Voices from the borderlands: A meditation on a metaphor

This piece takes up Beauregard’s (1989) challenge to view planning theory through the lens of postmodern critique. It is argued here that we need to broaden the planning theory literature to include the works of feminists and people of color who are addressing the condition of postmodernity in constructive and progressive ways, within a revised radical democratic tradition. The writings of bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, Cornel West, and others are a challenge to our theory and practice, and therefore to planning education. I discuss their contributions to such problems as ways of knowing, ways of acting, and ways of being, and suggest that they are addressing both what is wrong with our cities and with our way of seeing the world