My Career as a Planner

Abstract

In this essay, the author traces her development from a political scientist to an urban planner. Looking back on more than 40 years as a scholar and professor of planning, Fainstein deems issues of inequality derived from class, ethnicity, and gender to have been the focus of her teaching and scholarship. At first, she approached these questions through empirical investigations of citizen participation and theoretical exploration of the neo-Marxist literature and her early research focused on the politics of planning in American cities, the contributions of community groups, and the roles played by business interests. Later, she examined redevelopment and housing programs in London and Amsterdam to contrast these more welfare-oriented European cities to the American model and examined the relationship between gender and planning. Eventually, she brought together her empirical and theoretical research to develop a theory of urban justice and to suggest policies at the local level that were in line with these principles.