Planning Participation: Urban Design, Black Power, and the Struggle for Community Control During the American Century

Planning Participation: Urban Design, Black Power, and the Struggle for Community Control across the American Century explores the emergence of “participatory planning” in the mid-twentieth century. Through a focus on federally funded—yet activist led—community action programs in the US, Caroline’s research examines how the Black Power movement, the War on Poverty, and models of community development originally developed to quell insurgency abroad, intersected to form the foundation of a now central paradigm of US urban planning practice. This work touches on issues of democratic social engineering, cold war imperialism, 20^th century anti-racist urban uprisings, and continued struggles for self-determination across the US.