Abstract
The planner and architect are seldom envisioned as advocates for the urban poor. However, during the 1960s, New Left planners and architects began working with marginalized groups in cities to design alternatives to urban renewal projects. This was part of a national advocacy planning movement that was taking shape in urban areas like Chicago. Inspired by critics of the Rational-comprehensive model of planning, advocacy planners opposed the imposition of projects on neighborhoods often with no collaboration from residents. One example of this resistance was Hank Williams Village—a multipurpose housing and commercial redevelopment project modeled after a southern town. The Village, as it came to be known, was an attempt to prevent the displacement of thousands of southern whites by the planned construction of a community college in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. The events surrounding the rise and fall of Hank Williams Village represent a way to examine the viability of advocacy planning and intangible effects of community action. I conclude with a discussion of the legacy of advocacy planning its contemporary embodiment in progressive planning and recent link to environmental justice.
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