Planning For Diversity And Choice

Planning for Diversity and Choice (1968) by Stanford Anderson – The MIT Press
ISBN: None (because in 1968, books had no need for such modern fripperies) | Condition: Near Fine | From Crappy Old Books

Ah, 1968. A time of protest, revolution, and bold new thinking. While some people were planning marches and others were planning festivals, Stanford Anderson was busy planning… well, planning itself. Planning for Diversity and Choice is a serious yet strangely optimistic exploration of how cities, societies, and institutions could actually embrace variety rather than bulldoze it into neat little grids. Think less “grey Soviet housing blocks” and more “a thousand flowers blooming—organised responsibly, of course.”

This copy, published by the mighty MIT Press, is in near fine condition, which is about as close to bibliographic perfection as Crappy Old Books dares to dream. The spine is uncreased, the pages are tidy, and the whole volume looks like it has been handled with the kind of care usually reserved for antique maps or particularly shy cats. The only blemish? A few underlinings in the acknowledgements section—which, frankly, is rather charming. Someone out there really wanted to remember exactly who Anderson thanked. It’s academic fandom at its purest.

Inside, you’ll find Anderson dissecting the principles of choice, flexibility, and diversity in planning at a time when bulldozers were still roaring across cities with more enthusiasm than subtlety. It’s part theory, part critique, part “what if we tried not to make everything look the same?” and it still feels surprisingly fresh decades later.

So why pick up this copy? Because it’s more than just a planning classic—it’s a cultural time capsule from the late ’60s, preserved with scholarly devotion. Put it on your shelf, and you’ll look like the sort of person who knows words like “polycentric,” “heterogeneity,” and “urban morphology,” even if you never get past the underlined acknowledgements.

This is your chance to own a slice of intellectual history in a volume that has survived the decades not only intact but practically glowing with near-new charm. A rare find for collectors, urbanists, or anyone who enjoys the thrill of saying, “Oh this old thing? It’s just my 1968 MIT Press copy of Anderson’s Planning for Diversity and Choice.”

Crappy Old Books: where serious ideas meet surprisingly well-preserved pages.

Near new condition but has a annotations to the list of contributors and a lot in the introduction, like they were editing it. Virtually no annotations anywhere else in the book that I could find.

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