Goings On in the Competitive Urban Hierarchy:
Should We Be Concerned about Suburbs?
Sociologist R. D. McKenzie commented in 1933 that Big Cities were surrounded by growing suburbs/unincorporated areas; noting that new economic, political and social interrelationships between City and hinterland meant changes in function, roles and physical requirements of each. McKenzie believed these relationships created an “entirely new social and economic entity”[1]. Today we call it the “metropolitan area”. Since 1880 the census bureau reported statistics for central cities and “metropolitan district”; in1910 the Bureau provided data on twenty-five metros. The 1920 census reported a majority of Americans lived in urban areas; more than two-thirds of that majority lived in fifty-eight Big Cities that accounted for half the nation’s overall population increase.[2] The Bureau, however, also reported outlying peripheries grew at a faster rate than the central city itself.
It wasn’t until the 1920’s, however, that a critical mass, combined with a visible exodus to periphery areas, caught the attention of planners and elements of the business community. It wasn’t at all clear what one should think of this new development—but most felt that “decentralization” might be worrisome, but more likely represented an opportunity. A new intra-metropolitan urban hierarchy was being created, no doubt—but in this decade there was little consensus whether that was to be feared or fostered. In these years continued central city dominance was assume. Typical was N. S. B. Gras:
We may think of [the] metropolitan economy as an organization of people having a large city as a nucleus …. [Or] the metropolitan economy is the organization of producers and consumers mutually dependent for goods and services, wherein their wants are supplied by a system of exchange concentrated in a large city which is the focus of local trade and the center through which normal economic relations with the outside are established and maintained …. A closer examination of these dependent towns [suburbs] would show different types performing different functions, but all subordinate.[3]
From my research I sense the 1920’s were the pivotal turning point in suburban development—not the fifties and sixties as much of the contemporary literature would have it. In sheer numbers of people, the postwar years dwarfed the twenties, of course; but that misses the point. Metropolitanization and decentralization entered into policy consciousness in the 1920’s, and even more importantly, the physical landscape of the Big City (its hinterland) was fundamentally and irreversibly altered[4]. Twenties suburban development revealed a truth that was fundamental to future decades—where were growing populations going to go? “To the periphery” had been the answer thus far—and in the Twenties that pattern persisted across city limits that were now frozen because annexation was mostly off the policy table[5]. City-builders had lost a vital Big City growth tool. Suburban autonomy was evident since the late nineteenth century; by the Twenties it was firmly in place. In the Twenties it was amply evident that suburbs existed, were not going away, and, in fact, were growing faster than the Big City.
At that point, suburbs became, individually and collectively, actors in the urban policy system. In the lingo of our model, suburbs became a twentieth century addition to the competitive urban hierarchy. Logically, the issue was how the Big City and suburbs would get along; cynically, the issue was “who would control who” (kto kavo). In the Twenties the answer was simple; the Big City had population, financial resources, and a heritage of growth—the suburbs, except for growth, mostly the opposite. Then the issue in the Twenties was how the central city would control the suburbs—regional planning, centralized infrastructure, and a network of highways leading to the region’s economic and political capitol, the CBD. The issues of battered neighborhoods, inequality, and a first rate housing crisis were the central city’s chief obstacles to its hegemony. Those issues and geographies were prime concerns, and bailiwicks, of our community development approach. Accordingly, community development would play a large role in this dialogue, both during the Twenties and for generations following.
The reader should be aware that our take on suburbs follows that developed by Schnore; in future chapters our competitive urban hierarchical model will be expanded to include the following concept of the metropolitan area. The metropolitan area is no longer a simple two part system: Big City and hinterland. Rather, the metro area can be viewed as “a highly specialized mosaic of subareas tied together” within a larger economic base and a higher political subdivision (usually a county in the Twenties). As such the metro area becomes multinucleated with “large centers marked by functional diversity, while smaller places … [including smaller cities and towns] narrowly specialized … the main centers are specialized in the coordinating functions of administration and control”.[6] Schnore developed his ecological model in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, but to it can be extended to the Twenties. It is reasonably congruent with the RPAA conception that will be developed shortly.
This position allows Big Cities to lose their hegemonic position and permits the emergence of a multi-centered metropolitan area, with specialized functions, economic bases, and demographic characteristics. In this multi-nucleated metro area different “types” of suburbs can evolve (all suburbs are not alike), and different metro areas can establish or devise their own set of Big City-suburban relationships and pattern. It logically follows that metro areas vary in important aspects from each other.
As I said earlier, “there’s a whole lotta shakin going on” in this decade.
Twenties Decentralization is more than cars and elite suburbs
In this section I deal with two tasks: flesh out Twenties suburbanization and how it relates to the practice of economic development. Two “suburban myths” are that Twenties suburbs are automobile/Model T suburbs and that this period suburbanization was driven by wealthy elites in garden cities. As with most myths these are not wrong, but are incomplete.
There’s no denying the car was the American smart phone of the Twenties—everyone had one—“so long as they wanted black”[actually 8 million registration in 1920, one in thirteen households]. By 1925 there were 17.5 million car registration and 2.5 million trucks on the road.[7] In the 1920’s the car became the dominant mode of personal transportation and the era of the streetcar (and streetcar suburbs) was over. Hated streetcar monopolies and the all-too-corrupt streetcar politics began a decline which eventually led to General Motors/municipal-owned bus systems and ripping up the lines—much to the chagrin of contemporary transportation planners. Streetcar ridership peaked in 1923, but suburbanization into dispersed peripheries rendered streetcars uneconomical. “Several cities made key decisions against major spending on public transit during the 1920’s …. [for example] Detroit voters in 1929 rejected a $280 million dollar proposal that would have resulted in subways, 65 miles of surface rapid transit, and 560 miles of trolley lines”.[8]
Suburbs exploded in the interwar period “simply because millions of people wanted to live in them”. In 1920 a little less than 7 million lived in suburbs—by 1940 nearly 17.5 million.[9] Baltimore grew by 9.7% (1920-1930), its suburbs, 52%; Shaker Hills, Ohio (Cleveland suburb) grew 1000% and Elmwood Park, Illinois by 717%. The link between car registration and explosive suburban growth is undeniable. These are auto suburbs. Having said that, it might be evident one need not have been “elite” to buy a car. The era of solely elite suburbs is over. Dolores Hayden describes these years as “Mail-Order and Self-Built Suburbs”, and she includes a section on Sears mail order (whose motto was “A Home of Your Own is an Absolute Necessity”) from which she estimates 50,000 houses were constructed.[10] These are not “corporate one percenter” homes. The era of American home ownership, an era that last until 2008, had started. Also while I am not sure who was the chicken and who was egg, manufacturing also decentralized to the suburbs as well. “In 1919 eleven central cities in the country’s forty largest manufacturing counties still accounted for 85 percent of the [nation’s] manufacturing workers. By 1937 this percentage had fallen to just under 60”.[11]
Economic Development in the Twenties Suburb
All of which brings us to how suburbanization relates to economic development. First, for the next thirty years (or more!), Big City “economic developers” will be obsessed with how to cope with decentralization. Also vital growth elements of Big City manufacturing were on the move. These are sufficient links in their own right. Also, in our “hidden in plain sight” draw, we pull out the not so obvious reality that we are talking about suburban “city-building”. Suburban city-building followed its own Privatist model not totally dissimilar from the Big Cities streetcar model—except without the streetcar. The era of streetcar suburbs was over and a new model was devised.
