Learning From Mel King

The late Mel King was the preeminent community leader in Boston, Massachusetts, in the late 20 th century. In addition to serving as a nonprofit director, elected official and leader of broad coalitions, he taught planning at MIT for decades and authored a classic text on community organizing. Important ideas that he promoted included reviving and popularizing Fred Hampton’s strategy of a Rainbow Coalition; extending Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of the beloved community by stating that “Love is the question and the answer”; consistently centering the building of community as equal in importance to winning policy reforms; and arguing that planners should approach communities “without a plan” to pursue a collective process of plan-making. In this exploration, appreciation and exposition of Mel King’s ideas, practice and pedagogy, we point to important lessons for planners and planning educations seeking to develop and implement transformative planning. The authors were mentored by and/or collaborated with Mel King.