The Full Text of “The City Planners”
The Full Text of “The City Planners”
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“The City Planners” Introduction
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"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.
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“The City Planners” Summary
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While casually driving down these suburban streets on a sunny Sunday in August, we're bothered by just how intensely controlled and orderly everything is. The houses in their perfect little rows with neat, clean trees planted out front confidently reflect how straight the ground is, as if they're scolding our car for having a dent in the door. There's no yelling here or sounds of glass breaking; there's nothing more unexpected than the sensible drone of a mechanical lawnmower as it tidies up the demoralized grass.
But even as the driveways try to avoid any signs of chaos by being so perfectly uniform, and as all the roofs are angled in the same way to shield people from the scorching sky above, there are some things that peek through all this order. This includes the stench of spilled oil hanging about in garages, like some lurking illness; a little paint smear on a brick, popping up like an unexpected bruise; a plastic hose curled up like a snake waiting to pounce; and even the creepily unwavering gaze of the broad windows.
All these things give a quick glimpse into the world that still exists behind or beneath the walls of these houses, which will one day crack as the houses are overturned and slip sideways into a pile of rubble, as imperceptively as the massive, ever-moving bodies of ice that no one's paying any attention to at the moment.
Meanwhile, the City Planners, with the deranged faces of government accomplices, are dispersed all over wild, unmapped regions, hidden from one another, each in his own personal snowstorm.
They're approximating different directions (i.e., north, south, east, west) as they draw impermanent lines, which they treat like strict wooden boundaries, onto a wall in the snow-filled air that surrounds them.
They're mapping the terrifying chaos of an orderly suburb onto the wild, featureless snow.
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“The City Planners” Themes
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Order, Control, and Madness
“The City Planners” critiques humanity’s obsession with controlling its environment. The poem's speaker finds suburbia's monotonous perfection—its orderly houses, manicured lawns, and eerie silence—stifling and strange. At the same time, the speaker suggests that these markers of human "sanit[y]" are just an illusion; people may strive to make their world appear neat and rational, but the world isn't always neat and rational—and this stiff veneer of order is thus liable to crack. The need for such strict control, the poem ultimately implies, is itself a kind of "panic."
While driving through suburban streets, the speaker is “offend[ed]” by the rigid regularity they see. Houses are in precise rows alongside “sanitary trees” that people have deliberately “planted,” and the only sound is the “rational whine of a power mower” that keeps grass “straight” and tidy. In other words, everything is scrupulously controlled; nothing is overgrown, surprising, or out of place.
While the people living in the suburbs may think the lack of “shouting” and the absence of “shatter[ing ...] glass” is a mark of stability, the speaker finds such silence and sterility alarming. To the speaker, such order is an implicit "rebuke" of any signs of imperfection or difference—such as “the dent in our car door,” a mark that makes the speaker stand out. Even the “grass” seems “discouraged” as it's cut “straight” rather than being allowed to grow however it pleases, suggesting that society’s need for “sanit[y]” stifles expression, joy, and personal development.
The speaker suggests that this rigidity and control is in fact a sign of "panic": people are so terrified of disorder that they try to "trac[e]" meaning into the "madness" of nature. Yet this effort, the speaker implies, will fail; chaos will inevitably break through humanity’s attempts to contain it.
To that end, the speaker describes “the smell of spilled oil” as “a faint / sickness lingering in the garages,” suggesting that while everything looks perfect in this suburb, there’s something rotten beneath the surface. There’s also a “landscape behind or under / the future cracks in the plaster” just waiting to make itself known, and eventually all those tidy houses “will slide” into the "seas," gobbled up by the natural world that humanity tried to tame. However much people try to “sidestep hysteria” with their perfect “driveways” and yards, hysteria will find a way through.
The poem thus argues that human desire to impose order on the environment is itself a kind of insanity—a doomed attempt to regulate an irrational world. The speaker imagines the “city planners” thinking they can avoid chaos by dividing wild “territories” into suburbs. But the speaker describes their faces as “insane”; their attempts to control everything, the poem argues, is sheer “madness.”