One of the earliest is that pioneered in Shaker Heights (Cleveland suburb) by two brothers Otis and Mantis (I did not make up their names) Van Sweringen, former clerks and bicycle shop owners. Purchasing 1400 acres in what had been the site of a Shaker religious community, they meticulously planned a suburb comprised of different subdivisions in varying price levels so that each subdivision included homes with similar priced units on 100 foot lots. Cheaper units would not impinge on their neighbors. They abandoned the city grid and platted curved and semi-elliptical roads off of large boulevards. Natural parks areas were retained and each subdivision was comprised of units with similar housing design and followed strict exterior and landscaping appearances. As always marketing and promotion (aka boosterism) was core to the model. From 1919 to 1929 (the Depression) three hundred homes were sold each year (phasing and models). Starting at a population of 1,500, by decade’s end Shaker Heights was 15,000. Unfortunately for the two brothers, they took their profits elsewhere, and went bankrupt in the Depression.[12]
What made mail order, self-built or builder subdivision suburbanization possible was the development of what may be the foundation of the modern metropolis—the service district. The service district, from my vantage point, is another hybrid structure, set apart from gifts and loan clauses, and outside the budgetary, debt, and fiscal framework of municipal government that could be governed by private and public boards, sometimes elected, sometimes appointed. From my perspective, these are mostly infrastructure hybrids responsible for water, sewers, roads, lighting districts and all the good stuff that earlier Big Cities had detailed to corporation charters, franchises, regulated utilities, and state and/or local independent boards and commissions.
Service districts took over the heavy lifting associated with installing the infrastructure necessary for a large urban center and an industrial economic base—an infrastructure that had been the highest priority and first task of early economic developers. And so, to the astute reader that remembers our conceptual model, onionization (and siloization) takes a great step forward. Service districts, seldom thought of today as an EDO, took over the installation and service delivery associated with key urban infrastructure. It started earlier, mostly out West, but it really took off during the Twenties—service districts made large-scale suburbanization possible.
The Big Cities had already developed their infrastructure systems, but not the suburbs and unincorporated areas—they proved to be the main beneficiaries of the service district. Suburban service districts were possible in the Twenties because their tax exempt debt was attractive to bond markets, outside the debt limits of state constitutions. Moreover, by the Twenties many of the smaller and poorest suburbs, and the settled unincorporated areas had consolidated or annexed to suburbs. A suburban landscape of larger suburban towns and cities resulted—they reached sufficient scale to justify their own service districts.
These service districts cemented suburban autonomy—taking annexation off the table and locking Big Cities into a fixed geography. “Throughout America metropolitan agreements [service districts] brought improved services to suburbia … central cities no longer [held] a monopoly on the necessities of life …. [For example] in 1905 a state law creating the Board of Water Supply for the City of New York required the board to provide water to a dozen or more Westchester County communities … At the behest of the City of Newark, New Jersey’s legislature created the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission in 1918, and by 1924 Newark and seven municipalities were cooperating to complete a massive water project. … The year in which Illinois’ legislature enacted the Sanitary District Bill was the last year Chicago would make massive additions to its territory. Boston would annex only one town following the creation of the Metropolitan Water District.” Between 1900 and 1930, the state legislature of Ohio enacted twenty-five measures providing for intergovernmental contractual relations, including statutes that allowed municipalities to construct joint sewage systems and joint water works.”[13] We are not done. In the Twenties suburbanization and service districts created a rationale for augmenting the power and policy system scope—of urban counties.
States, like Ohio, empowered counties during the Twenties to assume what formerly were municipal functions for suburbs and unincorporated areas. Sewage and water districts were subordinated to counties, and the scope of functions performed by counties exploded to include libraries, health and sanitation, parks and recreation, fire and police, and regional planning. County fiscal, budgetary and policy capacity reforms accompanied these new responsibilities. “In urban areas from New York to California, the county was extending its governmental functions and responsibilities more rapidly than the municipality, and the county’s share of local government expenditures was rising.”[14] It does not appear that counties, aside from infrastructure and service districts, entered into economic development-related programs during the Twenties, but further research is necessary to confirm that observation. In any case, particularly in the West, the rise of urban counties had seriously commenced and the metropolitan area admitted yet another major player into its policy system.
In an era dominated by Progressive structural reformers, civic leagues, and municipal research bureaus, the newly appreciated metropolitan area, with fragmented, inefficient, and expensive suburbs required reform. The newly-appreciated county seemed the natural place to coordinate and manage. The county also seemed helpful in addressing the issue of how the Big City could maintain its hold on the hinterland and be responsible for its dispersing economic base. Chambers thought that counties could serve as a suitable “metropolitan government”.
In many Big Cities, powerful forces coalesced around their best idea on how to marry city and suburb to effectively compete against rival cities: city/county consolidation. Cincinnati, for example, obsessed with Cleveland’s perceived growth and success, turned to city/county consolidation. The city manager municipal government, the chamber, the Citizen’s League and the League of Women’s Voters lined up in support. A la Dillon’s Law, the battle was fought in the state legislature where Cincinnati’s Republican political machine rallied state-wide suburban support to defeat the measure. Attempts by Seattle (1923), St Louis (1926, 1930), and two attempts in Cleveland also met with failure during the Twenties. Out West, things were different. Both Denver and Los Angeles approved partial city/county consolidations.[15]
Finally, how did Big City chambers react to all this? The Twenties were “golden years” for our Northern and Midwestern Big Cities—they were years “dedicated … to bigness and growth … [and] unthinking expansionist fervor”.[16] That is why annexation attempts were so numerous, widespread—and increasingly unsuccessful. The fervor associated with Big City annexations petrified and united suburban opposition. Big Cities wanted to grow, and chambers led the effort—Teaford asserts because “census rank seemed one of the most vital factors in any city’s future success … the chief instrument for boosting the city’s fortune and reputation… the bigger city was supposedly the better city”.[17] Without growth, stagnation!
