"The City Planners" is a poem by the Canadian poet, novelist, and environmentalist Margaret Atwood, first published in her 1964 poetry collection "The Circle Game." The poem, which takes place in a tidy, monotonous suburb, presents humanity's desire for conformity and rigid control over the environment as strange, stifling, and ultimately futile. In fact, the speaker argues that humanity's desire to stave off the essential "hysteria" of the world is itself a form of madness. The poem also targets the misuse of the earth's resources by "city planners"—here, presented as conniving people who selfishly try to force human order onto the natural world out of vanity and greed.

• Read the full text of “The City Planners”

• “The City Planners” Summary

• “The City Planners” Themes

  • 

    Order, Control, and Madness

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-38
  • 

    Humanity's Destruction of the Environment

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-38

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The City Planners”

  • Lines 1-4

    Cruising these residential ...
    ... the sanities:

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 5-8

    the houses in ...
    ... our car door.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 9-12

    No shouting here, ...
    ... the discouraged grass.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 13-16

    But though the ...
    ... the hot sky,

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 17-22

    certain things: ...
    ... the wide windows

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 23-28

    give momentary access ...
    ... now nobody notices.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 29-33

    That is where ...
    ... own private blizzard;

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 34-38

    guessing directions, they ...
    ... madness of snows.

    

    

    

    

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• “The City Planners” Symbols

  • 

    Snow

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Lines 33-38: “each in his own private blizzard; / guessing directions, they sketch / transitory lines rigid as wooden borders / on a wall in the white vanishing air / tracing the panic of suburb / order in a bland madness of snows.”

• “The City Planners” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Personification

    

    

    

    

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    Where personification appears in the poem:

    • Lines 5-7: “the houses in pedantic rows, the planted / sanitary trees, assert / levelness of surface like a rebuke”
    • Line 12: “the discouraged grass”
    • Lines 13-14: “But though the driveways neatly / sidestep hysteria”
    • Line 22: “the too-fixed stare of the wide windows”

  • Alliteration

    

    

    

    

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    Where alliteration appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “Sunday”
    • Line 2: “streets,” “sunlight”
    • Line 4: “sanities”
    • Line 5: “pedantic,” “planted”
    • Line 6: “sanitary”
    • Line 7: “surface”
    • Line 8: “dent,” “door”
    • Line 9: “shouting”
    • Line 10: “shatter”
    • Line 12: “straight,” “swath”
    • Line 16: “same,” “slant”
    • Line 17: “certain”
    • Line 18: “smell,” “spilled”
    • Line 19: “sickness”
    • Line 20: “splash,” “brick,” “surprising,” “bruise”
    • Line 22: “wide,” “windows”
    • Line 27: “gradual,” “glaciers”
    • Line 28: “now,” “nobody,” “notices”
    • Line 36: “wall,” “white”

  • Consonance

    

    

    

    

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    Where consonance appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “Cruising these residential”
    • Lines 1-2: “Sunday / streets”
    • Line 2: “August sunlight”
    • Line 3: “offends us is”
    • Line 4: “sanities”
    • Line 5: “pedantic,” “planted”
    • Line 6: “sanitary trees, assert”
    • Line 7: “levelness,” “surface,” “like,” “rebuke”
    • Line 8: “dent,” “door”
    • Line 9: “shouting”
    • Line 10: “shatter”
    • Line 11: “whine,” “power mower”
    • Line 12: “straight swath,” “discouraged grass”
    • Line 14: “sidestep hysteria”
    • Line 16: “same slant,” “avoidance,” “sky”
    • Line 17: “certain”
    • Line 18: “smell,” “spilled oil”
    • Line 19: “sickness,” “lingering,” “garages”
    • Line 20: “splash,” “paint,” “brick,” “surprising,” “bruise”
    • Line 21: “plastic hose poised,” “vicious”
    • Line 22: “too-fixed stare,” “wide windows”
    • Line 23: “access”
    • Line 24: “landscape”
    • Line 25: “cracks,” “plaster”
    • Line 26: “capsized,” “will slide”
    • Line 27: “obliquely,” “clay,” “seas,” “gradual,” “glaciers”
    • Line 28: “now nobody notices”
    • Line 29: “City Planners”
    • Line 30: “insane faces,” “political conspirators”
    • Line 31: “scattered,” “over unsurveyed”
    • Line 32: “territories,” “concealed”
    • Line 35: “wooden”
    • Line 36: “wall,” “white”
    • Line 38: “bland madness ,” “snows”

