Key Planning Figures (people)

Question 1

Charles Abrams

Answer 1

created the New York Housing Authority. In 1965 he published The City is the Frontier, a book that was highly critical of U.S. federal policies surrounding slum clearance, urban renewal, and public housing.

Question 2

Thomas Adams

Answer 2

was an important planner during the Garden City movement. He was the secretary of the Garden City Association. U.K. He developed a number of garden suburbs in England.

Question 3

Saul Alinsky

Answer 3

was an advocate of community organizing. Alinsky organized Chicago’s poor in the late 1930s and 1940s. In 1946, he published Reveille for Radicals, which encouraged those who were poor to become involved in American democracy. Later he published Rules for Radicals, which provided 13 rules for community organizing.

Question 4

Sherry Arnstein

Answer 4

wrote “A Ladder of Citizen Participation” for the Journal of the American Planning Association in 1969. This article describes the levels of involvement by citizens depending on the form of participation utilized.

Question 5

Daniel Burnham

Answer 5

was a Chicago architect and prominent proponent of the City Beautiful movement. He was the lead force behind the 1893 Columbian Exposition and later the 1909 Plan of Chicago. His most famous quote is “Make no little plans. They have no fire to stir men’s blood.”

Question 6

Rachel Carson

Answer 6

wrote Silent Spring, an important book in environmental planning.

Question 7

Robert Moses

Answer 7

transformed New York City’s public works from the 1930s through the 1950s. He expanded the state’s park system and built numerous parkways. He also built parks, playgrounds, highways, bridges, tunnels, and public housing.

Question 8

John Nolen, Jr

Answer 8

designed Mariemont, Ohio and was a leading planner and landscape architect. He made substantial contributions including creating the first comprehensive plan in Florida, contributing to the park system in Madison, Wisconsin and designing Venice, Florida.

Question 9

Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.

Answer 9

considered the father of landscape architecture. He is responsible for many of the nation’s most important parks including Central and Prospect Parks in New York City, Niagra Reservation, and university campus landscapes. He was part of the design team for Riverside, IL, laid out in 1868.

Question 10

Clarence Perry

Answer 10

developed the neighborhood unit concept which was implemented in Radburn, New Jersey. He was a key contributor to the 1929 Regional Survey of New York and its Environs.

Question 11

Paolo Soleri

Answer 11

was an architect responsible for designing Arcosanti, an experimental utopian city in Arizona focused on minimizing the impact of development on the natural environment.

Question 12

Clarence Stein

Answer 12

designed Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, NY, Radburn, NJ, and many other garden suburbs in the U.S. He was a major proponent of the Garden City movement. He wrote New Town for America in 1951.

Question 13

Rexford Tugwell

Answer 13

served as the head of the Resettlement Administration during the New Deal. He worked on the greenbelt cities program, which sought construction of new, self-sufficient cities. Tugwell was closely involved in the development of Arthurdale, West Virginia, a Resettlement Administration community.

Question 14

Sir Raymond Unwin

Answer 14

was an English town planner and designer of Letchworth. He wrote Town Planning in Practice, published in 1909.

Question 15

Catherine Bauer Wurster

Answer 15

was a founder of American housing policy. She worked to reform policy that was related to housing and city planning. She served as executive secretary of the Regional Planning Association of America. She wrote Modern Housing and was influential in the passage of the Housing Act of 1937.

Question 16

Hippodamus

Answer 16

the first town planner and
“inventor” of the orthogonal (grid) urban layout (note the pictured ancient city of Dion laid out in a Hippodamean grid system).

Question 17

Charles Abrams

Answer 17

As an international housing consultant, Charles Abrams had a major impact on housing policy after World War II. In the mid-1960s, he headed a task force that recommended consolidating New York’s housing activities, a proposal that led to the creation of the New York City Housing and Development Administration. Designated a National Planning Pioneer in 1993.

Question 18

Frederick J. Adams

Answer 18

Frederick J. Adams (1901–1980) founded the city and regional planning department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1932. Adams insisted that the planning program should be interdisciplinary while also making sure that the field maintained its own identity.

Question 19

Thomas Adams

Answer 19

British-born planner Thomas Adams supervised work on the 1929 Regional Plan of New York and Environs. Adams was a prolific designer of low-density residential developments that were commonly referred to as “garden suburbs.”

Question 20

Sherry Arnstein

Answer 20

Sherry Arnstein became a household name among planners in 1969 when she published her ground-breaking article “A Ladder of Citizen Participation” about the hierarchy of public involvement. Arnstein’s work influenced how planners and communities go about engaging the public in the planning and decision-making process, provided the theoretical framework for advocacy planning, and organized planners’ understanding of meaning public participation as a way for citizens to be equal partners in shaping programs and plans.

