Andrew Zitcer
Biographic Data
| ID | 705144 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Zitcer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Zitcer |
| SIGNATURE | ZITCER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Drexel University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0234-9217 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Nihilism, Post-Truth and the Moral Future of Planning: Edited by Andrew Zitcer
A eulogy for creative placemaking
The field of creative placemaking united planners, artists, arts administrators, philanthropists, and policymakers in pursuit of equitable community development. By 2020, changes in funding streams and leadership impacted creative placemaking, while practitioners faced societal shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, racial reckoning, and heightened awareness of structural inequities. Looking at the trajectory of its development, we posit that crea…
Centering artist voices: Notes from a survey of artists and cultural workers in Philadelphia, PA, and Richmond, VA
This essay explores our work collecting artist experiences and attending to the voices of artists themselves in two US cities. Prompted by an earlier phase of focus group research in Philadelphia with artists who voiced their needs as workers, we undertook a survey of working artists in Philadelphia and Richmond, Virginia. This survey research asks about the spatial patterns of artists living, working, and presentation locations and how that geog…
Response Essays
This is Part III of a three-part forum published in this issue. Part I is the “Executive Summary” and “Introduction” of The Alliance for California Traditional Arts’ Tending the Taproot: Opportunities to Support Folk & Traditional Arts in the United States report by Amy Kitchener, Shweta Saraswat-Sullivan, and Lily Kharrazi, published in December 2022, Part II is a summary of the Living Cultural Heritage and the Traditional and Folk Arts in the N…
Democratic Public or Populist Rabble: Repositioning the City amidst Social Fracture
The current degree of social fracture that has attended the growing prevalence of populist movements calls into question the viability of democratic practices grounded in collective deliberation. Urban practitioners committed to democratic inclusion must confront the practical question of how to deal with a divided public. Any such effort must address longstanding and mutually reinforcing trends that have both aggravated social fragmentation and …
Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid beyond Capitalism
The specter of the “art-less city”: Locating artists in Philadelphia’s creative economy
Artists and creativity are on the urban agenda. Scholars and policymakers have embraced the role of artists as key drivers of economic growth and urban vitality. Yet, accounts of artists’ agency often reduce artists to members of a creative class, rendering the arts an instrument for economic growth and erasing important class and racial differences in the field. This paper centers artists’ perspectives through four focus group discussions with a…
Public art, cultural representation, and the just city
Recent controversies around public art demonstrate that cultural representation in urban public space is enormously consequential. Given that urban planners and policymakers are often involved in the design, siting, approval, and maintenance of such works, this article argues for more effective ways to evaluate potential public art projects and adjudicate conflicts that arise regarding existing works. The authors propose a novel visual rubric as …
Grocery Cooperatives as Governing Institutions in Neighborhood Commercial Corridors
We explore cooperatives’ potential to play governing roles in neighborhood commercial corridors (NCCs) by examining one grocery cooperative in Philadelphia that has had stores on three NCCs in the city. We distinguish between an anchor institution role, where one organization provides collective goods for the corridor, and governance, where multiple corridor stakeholders collectively provide goods. We conclude that a cooperative will more likely …
Unsettling planning theory
Recent political developments in many parts of the world seem likely to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the planetary-scale challenges of social polarization, inequality and environmental change societies face. In this unconventional multi-authored essay, we therefore seek to explore some of the ways in which planning theory might respond to the deeply unsettling times we live in. Taking the multiple, suggestive possibilities of the theme of un…
Making Up Creative Placemaking
Creative placemaking is an increasingly prevalent form of planning practice that invokes arts and culture as tools for revitalization. Planners, policymakers, funders, and practitioners are engaged in a discursive struggle to define what is meant by creative placemaking and what value it holds for cities. Using frameworks developed by Foucault and Hacking, I analyze the emergence and ongoing contestation of this term, contrasting the way creative…
