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ABSTRACT
The Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) comprised a core group of experts on urbanism, design, economics, housing, and planning throughout its ten years of advocacy and implementation from 1923 to 1933. A lesser-known subsequent organization, the Regional Development Council of America (RDCA), was founded twenty-five years later in 1948 in recognition of the 50th anniversary of Howard’s To-morrow. Primed for a postwar development surge, the RDCA’s ambitious agenda ranged from federal planning to urban renewal to community building for ‘productive defense’. This study applies a comparative analysis of archival materials, including review of efforts to sustain the RPAA mission during the bridging period when neither organization was active. While the RDCA only functioned for four years, the core membership consistently advocated for the regional city as the solution to a wide range of postwar challenges at the federal, state, and local levels. In doing so, their strategies addressed the increased professionalization and institutionalization of planning. At the same time, their sustained focus on communitarian regionalism diverged from the growing emphasis on economic development through expansionism that came to dominate the field.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 “Memorandum on New Towns Conferences,” December 1947 to April 1948, prepared by Paul Opperman, Box 7, Clarence S. Stein Papers, #3600, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library (CSP/CUL). The American Institute of Planners and the National Housing Agency invited Osborn to visit during the fall of 1947. Opperman, previously editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Planners (AIP), was President of the AIP from 1950-52.
2 “Memorandum on New Towns Conferences.” In addition to Stein and Osborn, those who attended included Oppermann, editor of the American City Magazine Harold Buttenheim, conservationist Benton MacKaye, Special Assistant to the Administrator of the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency William (Bill) Wheaton, prominent architect Ralph Walker, and director of Westchester County’s Planning Board Hugh Pomeroy. Houser Catherine Bauer and prolific writer and urban critic Lewis Mumford were invited but were unable to attend.
3 Self, “Evolution of the Greater London Plan,” 151.
4 Howard founded the Garden City Association in 1899 to work toward developing garden cities along the lines promoted in his 1898 book, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, reissued in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-Morrow. See Hall, Cities of Tomorrow.
5 Letter from Osborn to Mumford dated January 7, 1947, in Hughes, ed., The Letters, 145.
6 Letter from Mumford to Osborn dated March 6, 1947, The Letters, 148. In addition to Mumford, several scholars argue the RPAA influenced Roosevelt’s framing of the TVA through a July 1931 Round Table on Regional Planning they organised. See Creese, TVA’s Public Planning.
7 Stein, Memorandum dated September 30, 1948, to Members of the Regional Planning Association of America regarding Program for Meeting on October 10, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL. In addition to Stein, attendees included Mumford, Bauer, MacKaye, Buttenheim, Pomeroy, Oppermann, Tracy Augur (principal planner for the TVA), T. J. Kent (city planner and department head of the Department of Civic Planning at Berkeley), Herbert Emmerich (Director, Public Administration Clearing House), Henry Klaber (former Director of Architecture for the Federal Housing Administration), Elisabeth Coit (Principal Project Planner, NYC Housing Authority), Vernon DeMars (former Chief Architect for the Farm Security Administration), Frederic (Fritz) Gutheim (planner and staff writer for the New York Herald Tribune), Chloethiel Woodard Smith (architect and planner), Eric Carlson (Assistant Editor, The American City), Frederick Clark (Planning Director, Regional Planning Association of New York), Matthew Nowicki (Acting Head, North Carolina State College Department of Architecture), and Jaqueline Tyrrwhitt (British town planner).
8 Mumford, “The Regional Planning Association of America: Past and Future,” September 21, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL, 2 and 3.
9 In response to the proposal to revive the RPAA in 1948, Robert Kohn, a mentor and former partner of Stein’s and former President of the New York State Chapter and the national American Institute of Architects (AIA), observed ‘the good old U.S.A. seems to be going in quite another direction nowadays’ (Letter from Kohn to Stein dated August 23, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL).
