The field of Planning History has helped scholars across disciplines illuminate how historical actors dreamed of futures yet to come. The social policies which these visionaries explore have organized the economic development the industrial world. In Planning Future Cities, this classic field of historical literature is made comprehensible to a general audience for the first time.

Planning Future Cities combines the insights of historians, urban planners, architects, and industrial leaders to help students of the metropolitan landscape grapple with the contradictions that characterize the long 20th century. Production in rural agriculture, urban industrialization, global finance, and institutional architecture would undergo structural reform to accommodate demands wrought by women's suffrage, feminism, civil rights activism, and global governance between 1870 and 2010. Contemporary colleges and universities must produce informed citizens to confront myriad ways which private initiatives, public policy, and democratic engagement intersect to produce prosperous metropolitan regions in the global 21st century.