Illuminating urban planning
One of the key insights of MIT historian Jennifer Light’s career came when she was a summer intern at the RAND Corporation, the think tank famed for its analysis of Cold War military systems. That might seem like an unusual place for a historian’s eureka moment — but then, it was an unusual insight. In the late 1960s, Light noticed, people at RAND had suddenly become very interested in urban planning. What was that all about? It was about two things, Light concluded. First, researchers at RAND were already concerned that military and space program funding would diminish if and when the Vietnam War ended and the Apollo program put astronauts on the moon, and were looking for other areas where they could apply their expertise. Second, many U.S. cities experienced economic decline and social unrest in the 1960s. That led to politicians and planners expressing frustration that, as Light says,...