Dreaming the Rational City is both a history of the city planning profession in the United States and a major polemical statement about the effort to plan and reform the American city. Boyer shows why city planning, which had so much promise at the outset for making cities more liveable, largely failed. She reveals planning's real responsibilities and goals, including the kind of "rational order" that was actually forseen by the planning mentality, and concludes that the planners have continuously served the needs of the dominant capitalist economy.
- ISBN10 0262521113
- ISBN13 9780262521116
- Publish Date 20 March 1986 (first published October 1983)
- Publish Status Transferred
- Out of Print 7 December 2021
- Publish Country US
- Publisher MIT Press Ltd
- Imprint MIT Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 344
- Language English
- URL http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262521116