Mapping Possibility: Finding Purpose and Hope in Community Planning

Mapping Possibility traces the intertwined intellectual, professional, and emotional life of Leonie Sandercock. With an impressive career spanning nearly half a century as an educator, researcher, artist, and practitioner, Sandercock is one of the leading figures in community planning, dedicating her life to pursuing social, cultural, and environmental justice through her work.

In this book, Leonie Sandercock reflects on her past writings and films, which played an important role in redefining the field in more progressive directions, both in theory and practice. It includes previously published essays in conjunction with insightful commentaries prefacing each section, and four new essays, two discussing Sandercock’s most recent work on a feature-film project with Indigenous partners. Innovative, visionary, and audacious, Leonie’s community-based scholarship and practice in the fields of urban planning and community development have engaged some of the most intractable issues of our time – inequality, discrimination, and racism. Through award-winning books and films, she has influenced the planning field to become more culturally fluent, addressing diversity and difference through structural change.

This book draws a map of hope for emerging planners dedicated to equity, justice, and sustainability. It will inspire the next generation of community planners, as well as current practitioners and students in planning, cultural studies, urban studies, architecture, and community development.

Leonie Sandercock is a professor at the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her main research interest is in working with First Nations through collaborative community planning, using the medium of film as a catalyst for dialogue on the possibilities of healing, reconciliation, and partnership. Other research interests include immigration, cultural diversity, and integration; the possibilities of a more therapeutic model of planning; the importance of stories and storytelling in planning theory and practice; and the role of multimedia in planning.