New book, Designing Urban Transformations, reception in NYC on Thursday

From email:

Transforming Cities / Transforming Practice
6:00 pm
Thursday, December 12, 2013

Kellen Auditorium
Parsons The New School for Design
66 Fifth Avenue, 1st floor
New York NY 10011

On the occasion of the release of a new book, Designing Urban Transformation, there will be a book signing and reception, presentation, and panel discussion around the following questions: 

• How can we transform cities by transforming the practice of urbanism itself? 
• What are the kinds of truly creative strategies needed to generate fundamental urban change?

According to the webpage, Designing Urban Transformation:

focuses on a powerful question, "What can urbanism be?" by arguing that the most significant transformations occur by fundamentally rethinking concepts, practices, and outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, the book proposes three conceptual shifts for transformative urban practice:

(a) beyond material objects: city as flux,
(b) beyond intentions: consequences of design, and
(c) beyond practice: urbanism as creative political act.

... The book’s ten case studies of urban interventions from Barcelona, Belo Horizonte, Boston, Cairo, Karachi, Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Paris demonstrate the different ways and widely varying contexts in which this new approach can work—all with extremely impressive results.

While the problem for planners is that typically they are not the ones who are making the decisions that allow for a "fundamental rethinking of concepts, practices, and outcomes" to occur, if planners aren't asking themselves these questions, then we can be assured that nothing will change, not ever.

I definitely look forward to reading the book and I regret not being able to attend the session on Thursday.