Though previous studies examine university expansion and impacts on adjacent, often economically disenfranchised and segregated communities of color, most focus on large urban areas of the Midwest and Northeast following World War II (WWII). We assess the founding of a land grant university in a Southern, majority African American town and its subsequent direct and indirect community impacts. Our findings reveal the range of planning and land development tools deployed from that university’s founding through the early post-WWII period that reinforced racial displacement, disenfranchisement, and segregation. Understanding this legacy is essential to pursuing racial equity and remedying structural disparities.

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.

Problem, research strategy, and findings This study contributes to our understanding of how planning reproduces the "dominant narratives" of the most powerful, especially those that stigmatize minority neighborhoods, but also how equity-minded planners can identify and apply residents' views, or their "counternarratives." To enable the focus on social equity, we used critical race theory (CRT) to examine enduring racial stigma, particularly against African Americans, in historical and current planning narratives. Specifically, we conducted a case study of more than 5 decades of neighborhood planning in the Porters neighborhood of Gainesville (FL) to understand how planners' roles in storytelling and narratives reinforce inequity. Using a thematic narrative analysis, we discovered patterns and relationships in stories and narratives from within and outside the neighborhood and how dominant narratives became embedded in planning documents. The thematic narrative analysis of the Porters case was informed by our 2017-2018 research project to pilot a participatory neighborhood narrative for use in local planning. Through this analysis of practice in an African American community within a Deep South college town, we conclude that narratives matter and have profound consequences. Although neighborhood planning has shifted to include participatory methods, planners often fail to examine their own biases and the racist presumptions of planning culture and institutions before crafting policy. Takeaway for practice Narratives are not only externally imposed on locales by surrounding residents but are also integrated and reproduced in planning documents. Reflective equity-minded planners can use narrative inquiry and CRT to deliberately examine the prevailing narratives within their historic and current policies. Using this study's approach as a starting point, planners can examine how narratives can compete and are reproduced in the media and planning documents, by planning staff, and among neighborhood residents and to what ends.

Abstract Problem, research strategy, and findings This study contributes to our understanding of how planning reproduces the “dominant narratives” of the most powerful, especially those that stigmatize minority neighborhoods, but also how equity-minded planners can identify and apply residents’ views, or their “counternarratives.” To enable the focus on social equity, we used critical race theory (CRT) to examine enduring racial stigma, particularly against African Americans, in historical and current planning narratives. Specifically, we conducted a case study of more than 5 decades of neighborhood planning in the Porters neighborhood of Gainesville (FL) to understand how planners’ roles in storytelling and narratives reinforce inequity. Using a thematic narrative analysis, we discovered patterns and relationships in stories and narratives from within and outside the neighborhood and how dominant narratives became embedded in planning documents. The thematic narrative analysis of the Porters case was informed by our 2017–2018 research project to pilot a participatory neighborhood narrative for use in local planning. Through this analysis of practice in an African American community within a Deep South college town, we conclude that narratives matter and have profound consequences. Although neighborhood planning has shifted to include participatory methods, planners often fail to examine their own biases and the racist presumptions of planning culture and institutions before crafting policy. Takeaway for practice Narratives are not only externally imposed on locales by surrounding residents but are also integrated and reproduced in planning documents. Reflective equity-minded planners can use narrative inquiry and CRT to deliberately examine the prevailing narratives within their historic and current policies. Using this study’s approach as a starting point, planners can examine how narratives can compete and are reproduced in the media and planning documents, by planning staff, and among neighborhood residents and to what ends.

This article examines transnational planning history following the Second World War with a focus on the diffusion of Western planning principles to postwar India by US architect-planner Albert Mayer. Specifically, Mayer's role as a foreign advisor to the Indian government from 1946 to 1958 and the application of a US communitarian regionalist planning ethos to rural village improvement and town planning at Cawnpore (Kanpur), Greater Bombay (Mumbai), and Chandigarh is explored. Using the stages of transnational planning flows as a framework, we review the foundations of communitarian regionalism in American planning practice and Mayer's participation in the New Deal Greenbelt Town programme to inform his translation, in partnership with American and Indian planners, of these town planning principles to suit postwar Indian planning needs. This comparative assessment allows us to present a re-examination of the transfer and adaptation of Western planning as well as exchanges of knowledge and practice within very disparate contexts.

The new urbanism promotes preferred design and land use patterns as a means to enhance quality of life through socioeconomic diversity, but many criticise these assertions of causality. Deriving community indicators for social sustainability – including housing affordability and socioeconomic diversity – and from studies assessing new urbanism as an infill development tool, we examine the impact of new urbanism infill development in Parramore, an economically distressed inner city neighbourhood, and Baldwin Park, a brownfield inner-ring suburb, with comparative control neighbourhoods in Orlando, Florida. In Parramore, active new urbanism implementation, including HOPE VI and the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, reflect revitalisation efforts through increased socioeconomic diversity. Meanwhile, the Baldwin Park plan incorporates many new urbanist best practices. The findings from these two distinct cases of infill development indicate that the new urbanism does not necessarily ensure social sustainability, though these principles are often integrated into publicly funded revitalisation initiatives dedicated to doing so through mixed use and mixed income development.

