Berkeley Planning Journal

Planners, both academic and professional, have good reason to be grateful to Christopher Steins and his collaborators for creating and sustaining Planetizen, the lively and provocative web site devoted to ideas and practice in urban planning. Planetizen's appearance in 2001 was a landmark in moving planning into the internet era, and it continues to be a valuable asset for the field. Now, together with co-i!ditors Abhijeet Chavan and Christian Peralta, Steins has produced a book that provides a sampling of Planetizen's past offerings cast into the form of debates in planning. To pull this off and to review the results are no mean tasks. In 183 pages, the book manages to include essays by no less than 31 authors, in addition to comments by numerous anonymous respondents to the original website postings. Some essays were written specifically for the book, but the majority date from Planetizen postings during the years 2001 to 2006.