Is planning for America anathema to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness? Is it true, as ideologues like Friedrich Von Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand have claimed, that planning leads to dictatorship, that the state is wholly destructive, and that prosperity is owed entirely to the workings of a free market?

This is the synopsis of 'No Little Plans', Ian Wray's 2019 book that goes in search of an America shaped by government, plans and bureaucrats, not by businesses, bankers and shareholders.

Ian discusses 'No Little Plans' in this episode with Sam Stafford; Katie Wray; and, all of the way from the USA as the 50 Shades of Planning Podcast goes global, Karen Trapenberg Frick.

Ian Wray is Honorary Professor and Fellow in the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy at Liverpool University. He was formerly Chief Planner at the North West Development Agency between 200 and 2010.

Katie Wray (@kluw) is an Assistant Director at Deloitte.

Karen Trapenberg Frick (@TrapenbergFrick) is an Associate Professor in City & Regional Planning, at the University of California.

'No Little Plans' was Ian's follow-up to 2016's 'Great British Plans', which Sam, Ian and Katie discuss in Episode 36.

Some accompanying reading.

No Little Plans - How Government Built America’s Wealth and Infrastructure

https://www.routledge.com/No-Little-Plans-How-Government-Built-Americas-Wealth-and-Infrastructure/Wray/p/book/9781138594104

LEGO Can Build a Northern Overground

https://journal.theaou.org/articles/lego-can-build-a-northern-overground/

The essential state - Pandemic, norms and values, and the new authoritarianism

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1473095220969626?journalCode=plta

A Sure Bet: Megaprojects - Not on Time and Not on Budget

https://www.alexandrinepress.co.uk/Oakland_Bay_Bridge

Some accompanying listening.

For UK Listeners

Jimi Hendrix plays the Star Spangled banner at Woodstock in 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3-b3ViNTMI

For US listeners

The Village Green Preservation Society -The Kinks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc7dmu4G8oc

50 Shades T-Shirts!

If you have listened to Episode 45 of the 50 Shades of Planning Podcast you will have heard Clive Betts say that...

'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'.

Sam said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt and it does. Further details can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2021/07/50-shades-of-planning-t-shirts.html