Book excerpt: Internationally renowned architect and planner David A. Wallace left an indelible mark on the American urban landscape with his inspiring and successful urban renewal projects and innovative design and planning methods. Wallace vividly recounts in his memoir his illustrious urban planning and design career - one that spanned more than five decades. He reveals the inside story of how large-scale urban development projects succeed and traces the creation of his pioneering planning and design principles and methods through case studies of his work in Baltimore and other cities. Wallace's engaging narrative relates his first, and perhaps best-known, major success - the redevelopment of Baltimore's Charles Center that sparked a downtown renaissance and the spectacular renewal of the Inner Harbor. He reflects on his urban growth modeling method that became the basis for award-winning plans for New York's World Financial Center and Battery Park City. He draws on these experiences to urge contemporary planners to look beyond Ground Zero and plan for all of Lower Manhattan. A valuable eyewitness history of the evolution of urban design and planning, Urban Planning/My Way is a readable and captivating memoir by one of the foremost twentieth-century American architects and urbanists.