Ed Bacon

Gregory L. Heller is Executive Director of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. His writing on city planning has appeared in Next American City, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Alexander Garvin is President of AGA Public Realm Strategists, Inc., and author of several books, including The American City: What Works, What Doesn't.

• Foreword-Alexander GarvinPrefaceIntroductionChapter 1. Planning for a New DealChapter 2. Toward a Better PhiladelphiaChapter 3. Planning for PeopleChapter 4. The Architect PlannerChapter 5. Reinvesting DowntownChapter 6. The Planner Versus the AutomobileChapter 7. Articulating a Vision in a Shifting WorldChapter 8. New Visions of PhiladelphiaConclusionList of AbbreviationsNotesIndexAcknowledgments

"Gregory Heller's Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia provides a thorough, engaging, and compelling story about the career of Philadelphia's most prominent urban planner. . . . The book's content is extremely well documented and provides the reader with a new perspective on many of the city's rather famous midcentury plans and development projects. Aside from the rich historical narrative, which is valuable in and of itself, the book succeeds at making clear connections to contemporary planning practice. . . . A terrific contribution to the literature on planning history, the politics of urban planning and development, and the value of physical planning." (Stephanie Ryberg-Webster, Journal of Planning Education and Research) "Heller's book gives us a fascinating-and sympathetic-account of Bacon's accomplishments." (The New Republic) "Edmund Bacon, probably the most relentless and determined of all planners, believed that the most important and difficult thing to do was deciding what to advocate and that the trick in making that decision was selecting something that you could bring to fruition. . . . We are fortunate in having this stunning biography by Gregory Heller. The result is an engrossing story explaining how modern Philadelphia took shape." (From the Foreword, by Alexander Garvin)