James A. Throgmorton – författare

This is a look at the world of political conflict surrounding the Commonwealth Edison Company's ambitious nuclear power plant construction programme in northern Illinois during the 1980s. Examining the clash between the utility, consumer groups, community-based groups, the Illinois Commerce Commission and the City of Chicago, Throgmorton argues that planning can best be thought of as a form of persuasive storytelling. A planner's task is to write future-oriented texts that employ language and figures of speech designed to persuade their constituencies of the validity of their vision. Juxtaposing stories about efforts to construct Chicago's electric future, this study suggests a shift in how we think about planning. In order to account for the fragmented and conflicted nature of contemporary American life and politics, that shift would be away from "science" and the "experts", and toward rhetoric and storytelling.

The 2016 election in Iowa City would provide an opportunity that planning faculty have long desired: the opportunity for one of their own to serve as mayor.In this new book, former Iowa City Mayor and Professor Emeritus James A. Throgmorton provides readers a sense of what democratically-elected city council members and mayors in the United States do and what it feels like to occupy and enact those roles. He does so by telling a set of “practice stories” focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on what he, a retired planning professor at the University of Iowa, experienced and learned as a council member from 2012 through 2019 and, simultaneously, as mayor from 2016 through 2019. The book proposes a practical, action-oriented theory about how city futures are being (and can be) shaped, showing that storytelling of various kinds plays a very important but poorly understood role in the co-crafting process, and demonstrating that skillful use of ethically-sound persuasive storytelling (especially by mayors) can improve our collective capacity to create better places. The book documents efforts to alleviate race-related inequities, increase the supply of affordable housing, adopt an ambitious climate action plan, improve relationships between city government and diverse marginalized communities, pursue more inclusive and sustainable land development codes/policies, and more.It will be of great interest to urban planning faculty and students and elected officials looking to collaboratively craft better cities for the future.Winner of the Association of the Collegiate Schools of Planning’s 2024 John Friedman Book Award. This award is presented biannually to a book that best exemplifies scholarship in the area of planning for sustainable development.