people. By now that confidence is worn thin. Too many failures, or seeming failures, have been counted up, leaving planners rather shaken and discouraged.
