Contemporary Urban Planning

Citation

Levy, J. M., Hirt, S. A., & Dawkins, C. J. (2024). Contemporary Urban Planning (12th ed.). Routledge.

Chapter Summary

The 12th edition has sixteen chapters in four parts, plus an opening overview chapter. Several chapters carry named contributors: Sarah Schindler on the legal basis of planning, Charles Steger on urban design, C. David Loeks on national, state and metropolitan planning, and Johann Jessen, Clara Irazábal and Sanjeev Vidhyarthi on planning in other nations. The publisher's description frames planning as "a highly political activity", and the contents list is organised accordingly.

Chapter 1: An Overview

A single introductory chapter of about fourteen pages, ahead of the four parts, that frames what urban planning is and what the book will cover.

Part 1, Chapters 2–4: The Urbanization of America; The History of Planning: Part I; The History of Planning: Part II

"The Background and Development of Contemporary Urban Planning". The first chapter, on the urbanization of America, takes the American urban setting as the context for planning, and the history of planning then occupies two chapters, the first of them about twenty-five pages and the second about fourteen.

Part 2, Chapters 5–9: The Legal Basis of Planning; Planning and Politics; Social Issues; The Comprehensive Plan; The Tools of Land-Use Planning

"The Structure and Practice of Contemporary Planning" is the working core of the book. It covers the legal framework, the political setting, social issues, the comprehensive plan and the instruments of land-use control. The publisher highlights expanded treatment of public participation and the rising importance of social equity as a planning objective. The land-use tools chapter, at roughly thirty-five pages, is the longest in this part.

Part 3, Chapters 10–14: Urban Design; Housing and Community Development; Transportation Planning; Economic Development Planning; Environmental Planning

"Fields of Planning" takes the main areas of practice one at a time. The publisher's description points to the affordable housing shortage in large U.S. metropolitan areas, planning for micro-mobility, and the planner's role in responding to climate change, public-health challenges and environmental catastrophes. Environmental Planning is among the longest chapters in the book, at nearly forty pages.

Part 4, Chapters 15–16: Planning at the National, State, and Metropolitan Levels; Planning in Select Other Nations

"Larger Questions" widens the frame to higher levels of government and then to other countries. According to the description, the edition draws comparisons from the UK, France, Eastern Europe, China, Asia, Africa and Latin America on how different political regimes apply land-use controls and other policies.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4: Overview and Background

• Urban planning as political activity: the publisher's framing that decisions about public and private money create winners and losers.
• Reurbanization: the possible turn back toward city living and revitalization after decades of decentralization.

Chapters 5–9: Structure and Practice

• Legal basis of planning: the law that gives planners authority and limits it, treated in its own chapter.
• Comprehensive plan: the long-range plan for a community that guides its development.
• Land-use tools and controls: the instruments, such as regulation of how land may be used, by which plans are carried out.
• Public participation and social equity: expanded topics in this edition, tied to the influence of contemporary social movements.

Chapters 10–16: Fields and Larger Questions

• Urban design: the shaping of the physical form and spaces of cities.
• Housing and community development: planning responses to affordability and neighbourhood conditions.
• Micro-mobility: small-scale personal transport that cities are being asked to accommodate.
• Metropolitan and national planning: planning above the city, followed by comparison with practice in other nations.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Planning treated as politics, not only technique. The description presents planning as a contest over who gains and loses, and the contents list gives separate chapters to the law, to politics and to social issues before the technical fields.
• A clear progression from background to practice to fields. The four-part structure moves from history to legal and political structure, then to areas of practice and finally to wider levels of government, which makes the book easy to follow in sequence or to dip into by field.
• Specialist contributors for specialist chapters. Named contributors write the legal, urban design, regional and international chapters, which fits subjects that sit between planning and other professions.
• A long-running course text. This is the twelfth edition. Endorsements printed on the publisher's page call earlier editions a gateway into planning and the profession (Arthur C. Nelson, University of Arizona) and describe use of several editions for almost a quarter-century (Huston Gibson, Kansas State University). These are publisher-selected comments, but they indicate how the book is used.
• Classroom materials. The publisher lists discussion and multiple-choice questions and links to online readings, websites and media.

Limitations

• A planning textbook, not an urban geography text. The contents list has no chapters on urban systems and hierarchies, models of urban structure, or the social geography of cities, and the description does not mention them. Geography students will need a text such as Hall and Barrett alongside it for those topics.
• U.S.-centred. Part 1 begins with "The Urbanization of America", and the publisher's description of the housing material refers to the affordable housing shortage in large U.S. metropolitan areas. The dedicated international chapter is the last one, at about forty pages, although the publisher says that case examples from other countries also appear in the discussion of land-use controls. Readers outside the United States should treat the book mainly as a detailed account of U.S. practice with a comparative close.
• Dense chapters in the middle of the book. Land-use tools, urban design, housing, transportation and environmental planning each run to between about twenty-four and forty pages, so the book is closer to a reference for practitioners than a light first read.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within this course list, Levy, Hirt and Dawkins is the planning-practice text. Hall and Barrett's Urban Geography is the core geography textbook, and its chapter on planning, regeneration and urban policy is the natural point at which to turn to Levy for a deeper account of how planning works. Kevin Archer's The City: The Basics is a compact introduction to cities and urban studies and a gentler starting point, and Key Concepts in Urban Geography is a set of short essays on core concepts that gives vocabulary quickly.

Michael Pacione's Urban Geography: A Global Perspective is a large, systematic text that deliberately covers cities in both the developed world and the Global South, so it complements Levy's U.S. emphasis. It is described as giving sustained attention to urban problems and planning responses. David Harvey's Social Justice and the City is a founding text of radical urban geography and a useful critical counterpoint to the more practice-oriented Levy account of how plans are made and implemented.

How to Use This Book

The publisher presents the book as an in-depth introduction for students, city planners and anyone concerned with contemporary urban development, and it names no prerequisites. It is most useful for readers who will work with or study planning: planning and public policy students, and geography students who want to understand the institutions that shape cities.

• Start with Chapter 1 and the history chapters (2–4) for context, then read Part 2 in order, so that the land-use chapters are read against the legal and political setting.
• Core for a geography course: Chapters 1, 6–9 and 11–12 give the institutional picture and the two policy areas, housing and transportation, that most often connect to urban geography syllabi.
• Optional: Chapters 10, 13 and 14 for design, economic development and environmental planning; Chapters 15–16 if the course compares planning systems across countries.
• Use the end-of-chapter questions to practise applying the material to a city you know, and read Part 4 alongside local planning documents to see how the principles play out.