And so we see on display a central feature of chamber-style economic development—a huge sensitivity to the urban competitive hierarchy, in this case to the newly rising intra-metropolitan hierarchy. For chambers, in the Twenties and in the next several decades, the issue was how to preserve the hegemony of Big Cities amid the rising tide of “decentralization”. That many chamber leaders, and probably staff, lived in suburbs complicated affairs, but their loyalty was still based on their being honorary “citizens” of the Big, now central, City. If Big Cities were losing any ground to suburbs in these decades, it was not because chambers sold them short—just the opposite!
Progressive and Privatist Suburb-Building during the Twenties
Most readers probably don’t associate Progressive economic development with suburbs—suburbs are assumed to be Privatist bastions. In the interwar, World War II, and immediate postwar years that would be incorrect. These were the years when Progressives viewed suburbs as the solution and salvation to an ever-failing Privatist paradise—the Big City. So most of our Twenties discussion on this topic will focus on the extensive Progressive involvement with suburbs. Progressives wanted suburbs for the working class—and they wanted it to bring out the best in human nature. So they turned to the garden city for their design principles.
The idea was to use suburbs to compensate for the inadequacies of the Privatist industrial city, but to supplement and support its economic base. For this to happen, strong regional planning was required. Accordingly, the Twenties were characterized by innovations in regional planning, the most famous of which, the birth of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority, is described in this chapter. For Privatists, I am content with a mini case study of Kansas City’s Jesse C. Nichols whose 1920 model of suburban residential and commercial development would be a forerunner for future Privatist economic developers such as Victor Gruen and, maybe, James Rouse.
Planned Communities: Lewis Mumford
While much of twenty-first century thought (particularly planning) celebrated density as liberating, Lewis Mumford had other ideas. Mumford loved cities and regarded urbanity “as man’s greatest work”; but, he did not believe the industrial city was the best urban form to house humanity. His work and thought, a continuation of Howard Geddes and the garden city, attacked the scale, density, and the human pathologies, he believed were fostered by the Big City. Mumford believed:
the swollen urban conglomerations of his day [were] ‘far removed from the sources of life [and were] expanding without purpose [transforming] living forms into frozen metal’. The metropolis destroyed the individual’s identity and self-esteem; only by dispersing the inhabitants into regional clusters would people find communion with their surroundings and each other. Mumford believed that the giant city was just a temporary phenomenon, a product of the nineteenth century’s great population explosion and unprecedented industrial expansion … the accumulated disadvantages of the big cities promised to make them ‘cemeteries of the dead’.[18]
Mumford asserted central city revitalization was not possible, that urban redevelopment (slum and blight removal) would provide only temporary relief and would serve the interests of ‘real estate promoters’.[19] Mumford did not advocate abandoning the central city; instead he perceived the city as a central employment center encased by a ring of residential areas. His vision was not very different from Wright’s Broadacre City (see chapter on the Depression) and, in fact, departed dramatically from Howard’s garden city. Mumford’s general idea was to abandon the central city as a residential center, leaving to “house” the economic base of the metropolitan area. Mumford and Stein “called for the dismemberment of the [central city] …[the] ‘city of the dead’ in favor of a series of [well-planned] small scale ‘satellite cities’.[20] Between 1923 and 1929, Mumford was instrumental in creating a paradigm that placed the “regional (central) city” within a metropolitan context.
This paradigm crystallized from an alliance of convenience between the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA, founded by Mumford, Clarence Stein et al. in 1923) and Russell Sage Foundation (led by Thomas Adams, its Director of Plans and Surveys). Perry joined this group in 1928. That paradigm called for “a rationally planned and zoned [central] city which segregated residential, commercial, and industrial uses, as well as social classes … would be anchored by a concentrated central business district, connected by expressways to concentric, low-density residential and industrial suburban rings …. ordered according to a comprehensive regional plan”.[21] The engaged in surveying and writing a regional plan for the New York metro region—a plan which was formerly published in 1929. The famous ten volume Regional Plan of New York (RPNY and its Environs) published in a series from 1929, continuing, at generational intervals, into recent years[22] Integral to the Regional Plan was the development of two suburbs: Radburn and Hackensack.
Their paradigm acknowledged the inevitability of suburbanization, but attempted to structure decentralization to achieve a rational “order” of social and economic relationships between city and suburb. Up to this history, the RPNY has solely been the province of regional planning as has been interpreted in terms of its concepts and purposes. Zoning, for example, figures prominently. But in these years, much of the Big City-based planning movement embraced purposes deeply economic development in nature. Segregating uses through zoning, industry and manufacturing, for example, means determining the location of the core of a Big City economic base. When the 1929 Plan was published, it had become apparent that RPNY’s seeming consensus rested upon poorly defined concepts and conflicting purposes. Within the ten volume Regional Plan was, in reality, two competing concepts Mumford’s and Adams’) of the new metropolitan order. Not only that, the Plan awkwardly, but vividly, revealed the gap between hitherto “orthodox” economic development and a maturing “community development”. The dialogue and debate that ensued may well have been the most important debate on the future of economic development in the twentieth century. The differences were so serious they couldn’t be bridged and the two organizations parted ways in 1933. The heritage of this debate, and the failure to come to grips with the divisions revealed, left open the path that led to slum clearance, urban renewal, postwar suburbanization and the implosion of the central cities in the 1970’s.
The Debate of the Century: the fracturing of Progressive economic development[23]
The issue that fractured this powerful duopoly was whether the central city remained hegemon in the metropolitan order. Contained within that issue was a redefinition of key concepts that separated an embroyonic Big City economic development into two strands, with minimal interaction between the two. As explained above, Mumford rejected the Privatist heaven that was the central city—as a residence for workers and the middle class. It was not humane in large measure because “congestion” rendered a satisfying and empowering human existence impossible. He wanted the new metro system to be built around his version of garden city residential suburbs whose inhabitants went to work in the central city (where the manufacturing economic base was located) through a network of highways and transportation modes that culminated in the commercial center, the CBD.
