Title	The Ancestry of Regional Spatial Planning [electronic resource] : A Planner’s Look at History / by Louis C. Wassenhoven
Imprint	Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer, 2019
Connect to	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96995-4
Descript	XXIII, 249 p. 15 illus., 13 illus. in color. online resource

This book is not a historical or archaeological treatise, but rather a study in which the author looks at the past, not as a historian, but as a planner who has the ambition to unravel the early manifestations of his discipline; a discipline which did not exist as such in remote periods, but the ingredients of which were nevertheless present. The author has observed the past equipped with knowledge and understanding of what regional planning was in the second half of the twentieth century and still is. He stands in the period of the first decades after the Second World War, which were the formative years of regional planning, and looks back at bygone ages. He discusses ideas and literature from the immediate post-war period in order to examine the ancestry of regional planning through their lens. The book will attract a broad range of readers because of its approach and its wide coverage of historical periods and world regions. Although Europe is the main focus, the book contains material on all continents and all periods, the ancient world, the medieval age and the modern era. The history of Urban Planning is taught and researched widely, but the history, or pre-history, before the twentieth century, of Regional Spatial Planning is not. This book will fill that vacuum

Preface -- Ch.1. Introduction (Looking for the origins of regional spatial planning – Short presentation of chapters – Appendix on regional planning in the interwar period) -- PART I (Chapters 2-11) -- Ch.2. Historical periods, regions and examples -- Ch. 3. Greek colonization -- Ch. 4. Colonies and towns in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Empires -- Ch. 5. New capitals -- Ch. 6. Middle Ages and Modern Era: Towns and planned settlements -- Ch. 7. Land: Empires and ancient world -- Ch. 8. Land: Medieval period and Modern Era -- Ch. 9. Government, territorial organization and decision structures -- Ch. 10. Trade, industry and natural resources -- Ch. 11. Transport, infrastructures and fortifications -- Ch. 12. Parameters of analysis -- PART II -- Ch. 13. Planning “actors”, government and regions -- Ch. 14. Planning process: Means and survey -- Ch. 15. Population re-distribution and spatial re-structuring -- Ch. 16. Towns and urban networks -- Ch. 17. Land, natural resources and innovations -- Ch. 18. Networks, flows, trade and interconnected areal units -- Ch. 19. Long-run change and future prospects: Closing statement -- Bibliography -- Index