A capabilities approach to arts and culture? Theorizing community development in West Philadelphia
Arts and culture are increasingly part of the planning and development toolkit in the USA. Justifications for investment in the arts often center on economic development outcomes. In contrast, we propose the use of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to human development, which asserts the importance of the freedom to achieve personal and group well-being through the creation of conditions that maximize opportunity. This paper advances the capabi…
Food Co‐ops and the Paradox of Exclusivity
Consumer food cooperatives constitute a vital part of the alternative food movement in the United States, alongside farmers' markets, community‐supported agriculture, community gardens and other initiatives. Like these efforts, food co‐ops seek to counter the dominance of industrial agriculture and the decimation of local economies. Yet food co‐ops wrestle with a paradox of exclusivity, whereby some practices and people are inadvertently left out…
Who Says? Authority, Voice, and Authorship in Narratives of Planning Research
Recent developments in communicative planning theory and participatory research methods emphasize collaboration between researcher and research subject in the process of knowledge production. We ask how the ideal of collaboration that is integral to the process of data collection extends to the authorial phase of planning narratives and we identify ethical, pragmatic, and substantive justifications for collaborative authorship. The multidisciplin…
Everything but the Chickens: Cultural Authenticity Onboard the Chinatown Bus
Since 1998, the so-called "Chinatown buses" have grown from a niche service for Chinese immigrants to an important mode of intercity travel throughout the Northeastern United States. We argue that these buses serve as moving articulations, containers for passengers' perceptions of Chinatown. The Chinatown bus allows riders to explore their conflicted relationships to the Other, and to urban life. We present findings from focus groups with bus pas…
What's Love Got To Do With It? Illuminations on Loving Attachment in Planning
10.1080/14649357.2012.731210 Original image by Libby Porter, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia In 2009, the People of Color Interest Group (POCIG) sponsored a round table at the annual Associ
What's Love Got To Do With It? Illuminations on Loving Attachment in Planning
10.1080/14649357.2012.731210 Original image by Libby Porter, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia In 2009, the People of Color Interest Group (POCIG) sponsored a round table at the annual Associ
Making Up Creative Placemaking
Creative placemaking is an increasingly prevalent form of planning practice that invokes arts and culture as tools for revitalization. Planners, policymakers, funders, and practitioners are engaged in a discursive struggle to define what is meant by creative placemaking and what value it holds for cities. Using frameworks developed by Foucault and Hacking, I analyze the emergence and ongoing contestation of this term, contrasting the way creative…
Food Co‐ops and the Paradox of Exclusivity
Consumer food cooperatives constitute a vital part of the alternative food movement in the United States, alongside farmers' markets, community‐supported agriculture, community gardens and other initiatives. Like these efforts, food co‐ops seek to counter the dominance of industrial agriculture and the decimation of local economies. Yet food co‐ops wrestle with a paradox of exclusivity, whereby some practices and people are inadvertently left out…
Who Says? Authority, Voice, and Authorship in Narratives of Planning Research
Recent developments in communicative planning theory and participatory research methods emphasize collaboration between researcher and research subject in the process of knowledge production. We ask how the ideal of collaboration that is integral to the process of data collection extends to the authorial phase of planning narratives and we identify ethical, pragmatic, and substantive justifications for collaborative authorship. The multidisciplin…
The specter of the “art-less city”: Locating artists in Philadelphia’s creative economy
Artists and creativity are on the urban agenda. Scholars and policymakers have embraced the role of artists as key drivers of economic growth and urban vitality. Yet, accounts of artists’ agency often reduce artists to members of a creative class, rendering the arts an instrument for economic growth and erasing important class and racial differences in the field. This paper centers artists’ perspectives through four focus group discussions with a…
Grocery Cooperatives as Governing Institutions in Neighborhood Commercial Corridors