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-38
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Humanity's Destruction of the Environment
In addition to critiquing the human need for rigid order and conformity, "The City Planners" can also be read as a poem about humanity's increasing distance from and destruction of the environment. For one thing, the poem implies that suburbia’s neat and tidy surface shields people from the true cost of their cushy lives. And it also suggests that these housing developments aren’t just a distraction, but are in fact part of the problem: the poem's city planners, driven by profit and pride, expect to continue developing wild territories into ever-expanding suburbs, using up more of the earth’s natural resources in the process. The poem suggests that such short-sighted greed will eventually result in an unstable and inhospitable planet.
The speaker implies that perfectly "sane" residential streets shelter people from the realities around them, pointing out that “the driveways neatly / sidestep hysteria,” for example, while their homes shield them from “the hot sky.” Indeed, the speaker says that sometimes “the smell of spilled oil” or “a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise” will “give momentary access to / the landscape behind or under / the future cracks in the plaster.” The perfect surface is thus just an illusion; beneath it, the reality of environmental destruction (and specifically, perhaps, the use of fossil fuels) is still there, waiting to be addressed.
These perfect “residential streets” are actively contributing to this destruction as well. When this set of houses falls into disrepair, the poem suggests, the “City Planners” will just build more. They’ll even continue to make the same mistakes, “concealed from each other, / each in his own private blizzard, / guessing directions.” In other words, these “political conspirators” won’t communicate with each other and make a plan that is best for the people and the environment, but will rather continue making decisions alone (ostensibly out of pride and a desire for more personal profit).
The poem suggests such continued exploitation of the earth, its resources, and its inhabitants can only end in ruin. The speaker envisions the future of these houses as they “slide / obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers / that right now nobody notices.” Basically, as long as people continue to ignore the reality of environmental destruction and waste the earth’s resources, the future looks pretty bleak. The houses will “capsize[]” (or tip over, like a boat) into a sea of rubble.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-38
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The City Planners”
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Lines 1-4
Cruising these residential ...
... the sanities:As the poem begins, the speaker and some other unnamed person (or people) are "Cruising" (or leisurely driving) through a neighborhood. Everything about the poem's first two lines suggests comfort and calm:
- Not only is the speaker "cruising" along, but the streets are "residential"—they're streets where people live, rather than, say, the busy streets of a city center.
- It's Sunday, meaning it's the weekend (and a day when many go to church).
- It's also August—the height of summer, a time marked by vacation, leisure, etc.
The speaker thus seems to be just driving around aimlessly, enjoying the sunshine and maybe looking for a little fun.
The next lines, however, flip this image on its head, as the speaker says, "what offends us is / the sanities." The speaker isn't driving through the neighborhood with a sense of enjoyment, it seems, but rather is upset and disturbed by what they call "the sanities"—those things the world has deemed "sane" and normal.
One might assume "sanities" would be comforting, a sign of order and control. That the speaker is offended by these "sanities" is thus ironic—a sign that the speaker is feeling pretty disillusioned with suburbia.
The sounds of these lines, meanwhile, make their imagery more striking. Notice, for example, all the sibilance here (in the form of /s/ and /z/ sounds):
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:These smooth, hushed sounds suggest the ease and comfort—and perhaps the sinister, eerie quiet—of this suburban neighborhood.
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Lines 5-8
the houses in ...
... our car door. -
Lines 9-12
No shouting here, ...
... the discouraged grass. -
Lines 13-16
But though the ...
... the hot sky, -
Lines 17-22
certain things: ...
... the wide windows -
Lines 23-28
give momentary access ...
... now nobody notices. -
Lines 29-33
That is where ...
... own private blizzard; -
Lines 34-38
guessing directions, they ...
... madness of snows.
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“The City Planners” Symbols
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Snow
The blizzards mentioned towards the poem's end symbolize the inherent disorder, irrationality, and wildness of the natural world. Each of the scheming "City Planners" is surrounded by "his own private blizzard," the speaker says, within which he can only "guess[] directions." This might reflect the idea that human ideas of north, south, and so forth are just that: human ideas, a means of assigning order to the world that ultimately exists only in people's own minds.
Next, the speaker says that these planners:
[...] sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing airThis is a metaphorical description of drawing up blueprints or plans for new suburban developments. The speaker is saying that any "lines," or boundaries, the planners draw are "transitory," or impermanent—like trying to fence in the air itself. The white air (that "private blizzard") swirling around each planner can't be contained by any sort of border or wall, which is precisely the point: humanity's attempts to rationally divvy up the world are in fact irrational, meaningless.
