Reviews, Endorsements, and Media Appearances

Most Recent

"Gender-Sensitive City-Planning"
Skirt! Magazine (Jacksonville, FL)
Janice Metzger discusses gender issues in transportation planning.

"City planning is not only the design of physical spaces. Its essential elements include consideration and care for people, and including them in the planning process! Burnham's Plan of Chicago could have been a comprehensive one, but it wasn't. Every person - especially every city planner - who reads the 1909 Plan of Chicago should read this book.  You will be nodding throughout and find yourself astounded that so much was missing."

- Karen L. Stonehouse, AICP, President, American Planning Association - Illinois Chapter

 "What Would Jane Say? is not only an insightful historical work that highlights the work of Jane Addams and her progressive contemporaries, it is also a helpful guide that offers valuable lessons and ideas that planners and public-policy makers can apply today. If you are considering a career in urban planning, social work, or local government, What Would Jane Say? is a recommended read. There is much to glean from this book that speaks to why and how social factors should be incorporated in the crafting of any master development plan."    

- Alderman Manny Flores, 1st Ward, Chicago

"Janice Metzger's relentless inquiry, integrity, and passion for the subject are evident on every page. The 'Burnham' Plan was Chicago's gift to the world. What Would Jane Say? is a much needed expansion of the dialogue on the ingredients that make a healthy city, and it reminds us why place matters."

- Sylvia Ewing, Veteran producer and writer

"The Burnham Plan is often treated like a sacred text by urban planners. Its centennial is being celebrated in Chicago, the city it helped to define, with a reverential year-long tribute. Against this backdrop it's an illuminating relief to read Janice Metzger's What Would Jane Say? For me, the book exposes the nuances of the political and social conditions in which the Burnham Plan was forged. I was fascinated to learn how the seemingly innocuous frameworks of this regional vision were formed and reformed over the decades, casting for better and for worse, a long shadow over the shape and institutions of Chicago.

Had Metzger's history stopped there it would have been enough. Happily she dared to delve deeper, asking what could have been had the Burnham Plan included the voices of the female reformers of the day. And rather than simply catalogue these voices Metzger puts the reader right in the room with Jane Addams and her contemporaries as they debate subjects that dominate the Burnham Plan like transportation and open space as well as subjects glaringly absent from the Pan such as public health, juvenile justice, housing, and labor.

The conversations are historical fiction, cobbled together from the fragments that are known about the founding generation of Chicago's women leaders. Reading them, however, I'm struck by how so much of what was being debated 100 years ago continues to be discussed to this day, and how the social and economic divisions that existed then persist today. For me, through the imagined conversations of a century ago, it becomes clear that we still need to expand the regional vision. But not by making so-called big plans; rather by going small, which is inevitably a much harder, braver task. Metzger's work reveals not just the more liveable city that might have been, but creates a hopeful space for the Chicago that could be should we choose to open our eyes to the bigness of making small plans."

- Ben Helphand, Executive Director, NeighborSpace

"It appears history can and does repeat itself! As an elected official, I am struck by the comparisons of what Ms. Metzger writes of the days of Burnham's Plan of Chicago and Jane Addams's Hull-House, and life in Chicago as we know it today. As she notes, 'Chicago residents in 1909 suffered from corruption in government, inequitable taxation, overcrowded schools, unsanitary public hospitals, and a host of other social ills.' Throw in gun violence and road rage and you've described Chicago one hundred years later! While the sad truth lies in what little has changed, this book offers hope for what can change. Let's hope leaders will soon start asking: 'What Would Jane Say?'!" 

- Kathy Ryg, Illinois State Representative, District 59

"After reading Janice Metzger's account of the work of Jane Addams and the remarkable women who shared her vision, I wonder not only what would Jane and her colleagues say now, but what Chicago and the region might have become if their words had been heeded, and their models followed through the years. Given the similarity of today's challenges to those they so bravely confronted a hundred years ago, this book suggests that it is not too late to revisit their world, and emulate their efforts.
Metzger has truly captured the spirit of Jane Addams and her associates in this fascinating story of how these women put their intelligence and compassion to work toward a creating a livable city for the people of Chicago. Unlike Burnham's 'City Beautiful' Plan, these generous women not only recognized the needs of the people and identified practical ways to solve them, they put them into practice.

Metzger's own private and professional efforts to make the region more livable and beautiful have made her the perfect narrator for this engrossing book. She makes a compelling argument for a return the to the 'model of the collaborative, honest, and civic-minded network of women of all classes and races.'"

- Sheila H. Schultz, Past President of the Village of Wheeling

"After reading What Would Jane Say?, I felt the need to retrieve an old history of the Association House and read the names of the women who were involved. I had often walked the halls of our old building and wished that the women would speak to me. They have now. The impact of their wisdom and their struggles along with their successes continue to motivate the staff and leadership of modern day settlement houses and the communities we serve. This challenges me to do more and I hope that it will inspire others to do the same, after all, what would Jane say?"

- Harriet Sadauskas, President, Association House of Chicago, Est.1899

 "What Would Jane Say? is essential reading for anyone remotely interested in cities and urban planning today. What Metzger reveals happening one hundred years ago, through her research and insightful hypothetical narrative among women city-builders, continues to limit most mainstream planning in the US - a fervent belief that the design and workings of the city should strive to support business first, on the simple and misguided premise that this will benefit all people. As the women and men discuss in detail, this is not only misguided and narrow, it is a fundamentally unbalanced approach that ignores the real needs of the workers, their families, and the communities they live in, and more broadly the pursuit of social justice for all.

Moving beyond critique, Metzger provides insights from the past that can benefit all who today strive to plan with and for people of all classes, genders, and colors. Most pointed is the call to rethink the big plan and instead consider 'visionary and broad-reaching' plans with "judiciously targeted small investments." Whether small or grand, we are reminded by this book that even the best plans are neither solution nor salvation if they are not implemented."

Television

WGN-TV Midday News
Interview with author Janice Metzger on Channel 9's News at Noon (09/17/2009)

Radio

WBEZ, Worldview, Chicago Matters: Beyond Burnham: Exploring the Burnham Legacy"
Janice Metzger and three other panelists look at the legacy of Daniel Burnham, 100 years after the Plan of Chicago.

In Print

Daily Herald: "Book explores how Plan of Chicago could have used a woman's touch"
8/11/2009

Mindful Metropolis: Book Reviews
June 2009

Skirt! Magazine (Jacksonville, FL): "Gender-Sensitive City-Planning"
Janice Metzger discusses gender issues in transportation planning.

Streetwise: "Obama & Jane Addams Linked In" (sidebar)
December 2, 2009

Today's Chicago Woman: TCW Book Club
November 2009

Windy City Times: Books: "If women had their way: An urban fantasy"
October 21, 2009 

Online

The Burnham Plan Centennial: "Daniel Burnham and Jane Addams: What migh have been? Or not?"
9/10/2009

Community Media Workshop Newstips: "Burnham Plan: A Critical View"
3/22/2009

Pete Lit: "The Other Side of the Burnham Plan"
8/9/2009

Smart Growth Resource Library
"...[N]ot only an insightful historical work that highlights the work of Jane Addams and her progressive contemporaries, it is also a helpful guide that offers valuable lessons and ideas that planners and public-policy makers can apply today."

Miscellaneous

Women and Children First's Top Sellers"
Top seller, week of January 11, 2010, reported in "Chicago Subtext" on Chicagonow.com.

For press kits and review copies of all Lake Claremont Press titles,

and for information on media interviews, bookstore/library programs, and other events,

contact Sharon Woodhouse at 312/226-8400 or sharon@lakeclaremont.com.