Thomas Adams (Russell Sage), however, “sought to rationalize, reinterpret, and reinforce the cultural and economic hegemony of New York City as a regional and national center”. Adams’ general idea was to sustain the central city as “a regional city” surrounded by an interlocking set of small towns and cities that symbiotically enhanced the assets of the other. Mumford wanted “dismemberment of the metropolitan ‘city of the dead in favor of a web of small scale ‘satellite cities’ while Adams wanted to sustain manufacturing/industry through partial decentralization to suburbs and continue the Big City residential function—i.e. contain suburbanization.
Adams wanted manufacturing to be permitted in the suburbs so that it could (1) decentralize to allow modernization, logistical access and productivity enhancements, in so doing (2) relieving the Big City of the obligation of being the only location where manufacturing could be located. As some firms left for the suburbs, other firms could seize upon the abandoned land, modernize, install productivity enhancements, and upgrade logistical access. Partial decentralization of industry could allow for “congestion” to be reduced—allowing for both manufacturing growth and vastly improved Big City residential neighborhoods. Both Mumford and Adams supported Perry’s neighborhood principles, but Adams wanted to reduce Big City congestion enough to permit their application in the Big City. Mumford believed that was impossible; the dinosaur city was already lost to residential uses and satellite suburbs (what others would later call “dormitory suburbs’) was the only alternative.
This debate is very much economic development in nature-but its impact was obscured by importance of zoning as the tool which would segregate where the manufacturing economic base would be located. Less obvious was the inadequacy of the definition of a key concept, “congestion”, which had become the buzz word of the day, but which, in fact, contained two different concepts of what constituted “congested”. One definition was largely social, i.e. people-based—and from it community development would proceed—and the other was orthodox economic development in that it focused on barriers to private firms’ ability to adjust to changes in the firm’s profit cycle. Adams’ Progressivism allowed for Privatist economic development. Mumford embraced the former and Adams the latter. Mumford, in his satellite suburbs would use zoning so that manufacturing and industry were precluded from locating in the suburb. Adams wanted suburban zoning to allow for manufacturing to relocate to the suburb—today’s mixed uses. The two plans for suburbs, Radburn and Hackensack, reflect that distinction—the former was Mumford’s and the latter, Adams.
Congestion contained two sets of concerns; one was economic and private firm based, the other social and working/middle class people-centered. “The term had been inherited from the housing reformers and patrician planners of an earlier day, and had become, by the time of its adoption by [the RPAA and RPNY] conflated with the notions of ‘blight’, ‘slums’, ‘overcrowding’, ‘concentration’, ‘mobility’, ‘density’, and ‘traffic jams’. The elasticity of the term permitted a great deal of ostensible concord between [Mumford and Adams] [But] … the economic critique of congestion addressed a perceived crisis in the distribution of goods …, grounded in Frederick Winslow Taylor’s principle of scientific management, for more efficient location of industry, for reductions in building density, and for improvement in transportation. The social critique of ‘blight’ and ‘slums’ addressed population density, living conditions, health, and the negative social effects of real estate speculation”[24]. As “two ships passing in the night” these two divergent purposes did not cross each other and each was able to simply ignore the other and continue on divergent paths. Having exposed them, they never resolved these differences. Slum removal and “urban” renewal would cross paths, however, over the next two decades.
Two Ships Continue on Separate Paths
RPAA/Mumford fell back on his residentially zoned “garden city” and designed suburbs to reflect its principles. They formed a financing corporation, the City Housing Corporation which between 1924 and 1928 constructed two actual suburban garden cities. The first, Sunnyside New York (1924) was located on a 70acre tract within Queen (still largely undeveloped at this point). Sunnyside was intended to emphasize affordable, working class housing, but design and financing costs worked the other way. When completed it was probably as, or more, expensive than conventional subdivisions. John Nolen, a former City Beautiful planner, constructed a garden city suburb, Mariemont, near Cincinnati which he called “A New Town Built to Produce Local Happiness”, a motto that never quite caught on, but was intended to house workers away from the depressing environments of factories. It suffered the same fate as Sunnyside and would up housing middle class.[25]
The more significant 1928 development at Radburn, New Jersey attempted to learn from Sunnyside (intended to be a “town for the motor age”), but its timing was terrible. It caught the 1929 stock market collapse and then the Depression full on. The City Housing Corporation went bankrupt; construction was terminated, only later being resumed to house conventional middle class residents. The net result was that Radburn received unwanted credit for pioneering the ‘dormitory suburb”—i.e. today’s alleged antecedent of sprawl[26] and its pedestrian-segregated road system, its famous “townless highway”, an early example of the Parkway. Neither Sunnyside nor Radburn were able to achieve Mumford’s humane metropolis for the working class.[27]
The paradigm and the division between the two organizations exerted a huge impact on the future course of events. Prewar American Progressives, like Mumford, advocated against the central city because to them it had become a Privatist paradise. To Mumford, “Cities were being designed by speculators, planners and engineers with little sensitivity to the nature and function of the community as a whole. Traffic and commerce had become the ‘presiding deities’ of the ‘sacred city”. [The] … continuous, building up, tearing down, and re-building, with their steady process of congestion … were motivated by the need to provide opportunities for new investment and additional profits”.[28] Mumford’s solution was metropolitan planning that created planned suburbs built around home and community.
The middle class, in his view, was being driven from the city by Privatists and the effect of their unrestrained profiteering. In an important article, now ignored, “The Fourth Migration”, Mumford outlined “the first migration” described in our second and third chapters. The second led to the rise of the factory towns in the early nineteenth century (internal migration or hinterland migration). The third migration, occurring in early twentieth century, transformed the industrial city into a financial center. The fourth migration, an exodus out from cities, is suburbanization. The last migration had been made possible by innovation in communication and transportation technologies (telephone, truck and car, for example). The challenge of the fourth migration was whether to allow it to create new “dinosaur cities” as “destructive and inhumane” as the previous migrations[29].