At the poem's end, the speaker makes this explicit: the planners are simply "tracing the panic of suburb / order," or trying to assert irrational human order, onto the "madness" that is the natural world.
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.”
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“The City Planners” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Personification
The poem uses personification to imbue the suburban setting with a sense of human agency and also to evoke the power of the natural world.
First, the speaker says that the houses in their perfect rows and the neat and tidy trees out front "assert / levelness of surface like a rebuke." While this personification is subtle, it suggests that these houses and trees are actively scolding the speaker for having a "dent[ed]" car door. The perfection of the suburb reflects its residents' dislike and distrust of anything out of the ordinary.
Later in the stanza, the speaker subtly personifies the grass as well, describes it as "discouraged" while being cut into neat and tidy patches by a lawnmower. This adjective highlights the way "power mower[s]," like many of humanity's inventions, are meant to control the natural world rather than to live in harmony with it. It also suggests that human interference "discourages" or dissuades the environment from growing in ways that are natural and healthy.
There's more personification in lines 13-14, where the speaker says that "the driveways neatly / sidestep hysteria." The image of inanimate "driveways" gingerly evading "hysteria"—or irrational behavior—again fills the setting with a sense of agency and power that reflects the will of its inhabitants. The driveways are neat and orderly because the residents of this suburb think that such neatness and order will keep them at a safe distance from "hysteria."
Finally, in lines 22-25, the speaker says that the "too-fixed stare of the wide windows" gives a brief glimpse into the future, in which these houses will fall apart. By describing the "stare" of these windows, the poem personifies the houses themselves as beings with the ability to "stare." This echoes the earlier personification of the houses and trees in their perfect little rows, again implying that the suburb itself is watching and judging all who enter. That this gaze is "too-fixed" suggests there's something off and unnatural about its unwavering watchfulness. It doesn't seem warm or welcoming, but eerie and judgmental.
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”
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Assonance
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Imagery
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Irony
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Oxymoron
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"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
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(Location in poem: Lines 1-2: “these residential Sunday / streets”)
Designed for people to live in; occupied by private homes.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The City Planners”
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Form
"The City Planners" is a free verse poem, meaning it doesn't follow any specific pattern of meter or rhyme. There is some structure, however, as its 38 lines are broken into 7 stanzas of varying lengths.
Generally, these stanzas get shorter as the poem moves along: the first stanza has 12 lines, while the last has just two. This trajectory might reflect the way that suburbs (or residential areas that are built on city outskirts) disconnect people from each other, keeping everyone in their own little "sanitary" worlds. This privacy and disconnection, the poem's form seems to imply, are part of what is destroying the environment: people no longer work together for what is best for everyone, but rather center themselves and their own desires.
The form could also be seen to mimic the melting of glaciers; as the glaciers melt, they break into pieces which "vanish[]" into the sea.
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Meter
The poem is written in free verse and therefore doesn't follow any regular metrical patterns. Instead, line lengths and rhythms vary greatly—as in the first stanza, where the shortest line is just four syllables long and the longest is 12!
Free verse feels appropriate in a poem that is criticizing humanity's rigid control of its environment. The poem's language itself is loose and unpredictable, thus contrasting with "the houses in pedantic rows" and neat "driveways."
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "The City Planners" does not follow a rhyme scheme. The absence of a rhyme scheme, much like the absence of meter, allows the poem to unfold naturally and unpredictably. This lack of a steady rhyme pattern fits right in with the poem's critique of humanity's destructive desire to "perfect" its environment with "rigid" designs.
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“The City Planners” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is never named, but this person is clearly someone who is not from, or who at the very least doesn't like, the homogenous perfection of modern suburbia. The speaker starts the poem by driving slowly through a suburban neighborhood on a "Sunday" in "August." Despite the seeming lightheartedness of this activity, the speaker is "offend[ed]" by what they see: too-perfect rows of houses and trees, an inhuman silence, and the "whine" of lawnmowers clipping the grass into a uniformly "level[]" surface.
The speaker doesn't fit in here, as evidenced by the fact that they've got a "dent in [their] car door"—a mark of imperfection. And rather than finding the tidiness of the neighborhood comforting or welcoming, the speaker finds it strange, unnatural, and alarming. As an outsider, the speaker feels able to see this world more clearly—and thus to see what's wrong with it.
It's possible to read the speaker as simply being the poet, Margaret Atwood, herself. Atwood is an advocate of environmental causes, and the poem seems to express her own discomfort with rigid conformity.