Question 21

Edmund N. Bacon

Answer 21

Edmund N. Bacon, Philadelphia’s planning director from 1949 to 1970, is honored for bringing national attention to the rebuilding of the American city in the post-World War II era. In Design of Cities, Bacon explains his philosophy of design, derived in part from his study of great urban design achievements of the past, and shows how it applies to the revived design of mid-20 century Central City Philadelphia. Designated a National Planning Pioneer in 1993.

Question 22

Frederick H. Bair, Jr.

Answer 22

Much of today’s planning theory and practice is based on the writings and experience of Frederick H. Bair Jr., author of The Text of a Model Zoning Ordinance. He also refined the land-use intensity system, which he first adapted to Norfolk, Virginia. was a founder of the Florida Planning and Zoning Association (FPZA) (1950).

Question 23

Harland Bartholomew

Answer 23

Harland Bartholomew was the first planner ever to be put on staff by an American city. It was Newark, New Jersey, that hired Bartholomew to work on a comprehensive plan in 1914, a year after he started his planning career. Also wrote a comprehensive plan for st. Louis.

Question 24

Edward Murray Bassett

Answer 24

Edward Murray Bassett (1863–1948) chaired the commission that produced New York City’s landmark 1916 zoning code plan.

Question 25

Edward H. Bennett

Answer 25

Born in Wiltshire, England, Edward H. Bennett worked with architect Daniel H. Burnham on the 1909 Plan of Chicago. In the plan, Burnham and Bennett created a document that gave essence to the City Beautiful planning philosophy. He also served on the Chicago Plan Commission into the 1930s.

Question 26

Alfred Bettman

Answer 26

Alfred Bettman was a Cincinnati lawyer who drafted the bill which enabled the creation of local planning commissions in the state. He played a key role in establishing the constitutionality of zoning in the 1926 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the City of Euclid, Ohio, and Ambler Realty Company.

Question 27

Ernest J. Bohn

Answer 27

Ernest J. Bohn was a Cleveland city council member who, in the mid-1930s, founded what is now the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO), and created the nation’s first metropolitan housing authority.

Question 28

F. Stuart Chapin, Jr.

Answer 28

He is known for applying social science methods to the study of urban growth, systematizing the study of activity patterns, and emphasizing citizen participation in the planning process.

Question 29

Charles H. Cheney

Answer 29

California planner Charles H. Cheney (1884–1943) was a founding member of the American City Planning Institute in 1917. He is credited with helping win passage of the state’s first planning law in 1915 and with developing such regulatory instruments as protective covenants, architectural controls, and homeowner associations. Cheney organized the first California Conference on City Planning, held in Monterey, California, in October 1914.

Question 30

Paul Davidoff

Answer 30

Developed the concept of the “advocacy planner” Founded the Suburban Action Institute in 1969, in which members challenged exclusionary zoning in courts, winning in Mt. Laurel case. That decision led to the New Jersey State Supreme Court requirement that communities must supply their “regional fair share” of low-income housing needs.

Question 31

George Burdett Ford

Answer 31

Created the Technical Advisory Corporation of New York, the nation’s first private planning consulting firm. Ford went on to produce the New York City code of 1916, the first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the country.

Question 32

Frederick Gutheim

Answer 32

Frederick Gutheim (1908–1993) was the co-author of the 1976 master plan for the U.S. Capitol and creator of the historic preservation program at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Question 33

John Tasker Howard

Answer 33

John Tasker Howard (1911–1995) was planning director of Cleveland, Ohio, and a professor of city and regional planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his alma mater. Howard served as president of the Ohio Planning Conference, on the board of the American Society of Planning Officials, and as president of the American Institute of Planners. In 1960, he became the first president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, helping to guide academic planning programs during a period of rapid expansion.

Question 34

T.J. Kent, Jr.

Answer 34

T.J. Kent, Jr., was the first chairman of the first graduate planning program on the West Coast at the University of California at Berkeley. He also authored The Urban General Plan (1964).

Question 35

George Edward Kessler

Answer 35

George Edward Kessler (1862–1923) designed the Kansas City, Missouri Park System and site of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. He was a founding member of the American Institute of Planners and a member of the National Council of Fine Arts. During his career, he produced plans for dozens of communities, park and boulevard systems, schools, and private estates.