10 Sussman, “Introduction,” 3.
11 MacKaye and Mumford in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th Edition, 1929, as quoted in MacKaye, “Regional Planning and Ecology,” 350. While MacKaye and Mumford do not define ‘material equipment’, the term implies the built environment, including infrastructure. MacKaye also emphasises the dynamism of the region with flows of population, commodities, and natural systems.
12 See Fishman, “The Metropolitan Tradition in American Planning, and Thomas, “Holding the Middle Ground,” for a discussion of the metropolitan tradition in contrast to communitarian regionalism. Thomas explores those differences via the 1932 debate between RPAA member Mumford and Thomas Adams, who championed the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs. Fishman addresses the tensions and similarities between these two perspectives.
13 Fishman, “The Metropolitan Tradition in American Planning.”
14 Ibid, 79.
15 For more on the membership of the RPAA and their philosophies see: Gillette, Civitas by Design; Buder, Visionaries and Planners; Spann, Designing Modern America; Sussman, “Introduction;” Lubove, Community Planning in the 1920s; Parsons, “Collaborative Genius;” Fulton, “The Garden Suburb;” Birch, “Radburn and the American Planning Movement;” Friedmann and Weaver, Territory and Function; Creese, The Search for Environment; Talen, New Urbanism and American Planning. Individual biographies of various members also provide insight on the broader RPAA membership particularly the chapter entitled “A Thinkers’ Network and the City Housing Corporation” in Larsen, Community Architect.
16 Sussman, “Introduction,” 1.
17 Clarence Stein, “Proposed Garden City and Regional Planning Association,” unpublished notes March 7, 1923, Box 1, CSP/CUL, 2.
18 AIA, Proceedings of the Fifty-second Annual Convention, 14.
19 MacKaye, “An Appalachian Trail.” MacKaye introduced several types of camps, including shelter camps and more permanent community camps and food and farm camps.
20 Stein, ed., “Community Planning and Housing,” 126.
21 “Memo from the Program Committee” (unpublished, June 12, 1923), Box 8, CSP/CUL, 2.
22 Ibid. Later Stein described Geddes’ attendance as ‘a long weekend’ at the Hudson Guild Farm when ‘Geddes led the discussion (and in fact did most of it)’. See letter from Stein to Bauer dated September 27, 1961, CSP/CUL. In that letter, he maintains that many RPAA meetings were ‘informal’ with ‘no record except in our memories’. These occurred ‘during the lunch hour at the City Club;’ MacKaye’s hometown of Shirley Center, Massachusetts; Washington, DC; Stein’s home and his office in New York City.
23 Geddes, Cities in Evolution, 396-97.
24 Buder, Visionaries and Planners, 215.
25 Bing, Wright, Stein, “Preliminary Study of a Proposed Garden Community in the New York City Region,” unpublished (1923), Box 5, CSP/CUL.
26 Ibid, 1.
27 Chatham Village in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania joined Wright and Stein with Bigger in the design of an attached middle income housing project on a hilly site in the Mount Washington neighborhood beginning in 1930 for the limited dividend Buhl Foundation.
28 Regional Planning Association of America, June 8, 1923, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
29 Regional Planning Association of America, “A Housing Policy.” The last meeting of the RPAA occurred in May.
30 Michael Straus and Talbot Wegg of the Public Works Administration (PWA) Housing Division, which ran the program, assert that the New York legislation advocated by the HRPC ‘is the foundation on which all public aid to low-rent housing in the United States is built’. See Straus and Wegg, Housing Comes of Age, 23. Bing and Wright both served on committees to the Conference. Sunnyside Gardens and Radburn were presented as models of large-scale development. See especially Gries and Ford, eds., Slums, Large-scale Housing and Decentralization.
