The Wild Edge of Planning: Field Notes from the Frontiers of Community Practice
The Wild Edge of Planning: Field Notes from the Frontiers of Community Practice is a story-rich memoir of five decades in community planning, written by one of the field’s most outspoken feminist planning practitioners.
Beginning with a brutal baptism by fire in 1960s New Haven urban renewal, Wendy Sarkissian traces how witnessing organized destruction and token “public participation” pushed her to spend the rest of her career experimenting with more ethical, community-oriented ways of working.
Forthcoming on May 11, 2027
The Wild Edge of Planning: Field Notes from the Frontiers of Community Practice is a story-rich memoir of five decades in community planning, written by one of the field’s most outspoken feminist practitioners.
Beginning with a brutal baptism by fire in 1960s New Haven urban renewal, Wendy Sarkissian traces how witnessing organized destruction and token “public participation” pushed her to spend the rest of her career experimenting with more ethical, community-oriented ways of working.
Through detailed, often dramatic narratives, from public housing estates in Adelaide and Sydney, to caravan parks under threat, to feminist campaigns, to the healing of road-trauma communities with “Bless This Road,” to tenant resistance in contemporary Vancouver, Wendy shows what planning looks like when lived at the wild edge: places where official policy meets lived experience, where anger and grief become fuel for creativity, and where listening to the softest voices is a non-negotiable discipline.
Threaded through the stories are reflections on ethics, wildness, edge places, and “heart politics,” inviting readers to see planning not as a neutral technical exercise but as a deeply human, risky, and potentially transformative practice.