Question 36

Pierre Charles L’Enfant

Answer 36

Known for his 1792 plan of Washington, D.C., whose radial streets and grand vistas influenced generations of American planners, Parisian born Pierre Charles L’Enfant was made a major in the Continental Army in 1778 and was later charged with creating a plan for locating public buildings in the new capital city on the Potomac River.

Question 37

Kevin Lynch

Answer 37

His most famous work, Image of the City, published in 1960, was the result of a five-year study on how people perceive and organize spatial information as they navigate through cities. Created mental mapping and the Lynch Map

Question 38

Benton MacKaye

Answer 38

Conservationist and forester Benton MacKaye is most well known for having conceptualized and later having helped create the Appalachian Trail. He studied at Harvard University and went on to publish The New Exploration in 1928. MacKaye’s efforts in the 1920s created the foundations for the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Resettlement Program.

Question 39

Ian Lennox McHarg

Answer 39

Ian Lennox McHarg (1920–2001), a Scottish-born landscape architect, changed the face of the planning profession through his ecological principles and approach to plans and design. In 1954, McHarg joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania where he pushed for the creation of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning. He is renowned for his advocacy of ecological planning and for the layered mapping techniques that created the foundation for today’s geographic information systems.

Question 40

Mary Means

Answer 40

Sparked and has led the movement in main street revitalization for nearly four decades. She conceived of a 3-town pilot project, then led the team that took it to scale nationally. Now known as Main Street America.

Question 41

Harold V. Miller

Answer 41

Harold V. Miller was a longtime head of the Tennessee State Planning Commission. He also coauthored section 701 of the U.S. Housing Act of 1954.

Question 42

Arthur Ernest Morgan

Answer 42

Arthur Ernest Morgan, from Ohio, was named head of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933. He created the foundations for the authority’s regional programs and for the new town of Norris, Tennessee. Among his many books is The Making of the TVA (1974).

Question 43

Robert Moses

Answer 43

Robert Moses (1888–1981) left his mark on New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County, New York, during the mid 20th century. Although never elected to public office, he was considered one of the most powerful persons in New York State government from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was chief in the design and construction of more than 400 miles of parkways, the Triborough Bridge, and Jones Beach, the world’s largest public bathing beach.

Question 44

Lewis Mumford

Answer 44

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), author and critic, promoted the idea of planning through such books as The Culture of Cities (1938) and The City in History (1961), the latter of which received the National Book Award. He believed that urban planning should accentuate a natural relationship between people and their living spaces.

Question 45

John Nolen, Sr.

Answer 45

John Nolen, Sr. was a prolific planner, known for his model new towns of Kingsport, Tennessee (1915), Venice, Florida (1926), and Mariemont, Ohio (1926). In 1907, he produced a city beautiful plan for the town of Roanoke, Virginia. His General Plan for the Remodeling of Roanoke, initiated by the Women’s Civic Betterment Club, provided a blueprint for developing the town’s street grid and parkway system.

Question 46

Charles Dyer Norton

Answer 46

The Regional Plan Association, led by Charles Dyer Norton, initiated its Regional Plan for New York and Its Environs. Published in 1929, the plan was the world’s first comprehensive, long-range metropolitan plan for the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut tri-state area.

Question 47

Charles McKim Norton

Answer 47

Charles Norton was director of the Regional Plan Association of New York from 1945 until his retirement in 1969, guiding completion of the organization’s second regional plan. He led the drive to create the Gateway National Recreation Area of New York and New Jersey, the nation’s first urban national park.

Question 48

Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.

Answer 48

Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. (1822–1903), a landscape architect, designed many well-known urban parks, most notably Central Park in New York City. He produced plans for entire systems of parks and parkways that connected cities to green spaces, such as the park system he designed for Buffalo, New York.

Question 49

Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.

Answer 49

Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (1870–1957) is best known for continuing the work of his father, Frederick Olmsted, Sr., and his lifetime commitment to wildlife conservation and national parks, including projects at the Everglades and Yosemite National Park. He also designed Forest Hill Gardens in Queens, New York, and Palos Verdes Estates in Los Angeles County, California. He served as the first president of the American City Planning Institute.

Question 50

Lawrence Orton

Answer 50

Lawrence Orton was the New York Regional Plan Association’s secretary in the mid-1930s and a longtime member of the New York City Planning Commission.

Question 51

Clarence Arthur Perry

Answer 51

Clarence Arthur Perry is the originator of the “neighborhood unit” concept, which he developed in the 1920s as associate director of the Department of Recreation of the Russell Sage Foundation. He based his principles on Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, New York, where he lived

Question 52

Gifford Pinchot

Answer 52

Gifford Pinchot, America’s first professionally trained forester. Pinchot implemented the practice of selective rather than unrestrained harvesting of America’s forests.

