A very special role 

I’m proud to nominate as President to serve in the role of Chair of the Board of the International Society of City and Regional Planners. 

I say to all ISOCARP members voting to elect the President (Elect) that it is THIS role, as Chair of the ISOCARP Board, that they should vote to fill. 

I say this because understanding the role of President has never been more important.  

A unique vision 

The idea, in the early 1960s, that the city and regional planners of the world should have their own international association, is one of the great ideas of all time. 

Our Society is almost unique: while similar bodies are federations and alliances of national institutions, ours is a direct association of individual city and regional planners everywhere.  

This is such an inspiring idea. ISOCARP has made it to (almost) sixty years as a strong, member-governed association.  

In every one of those years we have held the World Planning Congress, where members of the “ISOCARP Family” renew friendships, meet new friends, talk, share ideas, catch up, exchange information, and gain a strong sense of the common challenges and rewards that we all experience as city and regional planners – whether as urbanist practitioners, teachers, researchers, administrators, policy makers or activists. 

That’s not all. ISOCARP publishes the world’s only journal focused on international planning practice, drawing on experiences in many of the world’s countries and regions. It forms networks, and it offers multiple ways in which city and regional planners – students, young professionals, mid-career planners, elders – can engage with communities, work with international teams, and gain critical experience in planning practice.  

That vision is fading 

We’ve gone commercial. We’ve chased contracts. We’ve even become dependent on a private “ISOCARP” consultancy over which we have no control.  

We’ve lost sight of what matters to an association of 700 city and regional planners who value belonging to a Society of like-minded professionals that understand the challenges and joys of helping to create humane and sustainable urban environments. 

We need a member-governed association of city and regional planners in all parts of the world, to communicate, to support each other, to share ideas and achievements – to just belong!  

That’s exactly why I say that the Board is the governing body representing, and elected by, those 700 members, and that the role of the President is to chair the Board, to lead the Board to reflect and implement the priorities of the members – not to have grand “agendas” that end up taking our Society into commerce and entanglements of little or no benefit to the members. 

Our Society is its members 

ISOCARP is a wonderful Society and enables city and regional planners to volunteer in many ways – UPATs, publications, committees, policy, Congress, events, online discussions, Board – and over the past two decades I have volunteered in all of those ways, including being responsible for the successful 2012 Congress in Perm, Russia. . 

Above all I saw the need to update the Constitution. Our new Constitution eliminates the old hierarchical structures, makes all members equal, gives every member a vote, and enables all members to help guide the Society in open, transparent, online meetings — like the general meeting we held during 2018 Congress in Norway, when the new constitution was discussed and adopted in real time, with a record number of members participating, both in person and online. 

I seek to return to the Board, as its Chair, to support the next Board in focusing on our original and inspiring vision: a member-governed association of city and regional planners, in which being a member really matters.