Scholarship on Latino communities in the UnitedStates has yet to catch up with the rapid growth of this ethnic population in the country. Understanding the Latino urban experience and developing plans to better respond to both the needs of Latino communities and their integration within society is not only relevant, but also urgently necessary. Using the city of Los Angeles as a main lens, in addition to a general look at the urban Southwest, we contribute to the scholarship on the subject with a review of literature on Latino communities. We structure the review as an assessment of the various challenges and opportunities for urban Latinos in the pre-war, postwar, and contemporary city. Focusing on space, culture, economy, and governance, we chart the various roles both the private and public sectors play in meeting these challenges. Our reading of the literature shows that particular government actions in the economic and governance domains in the past had positive impacts on Latino integration, and we call for a similar effort today in addressing contemporary challenges. We conclude by suggesting that future planning scholarship on Latino communities engage the wider urban studies literature, focus on emerging forms of urbanization, and call on planners to sustain increased academic and practical interest in the topic.

Progressive theorists and reflective practitioners have exhorted agents to renounce exploitative planning discourses. This repudiation can, however, only be successful if the agent's own investment in biased discourses is accounted for. Reflecting on the work of Jon Elster, John Thompson, and Raymond Geuss, it is argued that the progressive planner should direct agents toward an acknowledgement of the motives compelling them to become invested in biased discourse, and how these discourses satisfy these motives by capitalizing on the trappings of habitual modes of reasoning and thriving on the ambiguity of referents. The value of this perspective is illustrated in an analysis of neoliberalism as a contemporary hegemonic discourse. It is discussed how popular anxieties about social mobility and community power motivate the investment in discourses characterized by a thesis of the inevitability of neoliberal restructuring and associations with narratives on entrepreneurialism, multiculturalism, and self-help. Downloaded from Planning Theory 13(1) Elster J (1979) Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elster J (1981) Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elster J (1982) Marxism, functionalism, and game theory.

This article investigates place-branding as a contested “cultural politics.” Through a case study of the creation of a “Downtown” Pomona (California) from the “Antiques Row” and “Arts Colony” that preceded it, the framework furthers our understanding of place-branding by highlighting how communities of interest contest competing cultural outlooks and further outlines the consequences of inadequate attention to the cultural economies that are supported by the meaning-making and place-making strategies of this cultural politics. In discussing how coalitions that cut across business and community interests contest cultural outlooks in an intralocal politics, the analysis offers an alternative to both elite/local and use/exchange approaches to the study of place-branding.

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