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“The City Planners” Setting
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The poem takes place on a "dry," sunny Sunday in August as the speaker slowly drives down the quiet streets of a suburban neighborhood. The first two stanzas provide plenty of descriptive details: the neighborhood is made up of "houses in pedantic rows," "planted / sanitary trees," and "driveways" that "sidestep hysteria / by being even." In other words, the neighborhood appears rigidly pristine, without the slightest hint of a flaw.
Yet, despite this seeming perfection, the grass is described as "discouraged," the "smell of spilled oil" is like a "sickness lingering in the garages," and even something as seemingly harmless as a "plastic hose" seems "poised in a vicious coil" like a snake waiting to pounce. For all its orderliness, the setting thus feels threatening and tense—like there's some rot lurking beneath its surface.
Indeed, the speaker imagines that one day the the "landscape" that still exists "behind or under" this world will break through "cracks in the plaster" of these house's walls—that is, that the disorderly, irrational world will make its way back into the open, and those houses themselves will crumble.
At the poem's end, the setting moves to an imagined vision of the "City Planners"—those people tasked with creating these suburban environments in the first place. The speaker depicts such people as isolated in their own "private blizzard[s]," evoking an image of human beings futilely trying to create order when surrounded by fierce chaos.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The City Planners”
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Literary Context
“The City Planners” was published in 1964 in Margaret Atwood’s second collection of poetry, The Circle Game. Many poems in the collection tackle themes related to social conformity and compliance. Such ideas are clearly present in “The City Planners,” with its depiction of suburbia as a place where even the slightest deviation from the norm—such as the speaker having a “dent” in their “car door”—warrants “rebuke.”
Atwood also often writes from the perspective of outsiders and outcasts. In that sense, her later poem "Half-Hanged Mary" makes for an interesting comparison with "The City Planners"; despite being set centuries earlier, during the infamous Salem witchcraft trials, this poem similarly grapples with the tension between social conformity and "hysteria."
In addition to her poetry, Atwood has written many works of fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and criticism. Her work in every genre is frequently noted for its anti-authoritarian, environmentalist, and feminist concerns (all of which can be seen in what is perhaps her most famous work, the dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale).
Atwood’s early poetry, including The Circle Game, was influenced by the work of visionary English poet William Blake, who is associated with the Romantic movement. Blake is known for exploring contrasting states: childhood vs. adulthood, innocence vs. experience, etc. This can be seen in much of Atwood’s work as well, including in this poem's juxtaposition between the perceived “hysteria” of the world and humanity’s “rigid” desire to dominate it. Blake also believed human beings were losing their connection to nature, and therefore their connection to themselves and each other; this fear marks Atwood’s vast body of work as well.
Historical Context
Margaret Atwood was born in Canada in 1939. Her father was an entomologist who studied forest insects, and Atwood spent her formative years developing a deep appreciation for nature while exploring the woods of Ottawa and Quebec.
Published in 1964, “The City Planners” is undoubtedly a response to the proliferation of suburban neighborhoods throughout the mid-20th century. In the wake of World War II, a rise in economic prosperity and the return of veterans who wanted to settle down and have families meant that Canada and the U.S. both entered a housing boom.
To meet demand, houses were often built quickly and cheaply. Everything from the design of the houses themselves to the size and shape of amenities such as stoves, refrigerators, and kitchen cabinets were also often standardized to ensure that the housing industry could keep costs down. And as people fled the cities in favor of cheap real estate and the promise of a more wholesome, traditional family life, dependence on transportation grew.
The poem might subtly allude to this increased dependence on cars (and therefore fossil fuels) with its mention of "the smell of oil" in suburban garages, which it compares to a "sickness." The poem further suggests that the standardization necessary to make these residential areas viable led to dull homogeneity.
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More “The City Planners” Resources
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External Resources
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Atwood's Biography — Learn more about Atwood's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
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The Circle Game — Read a review of Margaret Atwood's first collection of poetry, The Circle Game, in which "The City Planners" appeared.
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Atwood on Climate Change — An article discussing the role of climate change in Atwood's fiction.
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The Problems of Suburbia — A brief article highlighting some of the main environmental concerns presented by suburban housing developments.
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"Home Sweet Suburb" — Learn more about the rise of suburbia in Canada in the mid-20th century.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Margaret Atwood
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