Berkeley Planning Journal

This article explores how planning has accrued what can be considered an ideal of practice over a century of addressing “the city as a problem space” and uses this compound ideal as a lens to examine the Western landscape. This process of utilizing an urban-focused practice ideal on the unique environment and history of the rural West reveals, I argue, the relevance of each era’s contribution to planning’s development, the folly of relying too heavily on any one single era’s trends, and the underlying causes for much of the tumultuousness experienced over the past generation in this storied region.