Inventing the Greatest: Crafting Louisville's Future Out of story and Clay

Abstract

In earlier publications I have argued that planning can be thought of as a form of persuasive and constitutive storytelling about the future. In this article I tell a story about the transformation of Louisville, Kentucky, a city of approximately 700,000 people located in the middle of the United States. The story begins in the early 1950s with a youth named Cassius Marcellus Clay, moves through space and time, weaves together a series of locally grounded common urban narratives, and ends at a new Center in Louisville named after Muhammad Ali. By weaving these tales together, I seek to demonstrate how narrative might be used to generate a more capacious approach to planning, but also to indicate how the physical design of the city-region has to be changed to make space for diverse common urban narratives. I end by suggesting that such an approach might help increase the sustainability of Louisville and other city-regions.

Framing the Zone: Political Executives Engaging in a Narrative-Framing Contest During Strategic Decision-making

“…The relation between storytelling and planning practices has been a topic of research for many scholars within planning studies (Forester, 1989(Forester, , 2012Throgmorton, 1992Throgmorton, , 2007Throgmorton, , 2008Finnegan, 1998;Sandercock, 2003b;Flyvbjerg, 2004;Uprichard & Byrne, 2006;Sandercock & Attili, 2010;van Assche et al, 2012; van Hulst, 2012;Beunen et al, 2013). Throgmorton straightforwardly states that planning is a form of persuasive storytelling.…”

Storytelling, a model of and a model for planning

“…The work of James Throgmorton, John Forester and Leonie Sandercock is used here to sketch the main ideas. According to Throgmorton (1992Throgmorton ( , 1996Throgmorton ( , 2003Throgmorton ( , 2007, planning is constitutive and persuasive storytelling about the future. If they do it well, planners try to shape the 'flow of future action' when they tell stories about 'interesting and believable' characters who act in specific settings.…”

“…Although the interest in storytelling in planning has grown over the last two decades (Mandelbaum, 1991; Forester, 1993, 1999; Throgmorton, 1992, 1996, 2003, 2007; Van Eeten, 1999; Eckstein and Throgmorton, 2003; Uprichard and Byrne, 2006; Jensen, 2007; Childs, 2008; Hajer et al, 2010; Van Dijk, 2011) and storytelling is seen as an important ‘tool’ in planning practice (Myers and Kitsuse, 2000; Sandercock, 2003a, 2003b, 2010), the further development of ideas about it depends both on the enrichment of its theoretical foundation, for example through the application of a narrative lens in the analysis of more cases and through an investigation into the connection between storytelling and other planning activities. Both routes are taken here.…”

Rethinking the memorial in a Black Belt landscape: Planning, memory and identity of African-Americans in Alabama

“…American planner Ken Reardon, from the University of Memphis, is leading a project of participatory planning that focuses on renovating a low-income African-American historic neighbourhood in close proximity to downtown Memphis. In these cases, and in other cases, local memory is considered a key strategy for a successful urban regeneration (Talen, 1999;Lah, 2001;Jankovič, 2001;Throgmorton, 2007). In New Orleans, architect Robin Riley's Louis Armstrong Park (Figures 14a and 14b), the historic Congo Square and Saint Louis Cemetery No.…”