A Familiar Ring: A Retrospective on the First National Conference on City Planning (1909)

Congestion. Blight. Affordable housing. The impact of mass transit. The need for enabling legislation. Lessons from abroad. And, of course, zoning. If you closed your eyes while someone recited the themes of the conference to you, you would swear you were at a gathering of planning officials and professional planners in 2009. You would be wrong. Instead, these were the topics covered 100 years ago at the National Conference on City Planning, held in Washington, D.C., from May 21 to 22, 1909—the first assembly of members and advocates of the emerging city planning movement in the United States.