We explore cooperatives’ potential to play governing roles in neighborhood commercial corridors (NCCs) by examining one grocery cooperative in Philadelphia that has had stores on three NCCs in the city. We distinguish between an anchor institution role, where one organization provides collective goods for the corridor, and governance, where multiple corridor stakeholders collectively provide goods. We conclude that a cooperative will more likely …
Response Essays
This is Part III of a three-part forum published in this issue. Part I is the “Executive Summary” and “Introduction” of The Alliance for California Traditional Arts’ Tending the Taproot: Opportunities to Support Folk & Traditional Arts in the United States report by Amy Kitchener, Shweta Saraswat-Sullivan, and Lily Kharrazi, published in December 2022, Part II is a summary of the Living Cultural Heritage and the Traditional and Folk Arts in the N…
Democratic Public or Populist Rabble: Repositioning the City amidst Social Fracture
The current degree of social fracture that has attended the growing prevalence of populist movements calls into question the viability of democratic practices grounded in collective deliberation. Urban practitioners committed to democratic inclusion must confront the practical question of how to deal with a divided public. Any such effort must address longstanding and mutually reinforcing trends that have both aggravated social fragmentation and …
Unsettling planning theory
Recent political developments in many parts of the world seem likely to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the planetary-scale challenges of social polarization, inequality and environmental change societies face. In this unconventional multi-authored essay, we therefore seek to explore some of the ways in which planning theory might respond to the deeply unsettling times we live in. Taking the multiple, suggestive possibilities of the theme of un…
Everything but the Chickens: Cultural Authenticity Onboard the Chinatown Bus
Since 1998, the so-called "Chinatown buses" have grown from a niche service for Chinese immigrants to an important mode of intercity travel throughout the Northeastern United States. We argue that these buses serve as moving articulations, containers for passengers' perceptions of Chinatown. The Chinatown bus allows riders to explore their conflicted relationships to the Other, and to urban life. We present findings from focus groups with bus pas…
Public art, cultural representation, and the just city
Recent controversies around public art demonstrate that cultural representation in urban public space is enormously consequential. Given that urban planners and policymakers are often involved in the design, siting, approval, and maintenance of such works, this article argues for more effective ways to evaluate potential public art projects and adjudicate conflicts that arise regarding existing works. The authors propose a novel visual rubric as …
Who Says? Authority, Voice, and Authorship in Narratives of Planning Research
Recent developments in communicative planning theory and participatory research methods emphasize collaboration between researcher and research subject in the process of knowledge production. We ask how the ideal of collaboration that is integral to the process of data collection extends to the authorial phase of planning narratives and we identify ethical, pragmatic, and substantive justifications for collaborative authorship. The multidisciplin…
Everything but the Chickens: Cultural Authenticity Onboard the Chinatown Bus
Since 1998, the so-called "Chinatown buses" have grown from a niche service for Chinese immigrants to an important mode of intercity travel throughout the Northeastern United States. We argue that these buses serve as moving articulations, containers for passengers' perceptions of Chinatown. The Chinatown bus allows riders to explore their conflicted relationships to the Other, and to urban life. We present findings from focus groups with bus pas…
What's Love Got To Do With It? Illuminations on Loving Attachment in Planning
10.1080/14649357.2012.731210 Original image by Libby Porter, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia In 2009, the People of Color Interest Group (POCIG) sponsored a round table at the annual Associ
Food Co‐ops and the Paradox of Exclusivity
Consumer food cooperatives constitute a vital part of the alternative food movement in the United States, alongside farmers' markets, community‐supported agriculture, community gardens and other initiatives. Like these efforts, food co‐ops seek to counter the dominance of industrial agriculture and the decimation of local economies. Yet food co‐ops wrestle with a paradox of exclusivity, whereby some practices and people are inadvertently left out…
A capabilities approach to arts and culture? Theorizing community development in West Philadelphia
Arts and culture are increasingly part of the planning and development toolkit in the USA. Justifications for investment in the arts often center on economic development outcomes. In contrast, we propose the use of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to human development, which asserts the importance of the freedom to achieve personal and group well-being through the creation of conditions that maximize opportunity. This paper advances the capabi…
