Insurgencies and Revolutions

Over the past six or more decades, John Friedmann has been an insurgent force in the field of urban and regional planning, transforming it from its traditional state-centered concern for establishing social and spatial order into a radical domain of collaborative action between state and civil society for creating ‘the good society’ in the present and future. By opening it up to theoretical engagement with a wide range of disciplines, Friedmann’s contributions have revolutionised planning as a transdisciplinary space of critical thinking, social learning, and reflective practice.

Insurgencies and Revolutions brings together former students, close research associates, and colleagues of John Friedmann to reflect on his contributions to planning theory and practice. The volume is organized around five broad themes where Friedmann’s contributions have risen to challenge established paradigms and generated the space for revolutionary thinking and action in urban and regional planning – Theorising hope; Economic development and regionalism; World cities and the Good city; Social learning, empowered communities, and citizenship; and Chinese cities. The essays by the authors reflect their engagement with his ideas and the new directions in which they have taken these in their work in planning theory and practice.

Haripriya Rangan works for the Australia India Institute, and is affiliated with the School of Geography, The University of Melbourne, Australia. Trained as an architect and planner, she studied with John Friedmann at UCLA, and has pursued a research and teaching career in geography in India, USA, Australia and South Africa.

Mee Kam Ng is Vice-Chairman of the Department of Geography and Resource Management, Director of the Urban Studies Programme and Associate Director of the Institute of Future Cities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a member of RTPI, a fellow of HKIP and academic advisor of HKIUD.

Jacquelyn Chase is a professor in the Geography and Planning Department at California State University, Chico. She has published articles on urbanization of agricultural regions, rural labor markets, gender, and fertility in Brazil and on county planning in California. She is the editor of the volume Spaces of Neoliberalism (Kumarian).

Libby Porter is a scholar in planning and urban geography. Her work focuses on the role that planning and urban development play in dispossession and displacement. She is author of Unlearning the Colonial Cultures of Planning (Ashgate 2010) and with Janice Barry of Planning for Coexistence? (Routledge 2016).