On November 9, Emeritus Professor and former Mayor of Iowa City Jim Throgmorton received the prestigious John Friedmann Book Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).  This award is presented biannually to recognize a book that best exemplifies scholarship in the area of urban planning for sustainable development. Throgmorton won this award for his recent book, Co-Crafting the Just City: Tales from the Field by a Planning Scholar Turned Mayor.

In this book, 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 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. According to the publisher, “It will be of great interest to urban planning faculty and students and elected officials looking to collaboratively craft better cities for the future.”

“I feel especially honored to have received an award named after John,” Jim said. “He was a brilliant and prolific scholar who had a major effect on the field of urban and regional planning through his writings about world cities, regional development, and planning theory.”  “Beyond that,” Jim said, “John was a friend who enabled me to develop a much deeper understanding of planning theory in two courses I took from him at UCLA 45 years ago.”

Co-Crafting the Just City is available at local independent bookstore, Prairie Lights, and through national booksellers.