The Body Politic: Planning History, Design, and Public Health

Abstract

Guest editor Stephen J. Ramos introduces the special issue, themed “The Body Politic: Planning History, Design, and Public Health.” The issue has five contributions from Australia, South Africa, Northern Europe, and the United States. Throughout its history, planning is continually tasked with both modernization and reflexive modernization simultaneously. The duality serves as an instrument of the state in the broader governance negotiation of private capital accumulation and public welfare. The contemporary COVID-19 pandemic provides the opportunity to reconsider relationships between planning, design, and public health, and the politics and policies that constitute and mediate these relationships. The hope is for the special issue to inspire empathy for a more civic, international body politic.