31 Berke, “The Evolution of Green Community Planning,” 396.
32 Birch, “Radburn and the American Planning Movement,” 424.
33 Fulton, “The Garden Suburb,” 14.
34 Grant, Planning the Good Community, 19-20.
35 Though no one event seems to have precipitated their dissolution, Stein alluded to the general tone that came to define the group during this period. In a March 1, 1933 letter to his wife, he highlighted the ‘growing difference among those to whom I am close recently … All after the same objective – a saner world – but off on different roads’ (Stein to MacMahon, March 1, 1933, CSP/CUL). Several members secured employment in early federal New Deal programs, which demanded much of their attention. For more on this period, see Spann, Designing Modern America, and Larsen, Community Architect.
36 See undated notes entitled “Housing Study Guild” circa 1934, 2, CSP/CUL. Others included Stein, Ackerman, Bauer, and architects Henry Churchill and William Lescaze. Funded in part with membership dues, the organization also received support from the Lavanburg Foundation and the Housing Association of New York.
37 See Caramellino, Europe Meets America for a detailed overview of the structure of the HSG. Note that Caramellino incorrectly states that the HSG was ‘[c]reated by the government’ (108).
38 Undated notes entitled “Housing Study Guild” circa 1934, 2, CSP/CUL.
39 Aronovici, Churchill, Lescaze, Mayer, and Wright, “Realistic Replanning.” See also Caramellino, Europe Meets America, for a detailed overview of this project.
40 Aronovici, Churchill, Lescaze, Mayer, and Wright, “Realistic Replanning,” 54.
41 Ibid, 50.
42 Ibid, 51.
43 Kohn served on the World’s Fair Board of Design and chaired the Theme Committee. The nonprofit that guided the film development included Stein, who secured funds from the Carnegie Foundation, Kohn, and Ackerman. Mumford wrote the script, and MacKaye’s Shirley Center was featured as emblematic of New England village life.
44 In addition to Bigger, who served as Chief of Planning, Stein consulted on the program and Wright, Mayer, and Churchill planned and designed the unbuilt Greenbelt Town of Greenbrook, New Jersey.
45 For a detailed discussion of these elements, see Stein, Toward New Towns for America, especially pages 41 & 44.
46 Stein, “City Patterns.”
47 During its 10-year existence, the organization’s name ranged from National Planning Board to National Resources Board to National Resources Committee to the final iteration of NRPB.
48 Scott, American City Planning, 302.
49 Ibid, 304.
50 Birch, “Advancing the Art and Science of Planning: Planners and Their Organizations 1909-1980.”
51 Clarence Stein, “Toward New Towns for America” (unpublished revised March 18, 1948).
52 Clarence S. Stein, “A Program for the Regional Planning Association of America,” unpublished notes dated 4/18/48, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
53 Ibid. Among the regions highlighted were the Mississippi Valley, Missouri Valley, Columbia River Valley, New England, and Central Valley.
54 “Minutes of the Meeting of the Regional Planning Association of America,” April 22, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
55 Letter from Bauer to Stein dated April 13, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
56 Mumford, “The Regional Planning Association of America: Past and Future,” unpublished, September 21, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
57 Regional Planning Council of America, “Minutes of 1st Board of Directors Meeting,” October 14, 1948, 2, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
58 Lederle, “The Hoover Commission,” 91.
59 Stein, “Preliminary Report to RPCA re: Proposed Suggestions to the Hoover Commission,” December 9, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
60 Letter from the RDCA to The Honorable Herbert Hoover, Chairman, Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, undated first draft, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
61 Stein, “Preliminary Report to RPCA.”
62 Regional Development Council of America, Announcement of upcoming February 9, 1949 meeting, undated, with copy of proposed amendment to State of New York, Nos. 1459, 2036, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
63 Pomeroy, “Memo on Redevelopment and Development Legislation – Federal and State,” unpublished dated December 5, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
64 Regional Planning Council of America, “Minutes of 2nd Board of Directors Meeting,” December 5, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL. The committee included Stein, Mumford, Pomeroy, Bauer, and Walter Kroening. At the time, Kroening worked at the Housing and Home Finance Agency of the Public Housing Administration.