Mumford’s problem was that the “dinosaur city” was much beloved, and evidence for the fourth migration was sketchy until the 1940 census. Also Mumford did not foresee the inevitable counter-response of Big City political and business leadership to “save” their city. Given the embedded power of Big Cities, and the weakness of hinterland suburbia in these years, the Big City was practically guaranteed favored treatment during 1920’s: “much was revealed in the 1930’s, when in the wake of the Great Depression, an uneasy alliance of architects, social workers, housing reformers, labor unions and construction companies launched a campaign to persuade the federal government to provide funds for slum clearance and low income housing. Their spokesmen argued that … public authority could provide decent housing at reasonable rents for low income tenants”.[30]
The New York-New Jersey Port Authority: Where’s the Port?
A key element in the RPAA/Russell Sage paradigm was coordination of city and suburb through a strong regional planning agency. So the Twenties witnessed some of the most aggressive attempts to organize and install regional planning entities across, the nation—especially the Northern and Midwestern Big City metropolitan areas. Even the Coolidge Administration joined in, setting up a National Capital Parks and Planning Commission chaired by Olmstead Jr. in 1926. The municipal research bureaus and the one percenter Civic and Commercial Clubs of the Big Cities joined in the effort as well. Our Clarence Stein at a regional planning conference in Buffalo asserted that “no city is the master of its destiny”.[31]
The Chicago City Club developed and submitted a proposal in 1923 to integrate planning entities in 340 jurisdictions in the Chicago metropolitan area. Eventually, it was successful and the Chicago Regional Planning Association brought together officials from three states and two counties to coordinate and plan for airports, highways, and zoning. Philadelphia, in 1926, set up the awkwardly titled Regional Planning Foundation of the Philadelphia Tri-State District. Boston, Cleveland and San Francisco formed similar functional entities. In 1924, a New York state regional planning conference in Buffalo spurred the creation of a two county, six city, twenty-two towns and villages Niagara Frontier Regional Planning Board—the forerunner of today’s Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, attempted under is social reform mayor to establish an actual metropolitan government “federation” failed, although voters approved it 2-1. Again, the culprit was the state legislature where suburban and rural factions combined[32]. Still, regional planning, the cornerstone of the RPAA/Russell Sage paradigm was very much in favor in this most conservative of eras—in fact, the success and influence of RPAA and Sage was an earlier regional planning success: the establishment of the New York-New Jersey Regional Port Authority.
Founded in 1921, an interesting problem arises from NY-NJ Port Authority: we can’t find a “port” or marine-harbor facilities anywhere in the initial NY-NJ Port Authority; the NY-NJ Port Authority operated more than twenty-five years before it acquired responsibility for port/harbor-related facilities[33]. The New York-New Jersey Port Authority is an interstate compact—not a port authority as discussed earlier—but it does provide considerable local and regional economic development-related functions and services. The NY-NJ Port Authority owes its existence more to the federal Interstate Commerce Commission than to any Progressive effort to rescue the public interest from monopolistic private elites. Its birth flows from a Harbor Development Commission set up in 1917 as joint advisory bi-state entity (part of the solution to a New Jersey’s 1916 law suit against New York). The lawsuit led to an ICC opinion directing the two states to play nicely in their shared sandbox, the Hudson River. For its first quarter of a century NY-NJ Port Authority was principally a regional planning and transportation infrastructure authority. Today, it is New York/New Jersey’s most powerful EDO and transportation infrastructure entity—a transformation that demonstrates the power of onionization.
But if, the NY-NJ Port Authority did little specifically for New York metro ports, its city Merchant Associations was far from neglectful. The city’s wharves were thriving, fifty-eight per cent of the nation’s imports went through them; exports totaled nearly a billion dollars (about 13x that of rival Boston). But congestion at the ports resulted, and modern facilities were needed to transfer cargoes to the railroads. With opening of Panama Canal (1911) Boston tried to take market share from NYC, The New York Merchants Association aggressively lobbied the unfortunately unmotivated Department of Docks to get its butt in gear. The Department facilities was accessed by one rail line while nearby Jersey City and Hoboken ports had access to seven. NYC cargo was transferred to barges and floats to reach deep water City piers. Congestion backed up traffic to 13th Street. A proposal crafted by the Merchant Association (1913) to the state legislature brought funds for an elevated railroad, access to terminal buildings, and a terminal to accommodate Jersey City cargo barges and floats. By the end of 1914, construction was underway—little thanks to the Department of Docks.[34]
J.C. Nichols: the Mall and the Country Club:
The contemporary mythical image of the suburban subdivision had to come from somewhere—our candidate is J.C. Nichols and his Country Club District developed during the 1920’s. Jesse Nichols was an out and out Privatist, but not one that perfectly fits the stereotype. His earlier real estate experiences included building working class subdivisions and City Beautiful-like subdivisions. Taking a gamble in 1912, he started development on a new type of subdivision which borrowed heavily from a 1907-1908 Baltimore suburb, Roland Park designed by Olmstead. With no utilities or streetcar, he visualized an upper class suburb designed for, and dependent on the automobile. Moreover, he was determined that it would remain a high class district forever. Property values would never deteriorate and the quality and beauty of the subdivision would last.
Homes, on large lots, in park-like settings were only the first step. Statutes, fountains and all the “beauty” associated with the old city beautiful were replicated. Broad streets, plenty of parking, lawns in the front. Open space between streets preserved a country-like atmosphere. The key to “forever” were near- perpetual deed restrictions which prescribed, indeed micromanaged, what could be done with the property, types of improvements, colors, gardens—and, of course, the racial covenants. To enforce these restrictions and covenants, owners were required to join a “homeowners association” which contracted for the services necessary to maintain the subdivision, and enforce its “standards”. Fire and police, as well as utilities were contracted by the association as well. By 1915, these homeowner associations were converted into Missouri or Kansas nonprofits and built into state law. Homeowner associations wasted little time and became a sort of neighborhood government who lobbied city, schools, county and state for services and supportive legislation.
The Country Club District proved successful and by the early Twenties, Nichols upped the ante. Believing that the future of shopping and consumer commerce did not lie with the congested downtown, he began his design of America’s “first extensively planned and architecturally homogenous shopping center”[35] adjacent to his Country Club district—what today is called an outdoor mall. Up to this point “strip” shopping centers, hodge-podge clusters at intersections, without parking typified commercial developments along the streetcar lines.
