Back to our Roots: Planners Being Bold, Brave and Beautiful

This editorial reflects on the enduring foundations of urban and regional planning by revisiting the discipline’s core aspiration to be bold, brave and beautiful. Drawing on seminal planning thinkers—from Ebenezer Howard and Jane Jacobs to John Friedmann, Patsy Healey and Paul Davidoff—the article traces how planning’s intellectual lineage has consistently challenged orthodoxy, embraced democratic contestation, and sought to shape more inclusive and resilient urban futures. The editorial uses contributions in the June 2026 issue of New Planner to illustrate how contemporary practice continues this tradition: confronting emerging infrastructure demands, redefining professional value in the age of AI, linking climate risk to feasibility, addressing car dependency, navigating uncertainty in transport‑led rezoning, and advancing beauty through design, ecological integration and community engagement. Together, these pieces demonstrate that bold ideas, brave practice and beautiful outcomes are mutually reinforcing, and remain essential to planning’s role in shaping places that are both practical and uplifting. The editorial argues that returning to these roots is vital for a profession facing accelerating social, environmental and technological change.