Many historians document the divorce between housing reform and planning. Yet, key advocates for government-supported housing during the early twentieth century considered the two highly interconnected, taking the form of the garden city. Members of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) translated the garden city into a uniquely American vision of complete communities that partnered government and entrepreneurial initiatives. Examining these lesser studied principles through the writings and advocacy of pioneer garden city planner and British government houser Raymond Unwin and prominent RPAA members Clarence Stein and Henry Wright broaden our understanding of early housing programs.

Though lesser known than his Regional Planning Association of America colleagues – Clarence Stein, Lewis Mumford, and Benton MacKaye – Henry Wright played a key role in implementing and promoting critical regional planning ideals. In doing so, he embraced what Wheeler (2002) characterizes as “ecological regionalism” and more recently Berke (2008) describes as the “environmentally sustainable urban form” (p. 395). After earning his degree in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Wright spent his early professional years in the office of nationally prominent landscape architect George Kessler. Here he gained a sensitivity to site design, including grading and infrastructure development, and a broadening understanding of natural systems and networks. His subsequent employment with the Emergency Fleet Corporation designing communities for war workers during World War I, established his expertise in economically designing communities. During the 1920s and until his death in 1936, he applied this expertise to design communities that reflect many of the current criteria of sustainability, new regionalism, and green infrastructure. This paper examines archival writings of Wright, his contemporaries, and more recent explorations of sustainability, green infrastructure, and new regionalism to assess the elements of Wright’s community planning, site design, and broader regionalist ideas that prefigured these modern concepts. As Planning Advisor to the New York Commission of Housing and Regional Planning, his contributions towards a 1926 proposal for statewide planning forms a critical component of this examination. Further, his lesser known articles on town planning, land development, and the economics of housing design offer a sustained perspective regarding the dynamics of his contributions to regionalism. These include conceptual new town designs integrating intensive mixed use urban areas punctuated with outlying parks as part of a balanced regional network of communities. A comparative and critical analysis of these contributions within the context of the contributions of his RPAA colleagues and regional scholarship today highlights his legacy as an architect, landscape architect, and planner.

This chapter provides context for Clarence Samuel Stein's engagement with and translation of Ebenezer Howard's proposed Garden City and for his advocacy of these ideas in his projects, service, writings, lectures, and consulting activities throughout his career. Stein promoted Garden City as an “ideal system” for neighborhood preservation, housing reform, traffic congestion mitigation, and park design. What struck Stein about the Garden City—rechristened Regional City—was its spirit of cooperation and community, the balance between open spaces and development, and the notion that distinctive planned new towns served as the building blocks of the region. This chapter reviews the Garden City concept with a focus on its adoption and evolution in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. It also considers the initiatives of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), where Stein served as founder and informal sponsor, including the Radburn Idea.

This chapter focuses on Clarence Samuel Stein's postwar concept of the Regional City as well as the maturation of his town planning ideas. Stein and his colleagues began to regularly use the term Regional City in 1927. Their early conception envisioned an amalgam of the romanticized medieval village with connections to the land combined with all the conveniences offered through new technologies to enhance modern lifestyles in distinctive, relatively small towns. Stein, together with MacKaye and Mumford, advocated for regional, even national, planning based on the ideas the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) had already promoted, including regional river basin planning, the townless highways, and state planning. This chapter considers Stein's postwar advocacy of communitarian regionalism and the rebirth of the RPAA as the Regional Development Council of America (RDCA). It also examines how Stein applied his collaborative regionalist and town planning ideals in a concrete project at Kitimat in Canada.

This study examines locational patterns of housing choice vouchers in Duval County, Florida, using the Housing Suitability Model (HSM), a newly developed geographic information system–based model that evaluates residential land parcels and neighborhoods in terms of their suitability for affordable housing. The HSM was used to characterize voucher locations and other residential parcels across the county in terms of opportunity and accessibility. The analysis explores the tradeoffs between opportunity and accessibility inherent in many neighborhoods throughout the county. It finds that voucher holders' locations lag substantially behind other residential locations in terms of opportunity measures but are more comparable in terms of accessibility. Further analysis finds differences in opportunity and accessibility among subgroups of voucher holders by various demographic characteristics. The study recommends the incorporation of opportunity and accessibility for voucher holders into local housing planning, including the implementation of proposed rules for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.