Nichols, again relying on the car, departed from the streetcar line and built on site housing a quarry, brickyard, and a landfill. Nichols spent over $1 million to acquire the land as early as 1912; the actual construction started in 1922. The shopping center was designed around the automobile with ample parking a defining feature. Kansas City’s famous City Beautiful planner, George Kessler was retrain for the design and an Olmstead student brought in to assist. Architectural uniformity, around a Spanish style was incorporated in each building. The first stores opened in 1923, and soon after branches of downtown department and chain stores opened as well. Nichols believed in owner associations and he set up a Plaza Merchants Association to coordinate business activities and programs. The Association in 1923 began its first Christmas display—an event that continues to the present. Apartments ringed the Plaza on three sides, creating traffic and demand; by 1929, 5,000 lived in the six block area.[36]
Both the District and the Plaza were financially successful, and extremely popular. By the end of the Depression, nearly 10% of Kansas City’s metro area population lived in the ever-growing Country Club District. It had prospered even during the horrors of the Depression. Nichol’s model was adopted by developers across the nation. And so by the early 1920’s the now infamous, insipid, monotonous, tasteless mall had arrived on America’s suburban scene—Babbitt was happy, less so architecture students and planners. Privatists on the other hand were overjoyed—and wealthier.
Quo Vadis Community Development
Housing and Neighborhoods
Our 1920’s Big Cities were bursting at the seams from a constant tsunami of incoming population. After an initial post-war steroidal immigration (1.2 million in 1920-1921), the immigration spigot was mostly turned off. The first immigration adjustment, voted into law in 1921, imposed a national quota system which drastically reduced immigration. The so-called “open door” now replaced with a screen door. In 1924 more restrictive legislation, appropriately titled the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, reduced immigration to about 300,000 per year for the remainder of the decade. As one door closes, however, another frequently opens.
The Southern Diaspora/Great Migration picked up steam after World War I as an estimated six million rural southern migrants moved to cities during the decade[37]. Twenties Southern Diaspora did not affect all Big Cities uniformly; migrants followed rail line routes and northern cities not directly connected to salient rail lines attracted fewer southerners (Buffalo, for example). Mostly, industrial cities with expanding employment opportunities (auto) gathered in large numbers; Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and New York City attracted the most.
Southern Diaspora brought an added dimension to Big City post World War I population growth—racial change.[38]. “Northern cities absorbed during the twenties over 600,000 Negro migrants from the South”.[39] “By 1930, the nonwhite population of Harlem had reached 164,566, making it the largest community of Negroes in the land”[40]. Pressure on inner city housing and neighborhoods, therefore, continued unabated. Beat-up housing and deteriorated inner city neighborhoods again welcomed new populations. Already in 1920, housing in inner city neighborhoods exhibited noticeable deterioration; such housing, overwhelmingly rental, poorly designed, milked by profit-seeking owners, had simply borne the brunt of overuse and overconsumption. Residents moved out to move up without any encouragement from new populations.
The immediate solution was high density, seven floors without elevator apartments. Residents of these units were tagged with the nickname “cliff dwellers”. Obviously, that didn’t work. The next step would be substantial rehab of individual units. That didn’t work on the neighborhood level, so it could produce the volume needed to accommodate demand. New solutions had to be found. By the end of the decade, housing production acquired an economic development cache. New York State, for example, approved a Reconstruction Commission (1919, Clarence Stein chair) and, by1928 empowered private business with eminent domain to demolish neighborhoods for apartments. Subsequent legislation empowered jurisdictions to offer tax abatement to stimulate new private construction. Housing reform and economic development in Big cities had comingled. Why? Housing and neighborhood reform had become the strategy to lessen, if not reverse, the movement to the suburban periphery.
The University of Chicago: The Policy World of Community Development
The Chicago School of Sociology, established in 1892, had become by the second decade of the twentieth century the nation’s leader in sociology and urban geography. Robert E. Park personified this Chicago School of Sociology. Park produced his classic, The City in 1925[41]. A student of Georg Simmel and John Dewey, a compatriot of William James, a former Harvard professor, and journalist, Park had completed a seven year stint with Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute. He joined with scholars such as Ernest Burgess (his office mate), Homer Hoyt and Louis Wirth—together they constituted the core of the first Chicago School of Sociology.
The first Chicago School conceptualized the city as an ecosystem (urban ecological approach) that was characterized by a Darwinian-like competition, between social groups over physical space. This competition for space produced distinctive geographies, neighborhoods, populated by individuals associated with particular social (usually ethnic and racial) groups. Class and income differences also fueled neighborhood competition, resulting in a hierarchy of neighborhoods. The hierarchy was driven by differentials in rental and housing prices. Older, usually cheaper, housing characterized the low end of housing-neighborhood hierarchy and poorer groups “filtered” into the oldest housing and wealthy into the newest. Thus neighborhoods sorted themselves out by class and income. A model of housing and neighborhood succession logically followed.
Neighborhood succession argued that new housing, destruction of older housing and/or the introduction of additional social, ethnic and racial groups triggered population flows (invasion) from one neighborhood to the next–creating a new hierarchy of neighborhoods and an accelerated deterioration of the poorest into slums. The city and its neighborhoods would “evolve” a pattern of neighborhood succession over time and distance—the furthest out, the periphery, would be the youngest most expensive housing and the home of the affluent. The most central neighborhoods, the home of the poorest were the most distressed. The city, then, could be viewed as a series of concentric rings each distinguished by its particular income, housing and class characteristics.
Naturally, given its focus on neighborhoods, sociology (class, social groups), and the fact that community development had sunk deep roots into Chicago, the model developed by Park, Hoyt and Burgess penetrated into the practice community development. Concerned as it was with low income, distressed groups and neighborhoods, Chicago became a prime example for the study and practice of community development—and in the parlance of the day, Chicago ghettoes (low income neighborhoods) laboratories. In the Chicago ghetto laboratory, The point is that race did not figure prominently in how community development in these years viewed ghetto neighborhoods; ghetto neighborhoods were predominately white and ethnic. This is the “first ghetto”.
The Chicago housing and neighborhood succession model seemed to fit the first ghetto fairly well. It also fit the previously described pattern of periphery expansion and suburbanization. From this perspective movement to the periphery was “good”—it represented economic and social success—and that meant immigrant ethnics were being “assimilated” into contemporary society and the economy. At the time, to the extent it was thought about, Afro-Americans would assimilate in their turn as immigrants were obviously doing. Also a reality during the Twenties was that some settlement houses and recreation centers segregated their programs—or would not admit blacks at all.[42]
That, of course, proved to be faulty thinking; accordingly in a future chapter we will revisit that issue and discuss “the second ghetto”. Up to and during the Twenties, however, Afro-Americans were submerged in a sea of ethnic neighborhoods. Also, except for color, “the first wave of black migration moved as family units, or maintained family ties, and placed heavy emphasis on education as the best means for advancement. In 1920 the rate of school attendance for blacks in Pittsburgh exceeded that among foreign-born and second generation whites…. By the end of the 1920’s, [however], major cities were split between a white and black metropolis divided by a few streets and invisible but real color lines”.[43] The second ghetto was in process of forming, but its evolution was noticed only by those directly affected by it.
