The Humanities in City Planning

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 was professor, emeritus, at the Sol Price School of Public Policy of the University of Southern California. He taught at Berkeley, Minnesota, MIT, and Michigan, and was a fellow at the National Humanities Center and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society. Martin Krieger passed away in 2024.

Preface: Why the Humanities? Part I 1. What Does Jerusalem Have To Do With Athens? 2. Arguments from Design 3. On Syzygy Street: The City in Analogy 4. The City in Gravity Part II 5. Riding Uncertainty 6. Courage as a Resource 7. Clutch or Choke: Making Your Own Luck 8. The Counsel of Probability 9. Taming Contingency:Statistics,Fortune,and History Part II 10. Seeing and Hearing Appendix Bibliography