Arata Abe Muhammad Abbas Abid Muhammad Bilal Abid Valerie Adams Robert Addington B. Adeleye Lee Akst Zeynep Alkan Jacqueline E. Allen Edmilton Pereira Almeida Sheila Tamanini Almeida Ana Alter-Rega Kenneth Altman Elaine Amella Andreas Anagiotos Liubiana Arantes Araujo Brenda Lima Araujo Sally Katherine Archer Joan Arvedson Joan C. Arvedson Jonathon E. Aviv Margareta Christina Bulow Arash Babaei Mary Bacon Laura W. J. Baijens Mark Baker Matina Balou Hideki Bando Philip G. Bardin Julie Barkmeier-Kraemer Julie Barkmeier-Kraemer Linda Bartoshuk Robert W. Bastian Eric D. Baum Patricia Bazemore Kareem Bedeir Peter Belafsky Luciana Rodrigues Belo Dawn M. Betts Debabrata Biswas Andrew Blitzer Joel H. Blumin Jonathan M. Bock Hans Bogaardt Elfriede Bollschweiler Donald Bolser Heather Shaw Bonilha Leonardo Bonilha Worth Boyce Daniel Brasnu James G. Brasseur Edmundo Brito-de la Fuente Martin B. Brodsky Michael Broniatowski Dina Brooks Valerie Julie Brousseau Charles Christopher Broz Karen Nancy Bryant Neil R. M. Buist Adam Burbidge James A. Burns Claire Louise Butler Susan G. Butler Vincent Byron Norman Capra Giselle Carnaby Donald Castell Chin-Wen Chang Joan Chen Sung-Lang Chen Robert Chun Julie Cichero Michelle Ciucci Heather M. Clark John O. Clarke Matthew Clary Pere Clave Elizabeth Page Clawson Nicola Ann Clayton Nadine P. Connor Ian Cook James L. Coyle MIchael Crary Cynthia J. Cress Lori Cunningham Daniella Curcio Leonardo da Silva Virginia Daggett Stephanie K. Daniels Lori Davis Jesse Dean Davide DeLorenzi Numan Demir

In their book American Urban Form: A Representative History, Sam Bass Warner and Andrew H. Whittemore explore transitions in urban form via a generalized city in the northeastern United States. This brief and accessible introduction to planning via the lens of historic urban fabric targets allied professionals and the general public. ‘‘We have written this book for two groups of people: citizens who are now concerned about the conditions of American urban living, and their allies . . . the professionals with whom they must work to preserve or alter these patterns to improve the places in which they live’’ (p. 1). Explorations of the social, economic, and political city are enhanced through representative bird’s-eye views and more detailed street drawings illustrating the hypothetical city, an amalgam of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, as it grows from a colonial outpost in the seventeenth century to a bustling global city of the twenty-first century. This broad perspective, the authors argue, offers a means to understand the dynamics of change and better prepare for the challenges of the future. Though their strategy draws on the histories of these three cities to explore common urban ‘‘patterns and trends,’’ students of planning history familiar with these iconic places might find this composite metropolis somewhat disorienting at first as partial histories come together. Certainly, the role social and political forces have played in shaping specific cities from Reps’ The Making of Urban America to Kostof’s The City Shaped have already been explored. The challenge here is to depict the complexities of urban change while also relaying a common story of urban America that appeals to an engaged public and resonates with academics and practitioners. To that end, the authors paint a vivid social, political, financial, and economic picture linked to broader global and national events and raise compelling questions about critical junctures in our country’s history. They see the city as always becoming. Unlike many urban histories, very few shapers of cities are specifically named; civic and business leaders, elites, architects, landscape architects, reformers, planners, all remain faceless alongside the larger numbers that also played a significant role—immigrants, African American slaves and migrants, and white rural migrants. In this way, the hypothetical city becomes an effective means to explore these themes and dynamics. Still, the reader is often reminded that it best reflects one in the Northeastern, or perhaps Midwestern, United States as the authors comment on such events as the migration of African Americans from the South during the early twentieth century or compare it to the growth of California and the South during the 1970s. The book abruptly ends by noting the paradoxical constancy of urban change. And yet, there is enough currently occurring— the authors in fact allude to these dynamics at the book’s outset—for some discussion of possible near futures. Part of the Urban and Industrial Environments series, the book fails to mention certain key emerging environmental topics, most notably the impacts of environmental change, such as sea level rise, salt water intrusion, and/or subsidence, on urban infrastructure, enduring settlement patterns, and land economics (i.e., the role of property insurance). In addition to environmental change, how might ongoing global economic events shape the future of the city? Overall, these shortcomings are minor in this ambitious though relatively brief book that encapsulates many of the national, regional, and local dynamics that have shaped the US city as it grew into the modern metropolis it is today. Based on this, an additional target audience is indicated—the undergraduate student taking an introductory planning or urban studies course or even the beginning graduate student in these fields. Warner and Whittemore offer a solid foundation for future planners and anyone wanting to have a richer understanding of cities.