  • Assonance

    

    

    

    

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    Where assonance appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “these”
    • Line 2: “streets”
    • Line 4: “sanities”
    • Line 5: “pedantic,” “planted”
    • Line 6: “sanitary,” “assert”
    • Line 7: “surface”
    • Line 15: “being,” “even”
    • Line 19: “sickness lingering”
    • Line 21: “poised”
    • Line 22: “coil”
    • Line 26: “capsized,” “slide”
    • Line 27: “obliquely,” “clay,” “glaciers”
    • Line 30: “insane,” “faces”
    • Line 34: “guessing,” “directions,” “sketch”

  • Imagery

    

    

    

    

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    Where imagery appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-2
    • Lines 5-6
    • Lines 9-10
    • Lines 11-12
    • Lines 13-16
    • Lines 18-22
    • Lines 24-27
    • Lines 35-38

  • Simile

    

    

    

    

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    Where simile appears in the poem:

    • Lines 5-8: “the houses in pedantic rows, the planted / sanitary trees, assert / levelness of surface like a rebuke / to the dent in our car door.”
    • Line 20: “a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise”
    • Line 27: “gradual as glaciers”
    • Lines 34-35: “they sketch / transitory lines rigid as wooden borders”

  • Metaphor

    

    

    

    

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    Where metaphor appears in the poem:

    • Lines 18-19: “the smell of spilled oil a faint / sickness lingering in the garages,”
    • Lines 26-27: “when the houses, capsized, will slide / obliquely into the clay seas”
    • Line 33: “each in his own private blizzard;”
    • Line 36: “on a wall in the white vanishing air”
    • Lines 37-38: “tracing the panic of suburb / order in a bland madness of snows.”

  • Irony

    

    

    

    

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    Where irony appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-4: “Cruising these residential Sunday / streets in dry August sunlight: / what offends us is / the sanities:”
    • Lines 29-30: “That is where the City Planners / with the insane faces of political conspirators”

  • Oxymoron

    

    

    

    

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    Where oxymoron appears in the poem:

    • Line 35: “transitory lines rigid”
    • Lines 37-38: “panic of suburb / order”

• “The City Planners” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Residential
  • Sanities
  • Pedantic
  • Sanitary
  • Assert
  • Rebuke
  • Abrupt
  • Swath
  • Hysteria
  • Sidestep
  • Capsized
  • Obliquely
  • Conspirators
  • Unsurveyed territories
  • Transitory
  • Rigid
  • Suburb
  • Bland
  • (Location in poem: Lines 1-2: “these residential Sunday / streets”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The City Planners”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “The City Planners” Speaker

• “The City Planners” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “The City Planners”

• More “The City Planners” Resources

  • External Resources

    • Atwood's Biography — Learn more about Atwood's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.

    • The Circle Game — Read a review of Margaret Atwood's first collection of poetry, The Circle Game, in which "The City Planners" appeared. 

    • Atwood on Climate Change — An article discussing the role of climate change in Atwood's fiction.

    • The Problems of Suburbia — A brief article highlighting some of the main environmental concerns presented by suburban housing developments. 

    • "Home Sweet Suburb" — Learn more about the rise of suburbia in Canada in the mid-20th century.

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by Margaret Atwood

    • Half-Hanged Mary

    • Siren Song

    • This Is a Photograph of Me

    • [you fit into me]

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