Question 53

Jacob August Riis

Answer 53

Jacob August Riis (1849–1914) used photography and writing to reveal the terrible conditions of the urban poor in the U.S. Born in Denmark, Riis came to the United States in 1870. How the Other Half Lives (1890) and The Children of the Poor (1892) led to the first federal investigation of slum conditions and to changes in New York’s housing laws that later became national models.

Question 54

Charles Mulford Robinson

Answer 54

Charles Mulford Robinson was a chief promoter of the City Beautiful movement and was well-known as a pioneering urban planning theorist. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Robinson became the first professor of city planning (civic design) in the country. He wrote the first guide to City Planning in 1901, titled The Improvement of Towns and Cities.

Question 55

James W. Rouse

Answer 55

James W. Rouse chaired the committee that recommended the urban renewal program included in the federal Housing Act of 1954. He is known equally as a major shopping center developer, builder of the new town of Columbia, Maryland, and creator of festival marketplaces.

Question 56

Charlotte Rumbold

Answer 56

Charlotte Rumbold helped found the Ohio Planning Conference in 1919, the first statewide citizen-based planning group. As a lobbyist for the group in the 1920s and 1930s, she won legislative support for planning enabling laws, zoning and subdivision regulations, and public housing.

Question 57

Ladislas Segoe

Answer 57

Segoe was an unwavering advocate of independent, professional planning and is most well-known as editor of The Local Planning Administration, also known as the “green book.” First published in 1941.

Question 58

Donald Shoup, FAICP

Answer 58

Donald Shoup’s work has redefined the relationship between transportation and land use. He has extensively studied parking as a key link between transportation and land use, with important consequences for cities, the economy, and the environment. Shoup’s book, The High Cost of Free Parking and his other innovative ideas have led to cities across the country reevaluating their parking policies with the new realization that parking has impacts not only in the here and now, but in the greater community and environment for years to come.

Question 59

Clarence S. Stein

Answer 59

Clarence Stein studied architecture at Columbia University and the École des Beaux-Arts. He worked in the office of Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, where he assisted in the planning of the San Diego World’s Fair (1915). Along with Lewis Mumford and Henry Wright, Stein was a founding member of the Regional Planning Association of America, a group instrumental in importing Ebenezer Howard’s garden city idea from England to the United States. Stein and Wright collaborated on the design of Radburn, New Jersey (1928–32), a garden suburb noted for its superblock layout.

Question 60

Rexford Tugwell

Answer 60

Rexford Tugwell (1891–1979) devised a plan to resettle the Depression-era poor in suburban new towns. Three towns were built: Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin. Later in his career, Tugwell served briefly as New York City planning director and as governor of Puerto Rico, where he drafted innovative laws that guided the island’s postwar development. In 1946, he founded a planning program at the University of Chicago that influenced a generation of planning educators.

Question 61

David A. Wallace

Answer 61

David A. Wallace, AICP (1918–2004) contributed significantly to the fields of planning and urban design as a professional, builder of communities, and teacher. As a founding partner of Wallace Roberts & Todd and a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, he brought a specialized knowledge of the potential for urban redevelopment and revitalization strategies.

Question 62

Henry Wright

Answer 62

Henry Wright (1878–1936) was an architect and advocate of the garden city movement. He worked with Clarence Stein in the 1920s on Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, New York, and Radburn in Fairlawn, New Jersey. Sunnyside Gardens was one of the earliest developments in the country to embrace the “superblock” model in the United States. In the 1930s, he designed Chatham Village, an APA Great Neighborhood, in Pittsburgh.

Question 63

Patrick Geddes

Answer 63

Patrick Geddes of Scotland, the father of regional planning, to regional development in the United States.

Question 64

Lawrence Veiller

Answer 64

Recognized as the leading American proponent of housing standards, codes, and enforcement during the early decades of the 20th century, Lawrence Veiller was a housing reformer and a critic of the dumbbell flats built throughout New York City after the passage of the “old law” in 1879. He led the successful campaign for revision of tenement house laws that resulted in the “new law” of 1901. He served as deputy commissioner of the New York City Tenement House Department, organized the National Housing Association, and served as its first director.

Question 65

Jean Gottman

Answer 65

Megalopolis

Question 66

Paolo Soleri

Answer 66

was an architect responsible for designing Arcosanti, an experimental utopian city in Arizona focused on minimizing the impact of development on the natural environment.