In the meantime, the various “wings” of community development (settlement/playground and housing) defined their mission (goal) to facilitate upward assimilation. As Trolander reports: “With the partial exception of Hudson Guild, settlement workers eschewed grassroots organizing, in favor of ‘interpreting [assimilating] the poor to the rest of society…. Low income neighborhoods contained a number of people who aspired to middle class status … The settlements did help many of these people join the middle class”.[44] Indeed a wing, to be discussed shortly, conceptualized schemes to build new suburban planned communities as their way to break up the first ghetto and assimilate immigrant ethnics into society and the economy.
For most community developers, however, the crisis so visibly obvious was the deplorable state of inner city ghetto housing. These latter community developers were not waiting for (or frankly did not believe in) new suburban planned communities, and they believed it imperative to deal with the existing ghetto housing stock to make it safe for families. The latter were dominant; therefore starting in the twenties, picking up considerable steam in the Depression ghetto housing rehabilitation became the prime strategy of community development. Social reformers/settlement workers either joined with housing planners and moved toward public housing and slum clearance or were pretty much shoved aside. A few, Mary Simkhovitch for example, remained committed to settlement house style. Daniel Carpenter, Hudson Guild Neighborhood House in New York City also stuck to early concepts well into the 1950’s. The reader may guess that we have started down the long path to slum clearance and urban renewal.
Planned Neighborhoods: Clarence Arthur Perry
Clarence Perry is commonly regarded as the “founder” of the neighborhood movement. Deeply involved with the 1909 Forest Hills Gardens project that he believed preserved balance between the physical and the social, Perry, an employee of Russell Sage, gravitated into the playground-community center–recreation movement[45]. His 1910 book, Wider Use of the School Plan became the movement’s bible and it was supplemented by additional pamphlets and monographs. Perry described the community center movement as “an extension of the settlement movement” and perceived neighborhoods and neighborhood facilities as linking individuals-residents to the larger community, improving in the process their overall well-being, creating a more effective democracy.[46]
Perry was a planner; he arrived on the scene as cars made their first appearance. His first concern was that children could not travel to playgrounds safely because of the traffic. So he developed ideas on how to design neighborhoods to accomplish his larger purposes, while countering an enforced isolation imposed on neighborhoods by wider streets and increased traffic. Using planning designs and concepts, “the Neighborhood Unit: a Scheme For the Arrangement of Family Life Community” was included in the 1929 Regional Plan of New York. His approach became linked in the eyes of many to the Chicago school and neighborhood succession.
Perry’s ideas reflected the “physical planning affects behavior paradigm” of the era. The notion that “physical changes in the urban fabric … could improve social life and enhance citizenship” were first presented in 1909 by Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization. Cooley argued the family, play group, and neighborhood or community group of elders were the three most important factors in the socialization process–he saw neighborhoods as a nursery for “primary ideals”, such as loyalty, truth, service and kindness.[47] For early neighborhood activists and planners, neighborhoods, if planned correctly, could recreate the small town and the virtues associated with small town living within the Big City: “…with its physical demarcation, its planned recreational facilities, its accessible shopping centers, and it’s convenient circulatory system … would furnish the kind of environment where vigorous health, a rich social life, civic efficiency, and a progressive community consciousness would spontaneously develop and permanently flourish”.[48]
Legitimizing neighborhoods as a planning concern, Perry’s image of a neighborhood included neighborhood identity, defined its ideal size (5,000-9,000), and fixed the location of services, residences and traffic patterns. For all practical purposes he originated the term: neighborhood unit. The school was in the center and wide, high traffic streets with shopping and commercial on its periphery. Residential streets, often curvilinear, flowed away from the major arteries. Ten per cent of the neighborhood was dedicated to parks and playgrounds. He advocated forming homeowner’s associations. Seized upon by Clarence Stein, Perry’s ideas were later incorporated into Radburn and suburban subdivisions.
Perry fell into disfavor after the Second World War. At that time social reform advocates abandoned the neighborhood concept as “obsolete” (Jesse Steiner, President of National Community Center Association). Revisionists argued that neighborhoods needed to be homogenous–that Depression era neighborhoods had become too heterogeneous and too dense to achieve desired effects. Such Neighborhoods had become “pseudo-neighborhoods”. This issue would later be resolved by accepting neighborhood diversity as replicating America’s diversity—but that reconciliation was thirty years or more in the waiting. Perry eventually returned to favor, embraced by Urban Land in the 1970’s, and New Urbanism in 1990’s.
[1] R. D. McKenzie, the Metropolitan Community (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1933)
[2] Blake McKelvey, the Emergence of Metropolitan America, 1915-1966 (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1968), p. 31.
[3] N. S.B. Gras, An Introduction to Economic History (New York, Harper, 1922) quoted in Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America (3rd Ed) (New York, Macmillan Publishing Co, 1983), pp. 270- 271.
[4] Leo F. Schnore and Vivian Zelig Klaff, “Suburbanization in the Sixties” in James W. Hughes (Ed), Suburbanization Dynamics and the Future of the City (New Brunswick, Center for Urban Policy Research 1974).
[5] Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburbs (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p.76. Teaford reports that Miami (1925) annexation was defeated, Detroit reached its full growth in 1926, and Minneapolis in 1927. Overall the nation’s most populous cities increased their land area by 10.6% during the Twenties—the lowest since 1860. In the following decade, these cities increased by only one-half (.5) percent! (Teaford, p. 77, Table 4). Also see detailed descriptions of specific annexation attempts, pp. 88-104—a masterpiece which must be read.
[6] Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America (3rd Ed) (New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1983), p. 271ff; Leo F. Schnore and Vivian Zelig Klaff, “Suburbanization in the Sixties” in James W. Hughes (Ed), Suburbanization Dynamics, op. cit.
[7] Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: the Suburbanization of the United States (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 162.
[8] Carl Abbott, Urban America in the Modern Age, op. cit., p. 43.
