Timing the Future Metropolis

<p><b><i>Timing the Future Metropolis</i></b><b>--an intellectual history of planning urbanism design and social science--explores the network of postwar institutions formed amid specters of urban crisis and renewal that set out to envision the future of the American city.</b> Peter Ekman focuses on one decisive node in the network: the Joint Center for Urban Studies founded in 1959 by scholars at Harvard and MIT. </p><p>Through its sprawling programs of organized research its manifold connections to universities foundations publishers and policymakers and its years of consultation on the planning of a new city in Venezuela--Ciudad Guayana--the Joint Center became preoccupied with the question of how to conceptualize the urban future as an object of knowledge. <i>Timing the Future Metropolis</i> ultimately compels a broader reflection on temporality in urban planning rethinking how we might imagine cities yet to come--and the consequences of deciding not to.</p>