The What, Why, and How of Planning History

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates the history of planning since its emergence as a discipline in the mid-19th century. Planning is a complex discipline, with more than one body of terminology, multiple interpretations, and manifold applications through space and over time, and historians have commented on it from a variety of perspectives. The book focuses on English-language sources, and develops novel interdisciplinary, transcultural, and postcolonial approaches. It examines sites, dynamics, and typologies, and explores the state of the field—its achievements and shortcomings and future challenges. The book analyzes planning histories and historiographies while acknowledging the difficulties of comparing planning in a global setting. It explores spatial traditions and cultural landscapes—imagine folding and unfolding the world anew, as in the Dymaxion map made by the American architect Buckminster Fuller.