University of North Carolina at Pembroke sociologist Roger Guy ably uses Chicago’s Uptown as a case study of the emergence of activist architecture and advocacy planning in the mid-20th century.... The author’s enthusiasm for the many levels on which this compelling narrative unfolds complements his academic rigor in getting the details right.... This book provides an excellent opportunity for students to understand the history and philosophy of advocacy planning and activist architecture, as well as to absorb useful insights on the benefits and pitfalls involved with these practices.... [T]his work is an important contribution to the literature on the history of urban planning and architectural design. When Architecture Meets Activism articulates the politics, helps understand the people, and analyzes the professions that came together in Uptown during the 1960s and 1970s. It is a compelling narrative well worth the read.

Journal of Urban Affairs

Guy is at his best when analyzing the complicated lives and motivations of coalition members, primarily male leaders, whose stories are usually hidden in macro studies but are made visible here by his extensive use of interviews. . . . Guy's work challenges the view that access and participation alone equate to influence in decision-making.

Journal of Southern History

In telling this story, Guy captures both the limits of “advocacy planning” as well as the influence of activist architecture on the careers of the professionals involved in the experiment.

Journal of American History

This is an excellent, thoroughly researched and well-written detailed historical account of a group of “advocacy” planners and architects who, in the 1960s, led the effort to revitalize Chicago’s Uptown, a community of poor white migrants from the South. Guy’s book presents a new perspective on urban renewal by uncovering the grassroots organizing role played by a group of radical architects and planners who led the effort to preserve community control over redevelopment in Uptown. This is a ground breaking study that is well suited for urban history, geography, sociology, and planning courses.

Joseph A. Rodriguez, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

For those concerned with the history of America's sometimes turbulent city centers, Roger Guy's vibrant new book is an important read. By exploring the life and death of Hank Williams Village in Chicago's Uptown, he describes how, in the final years of the 1960s, architects and planners came together with political activists to create an alliance, a wave of organized resistance to the orthodoxies of centrally planned urban renewal. The story told in When Architecture Meets Activism—that of the unprecedented level of control and self-determination over their built environment sought by local residents spurred on by the promises of the civil rights era, and the ultimately successful extinguishing of this community-based approach to design—makes clear the profound importance of grassroots decision-making and advocacy planning, and reveals much that can teach us about contemporary urban issues.

Paul Cronin, School of Visual Arts

The once thriving Uptown neighborhood in Chicago was a cauldron of social change at the end of the 1960s. Roger Guy has written an intriguing book about the struggle by residents to fight the city’s urban renewal efforts by proposing their own plan for Hank Williams Village. Through extensive interviews and archival research Guy traces the emergence of advocacy planning, Community Design Centers, and activist architecture from early concepts and theory to application in Uptown. The story of young VISTA Volunteer architects, charismatic leadership among Appalachian migrants living in Uptown, development of a Community Design Center, and the lasting impact on those involved is a must read for anyone interested in urban planning history.

Thomas E. Wagner, University Professor Emeritus of Planning and Urban Studies, School of Planning, University of Cincinnati