Unsettling planning theory
Recent political developments in many parts of the world seem likely to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the planetary-scale challenges of social polarization, inequality and environmental change societies face. In this unconventional multi-authored essay, we therefore seek to explore some of the ways in which planning theory might respond to the deeply unsettling times we live in. Taking the multiple, suggestive possibilities of the theme of un…
Making Up Creative Placemaking
Creative placemaking is an increasingly prevalent form of planning practice that invokes arts and culture as tools for revitalization. Planners, policymakers, funders, and practitioners are engaged in a discursive struggle to define what is meant by creative placemaking and what value it holds for cities. Using frameworks developed by Foucault and Hacking, I analyze the emergence and ongoing contestation of this term, contrasting the way creative…
Public art, cultural representation, and the just city
Recent controversies around public art demonstrate that cultural representation in urban public space is enormously consequential. Given that urban planners and policymakers are often involved in the design, siting, approval, and maintenance of such works, this article argues for more effective ways to evaluate potential public art projects and adjudicate conflicts that arise regarding existing works. The authors propose a novel visual rubric as …
Grocery Cooperatives as Governing Institutions in Neighborhood Commercial Corridors
We explore cooperatives’ potential to play governing roles in neighborhood commercial corridors (NCCs) by examining one grocery cooperative in Philadelphia that has had stores on three NCCs in the city. We distinguish between an anchor institution role, where one organization provides collective goods for the corridor, and governance, where multiple corridor stakeholders collectively provide goods. We conclude that a cooperative will more likely …
The specter of the “art-less city”: Locating artists in Philadelphia’s creative economy
Artists and creativity are on the urban agenda. Scholars and policymakers have embraced the role of artists as key drivers of economic growth and urban vitality. Yet, accounts of artists’ agency often reduce artists to members of a creative class, rendering the arts an instrument for economic growth and erasing important class and racial differences in the field. This paper centers artists’ perspectives through four focus group discussions with a…
Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid beyond Capitalism
Democratic Public or Populist Rabble: Repositioning the City amidst Social Fracture
The current degree of social fracture that has attended the growing prevalence of populist movements calls into question the viability of democratic practices grounded in collective deliberation. Urban practitioners committed to democratic inclusion must confront the practical question of how to deal with a divided public. Any such effort must address longstanding and mutually reinforcing trends that have both aggravated social fragmentation and …
Response Essays
This is Part III of a three-part forum published in this issue. Part I is the “Executive Summary” and “Introduction” of The Alliance for California Traditional Arts’ Tending the Taproot: Opportunities to Support Folk & Traditional Arts in the United States report by Amy Kitchener, Shweta Saraswat-Sullivan, and Lily Kharrazi, published in December 2022, Part II is a summary of the Living Cultural Heritage and the Traditional and Folk Arts in the N…
Centering artist voices: Notes from a survey of artists and cultural workers in Philadelphia, PA, and Richmond, VA
This essay explores our work collecting artist experiences and attending to the voices of artists themselves in two US cities. Prompted by an earlier phase of focus group research in Philadelphia with artists who voiced their needs as workers, we undertook a survey of working artists in Philadelphia and Richmond, Virginia. This survey research asks about the spatial patterns of artists living, working, and presentation locations and how that geog…
Nihilism, Post-Truth and the Moral Future of Planning: Edited by Andrew Zitcer
A eulogy for creative placemaking
The field of creative placemaking united planners, artists, arts administrators, philanthropists, and policymakers in pursuit of equitable community development. By 2020, changes in funding streams and leadership impacted creative placemaking, while practitioners faced societal shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, racial reckoning, and heightened awareness of structural inequities. Looking at the trajectory of its development, we posit that crea…
Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (7 works) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (6 works) · Art (5 works) · The arts (5 works) · Visual arts (5 works) · Business (4 works)