65 Regional Planning Council of America, “Minutes of Meeting for RPCA Members in the New York Area,” December 22, 1948, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
66 Ibid.
67 Dubose to Bing, April 24, 1929, as quoted in Allaback, Marjorie Sewell Cautley, 78.
68 “Summary of Discussions of Problems Connected with a Garden City, at a Series of Conferences of the Regional Planning Association of America at the Hudson Guild Farm, October 8 and 9, 1927” (unpublished minutes, October 8 and 9, 1927), 6, Box 180, Lewis Mumford Papers, Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania (LMP/UPA).
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid, 2. Bauer did not attend this conference and later criticized Stein and Associated Architects in an otherwise glowing review of their 1941 Los Angeles project Baldwin Hills Village for excluding all races but white.
73 Regional Planning Council of America, “Constitution,” November 12, 1948, Draft, Box 8 CSP/CUL. Emphasis added.
74 Letter from Bauer to Stein dated April 13, 1948.
75 Stein, “New Towns for America,” unpublished draft, March 18, 1948.
76 RDCA, “Meeting Notice,” January 17, 1950, Box 8, CSP/CUL.
77 “Program CIO Committee on Regional Development and Conservation,” adopted Chicago, Illinois, August 9, 10, 11, 1949, John Brophy, Chairman, Anthony W. Smith, Executive Secretary, Box 8, CSP/CUL. Smith was a member of the RDCA, which received a copy of the CIO Committee’s recommendations in early 1950.
78 See Larsen, Community Architect for a detailed discussion of these RDCA initiatives.
79 For more on dispersal see Parsons, “Shaping the Regional City;” Subcommittee of the Committee on Public Works United States Senate, Hearings on S. 4232: A Bill to Authorize a Program to Provide for the Construction of Federal Buildings Outside of, but in the Vicinity of and Accessible to the District of Columbia, and for Other Purposes, 81st Cong., 2nd sess., 13, 14, and 18 December 1950, Written Statement of C. Stein incorporated into the Record, 178.
80 For more on the planning of Kitimat, see Larsen, “Cities to Come.”
81 Stein’s contributions to the project were minimal. Nowicki, who died in a plane crash in August 1950, was the lead with Mayer on the project. For more on Chandigarh, see Harbin and Larsen, “Communitarian Regionalism in India.”
82 Marcuse, “Who/What Decides What Planners Do?” 79.
83 Letter from Mayer to Stein dated October 26, 1948, CSP/CUL, Box 8.
84 Dear, The Postmodern Urban Condition, 135.
85 Sussman, “Introduction,” 22.
86 Jon A. Peterson details this rift in his book The Birth of City Planning. See also Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, Marcuse, “Who/What Decides,” and von Hoffman, “The End of the Dream” for more on this topic.
87 For more on Hoyt, see Beauregard, “More Than Sector Theory.”
88 Hoyt, The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities. His empirical approach to guiding land investment also appeared that year in a coauthored real estate textbook, Principles of Real Estate. See Beauregard, “More Than Sector Theory” for a detailed assessment of Hoyt’s impact.
89 Fishman, “The Metropolitan Tradition,” 80.
90 Beauregard, “More Than Sector Theory,” 257.
91 Ibid, 259.
92 Dubose to Bing, April 24, 1929, as quoted in Allaback, Marjorie Sewell Cautley, 78.
93 At their October 8-9, 1927 conference, the RPAA members and invited guests noted, ‘the practical difficulty in adopting such a plan in connection with development and sale’ (7).
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Kristin Larsen
Kristin E. Larsen, AICP, is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida. She is author of Community Architect: The Life and Vision of Clarence S. Stein and currently working on an intellectual biography of Henry Wright. Her specialties include housing policy, neighborhood planning, urban and planning history, and historic preservation.