[9] William H. Wilson, Coming of Age: Urban America, 1915-1945 (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1974), p.34. See also pp. 46-57.
[10] Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-200 (New York, Vintage Books, 2003), Chapter Six. See p. 97 for the Sears motto.
[11] Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America, p. 275
[12] Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America, pp. 280-281.
[13] Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburbs, op. cit., pp. 80-82.
[14] Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburbs, op. cit., pp. 81-82.
[15] Blake McKelvey, The Emergence of Metropolitan America, op. cit., p. 60.
[16] Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburbs, op. cit., p. 87.
[17] Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburbs, op. cit., p. 88.
[18] Mark I. Gelfand, A Nation of Cities, op. cit. p. 132 and pp.131-136.
[19] Robert Beauregard, Voices of Dissent, op. cit., p. 78.
[20] Andrew A. Meyers, “Invisible Cities: Lewis Mumford, Thomas Adams, and the Invention of the Regional City, ,op. cit., p. 293; also, Michael N. Danielson and Jamison W. Doig, New York: the Politics of Urban Regional Development (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1982).
[21] Andrew A. Meyers, “Invisible Cities: Lewis Mumford, Thomas Adams, and the Invention of the Regional City, 1923-1929”, Business and Economic History, Volume 27, Number 2 (Winter, 1998), pp. 292-306.
[22] See Mel Scott, American City Planning, op. cit., pp. 221-227 “Conflicting Conceptions of Regionalism”. Scott provides context to our general comments.
[23] Andrew A. Meyers, “Invisible Cities: Lewis Mumford, Thomas Adams, and the Invention of the Regional City 1923-1929”, Business and Economic History, Volume 27, Number 2 (Winter 1998), pp. 292-306. We are indebted to Meyers in this section. Our presentation is but a poor summary of an outstanding article.
[24] Andrew A. Meyers, “Invisible Cities: Lewis Mumford, Thomas Adams, and the Invention of the Regional City, op. cit., p. 295.
[25] Carol Abbott, Urban America in the Modern Age, op. cit., p. 41.
[26] Andrew A. Meyers, “Invisible Cities: Lewis Mumford, Thomas Adams, and the Invention of the Regional City 8), op. cit., p. 292-306.
[27] Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America, pp. 295-296.
[28] Robert Beauregard, Voices of Dissent, op. cit., p. 78.
[29] Lewis Mumford, “The Fourth Migration”, the Survey, 54 (May, 1925) as described in Robert Beauregard, the Voices of Dissent, op. cit., p. 80; Clarence Stein’s companion piece, “Dinosaur Cities” followed from Mumford’s Fourth Migration : Clarence Stein, “Dinosaur Cities”, 54 (May, 1925). See Andrew A. Meyers, “Invisible Cities: Lewis Mumford, Thomas Adams and the Invention of the Regional City, op cit p. 293.
[30] Robert M. Fogelson, Downtown, op. cit., p. 338.
[31] Blake McKelvey, The Emergence of Metropolitan America, op. cit., p. 61.
[32] Blake McKelvey, The Emergence of Metropolitan America, op. cit., pp. 60-61.
[33] At the present time, the Authority manages formidable port-harbor related facilities and programs; it is currently the largest port complex in Eastern United States. The current Port Authority harbor and marine facilities are mostly located in New Jersey–not New York City. The Authority acquired control over the Port of New Jersey in 1948 and its New York City seaport related facilities (Staten Island Howland Hook Marine Terminal) were transferred after 1973 acquisition by New York City and were leased to the Authority in 1985. The second New York City facility (Red Hook Container Terminal) arrived on the Port Authority’s doorstep in 2011.
[34] Kenneth Montague Sturges, American Chambers of Commerce, op. cit. pp. 250-253.
[35] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.: A History of Kansas City Missouri, (Boulder Colorado, Pruett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 176.
[36] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.: A History of Kansas City, op. cit., p. 176-179.
[37] Blake McKelvey, the Emergence of Metropolitan America, 1915-1966, op. cit., pp. 37-39.
[38] Edward C. Banfield, the Unheavenly City Revisited (Boston, Little, Brown & Company, 1974) observed “The misfortune, amounting to a tragedy, is not that Negroes got to the city but that they got there so late, and then in such great numbers in so short a time (p. 79).
[39] Blake McKelvey, The Emergence of Metropolitan America, 1915-1966, op. cit., p. 39.
[40] Blake McKelvey, The Emergence of Metropolitan America, 1915-1966, op. cit., p. 39.
[41] Two different schools of Chicago sociology have developed. In this chapter, of course, the first, in its heyday before the 1940’s is my focus. Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and Roderick McKenzie, the City (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1925) is the base for our discussion. Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson’s, City Politics carried that first school perspective into the sixties, extending it to political science. One can argue this approach shifted with Roger S Ahlbrandt, Jr. and James V. Cunningham, A New Public Policy for Neighborhood Preservation (Praeger, 1079) and with Anthony Downs, Neighborhoods and Urban Development (Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 1981) who plugs in an “arbitrage” model to neighborhoods succession.
[42] Carl Abbott, Urban America in the Modern Age, 1920 to the Present (Arlington Heights, IL, Harland Davidson Inc, 1987), p. 31
[43] Carl Abbott, Urban America in the Modern Age, 1920 to the Present, op. cit., pp. 29-30.
[44] Judith Ann Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change (New York, Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 21.
[45] This movement, active through World War I, formed the Community Center Association, and attached to the Chicago School of Sociology. The American Sociological Association and Community Center Association met jointly in 1923. The movement urged public schools use their playgrounds for general neighborhood resident use. He moved onto construction of community centers that served a variety of resident needs including neighborhood meetings, adult education, and recreation. “Every school house [was to be] a community capital, and every community a little democracy” was its public goal. See Howard Gillette, Jr., “The Evolution of Neighborhood Planning: From the Progressive Era to the 1949 Housing Act“, Journal of Urban History, Volume 9, Number 4, August 1983, pp. 421-444.
[46] Howard Gillette, Jr., “The Evolution of Neighborhood Planning: From the Progressive Era to the 1949 Housing Act“. op. cit. p.423.
[47] Howard Gillette, Jr., “The Evolution of Neighborhood Planning: From the Progressive Era to the 1949 Housing Act” op cit. p. 425.
[48] Howard Gillette, Jr., “The Evolution of Neighborhood Planning: From the Progressive Era to the 1949 Housing Act“, p.427 from Architectural Record (January, 1932), p. 41.
Ron W. Coan 