{"id":30159,"date":"2017-06-13T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T17:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/?p=30159"},"modified":"2017-06-15T15:41:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T22:41:12","slug":"planning-theorist-john-friedmann-obituary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/2017\/06\/13\/planning-theorist-john-friedmann-obituary\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on the Life of John Friedmann"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Internationally-renowned planning theorist John Friedmann passed away on June 12, 2017 in Vancouver. At 91, John was an honorary professor at the University of British Columbia School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP)<\/a>, where he taught and conducted research alongside his wife, fellow planning theorist Leonie Sandercock<\/a>. The fact that he was named the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Distinguished Educator in 1987<\/a>, yet continued to teach, publish, supervise students, and conduct research for another 30 years, is a testament to his passion for the discipline.<\/p>\n

Generations of urban planning students have been shaped by John\u2019s work as a scholar, theorist, and planner. Born in Vienna in 1926, he arrived in the United States at the age of 14. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1955, and taught at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil (1956-58), MIT (1961-65), and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (1966-69). In 1969, John was one of the founders of the planning program at UCLA<\/a> under Dean Harvey S. Perloff, and he served as its director for a total of 14 years. He retired from UCLA in 1996, then spent four years as a Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning of the University of Melbourne before joining SCARP as an honorary professor in 2001.<\/p>\n

As a SCARP Masters and Ph.D. student from 2005-2011, I saw John frequently, read his work, and was his student in the Ph.D. theory and colloquium courses. The colloquium was a uniquely Friedmann experience: each student was required to present their work twice during the first year, second term, and then repeat the process again the following year. John would ask pointed questions about the theories we relied on, the authors and the relevance of their ideas and methods to the discipline of planning. He wasn\u2019t above suggesting that questions concerning urban design, transportation planning or community health were outside of the realm of planning; indeed, unless your work centered on questions of power, participation, or increasingly, Chinese urban economies, you would find him an inescapable skeptic.<\/p>\n

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John Friedmann, 1969.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

John\u2019s astonishingly productive career spanned major transitions in planning education and employment. From the positivist 1950s and citizen-powered 1960s all the way to the millennial concerns of labour market restructuring and international (re)development, his work evolved over time. While his earliest work was undoubtedly in the realm of regional science and development, central themes were power dynamics among stakeholders, the roles and responsibilities of citizenship, economic transitions in world cities, and the relationship between action and knowledge.<\/p>\n

His publication record includes 15 individually authored books, 11 co-edited books, and more than 150 chapters, articles, and reviews. Planning in the Public Domain<\/em> (1987) remains a foundational text in the discipline. His most recent work focused on the urban economic transition in China, with China\u2019s Urban Transition<\/em> published in 2005. His writings have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Farsi, and he received the first UN-Habitat Lecture Award for lifetime achievement in the service of human settlements in 2006. In 2013, ACSP created the John Friedmann Book Award<\/a>, to be presented to a book or comparable work that best exemplifies scholarship in the area of planning for sustainable development.<\/p>\n

Yet his power as a teacher, mentor, and lecturer was undeniable. With Leonie, John helped reinvigorate the Ph.D. program. The two of them played a large role in the successful graduation of every Ph.D. student since their arrival in 2001, through program and course design, teaching, and supervision. John was instrumental in the work of several Ph.D. students through the colloquium course, shared interests, and informal discussions on theory and practice, including:<\/p>\n