Harvard University, by G. Holmes Perkins, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning, Chairman of the Department of Regional Planning in Harvard University
In the United States varied threads of planning thought and action have developed from many and often unsuspected quarters in the past fifty years. The present stress and strain within the planning profession can hardly be understood or charitably viewed without some acquaintance with the widening circle of interested participants in city and regional planning, and particularly with the sources of the original civic impetus towards facing the mounting problems of our cities and regions. The first professional courses in city planning at Harvard coincided historically with the publication of Burnham’s famous plan of Chicago of 1909. This early training reflected also the then dominant architectural approach to these problems. These men, though since derided by many as advocates of a city beautiful, were truly pioneers in developing the idea of the city as a total organism whose ills required the unselfish attention of the citizen who could place the interest of the community above his own. This tendency to decry some of the achievements of these pioneers reflects a delayed awareness of the physical problems among social and political scientists who were in their own way vigorously attacking the squalor and mismanagement of our cities.
By 1916 in both New York and Chicago the overcrowding of land had reached such heights that an almost spontaneous outcry from injured property owners and civic-minded leaders resulted in zoning ordinances which set new rules and limits to the cutthroat competition in land development. But this and subsequent extensions and intensifications of city planning required new techniques and a deeper understanding of economic trends in city growth and a sharper appraisal of competitive urban land uses. A new science of urban land economics grew from Ely’s pioneering studies.
Almost simultaneously Ford’s Model T made the nation conscious of its rutted, muddy country roads and hinted at the tumult and congestion which would shortly overtake the cities. The traffic engineer was born to add his speciality to the widening scope of city planning. The architect was forced to share the stage with these glamorous new experts in highway design whose wondrous convolutions tested the imagination and stamina of every motorist. But this technocrat in turn gave way to those socially oriented analysts of housing and of industry whose sterile standards have given us a generation of minimum shelter. The obvious conclusion that all these problems bore heavily and profoundly on one another and were in isolation insoluble parts of the greater problem of organic city growth, escaped the citizen. The city planner received only the smallest encouragement. Yet through the process of planning there developed a dawning recognition of the relationship between social analysis and physical design. These straws in the wind before the war forecast the rapid. evolution of a more effective and meaningful planning process in the postwar city in the United States. The staffs of the planning commissions today bear faint resemblance to those of the 1920’s when engineer and architect were almost the sole participants. Even the untimely wartime death of the National Resources Planning Board did not prevent its inspired leadership from giving a new direction to our planning goals nor from successfully fostering a broader professional base in the studies undertaken by planning staffs. A team of social scientists, architects, engineers, and administrators had in the larger cities replaced the general practitioner to the well-being of the patient.
At Harvard we are convinced that this evolution has been a healthy one. Nor do we suggest that it has reached its zenith, nor that it should be fought because the architect must now share the glory which was once his alone. Rather we must the more devoutly explore means of harnessing our diverse talents to the ever-growing task of rebuilding our cities. What we can have is far better than what we see about us. But to find the means is not easy. In an effort to enlist all talents in this crusade for a better environment we welcome students from all disciplines to the post-graduate work leading to the degree of Master in City Planning. After graduation from college at 21 or 22, a student spends about three years more working for his degree.
It is no easy task to describe a typical program, for there is none. The requirements are most simply stated. Each man must do some advanced post-graduate work in economics, physical design, sociology, public administration and planning law, and economic geography. The emphasis he may give these various fields is dependent on his previous training or his current predilection. In his lecture courses and seminars he will gain some familiarity with the professional mores of his future colleagues as well as real professional competence in one branch of his future calling. But all these diverse disciplines must in the essence of planning be simultaneously brought to bear upon concrete case studies. On these, students and faculty with different backgrounds learn to co-ordinate their efforts in the search for new solutions. Methods of research, analysis and synthesis become familiar to the student through the personal and repeated experience of doing rather than by the lifeless routine of reading and the absorption of second-hand information. These case studies, varied in character, form the challenging core and focus of his own experience; the 25 to 30 hours a week which he will spend on them will be half his working hours. Field studies and surveys by students and faculty form a practical base for the preparations of programs whose realism creates a spontaneous enthusiasm. It is not suggested that by such means the social scientist becomes a designer or vice versa, but that each is enabled to gain a deeper experience within his special field while at the same time appreciating the contributions of others and the advantages of sharing in the creative effort.
The expanding sphere of government activities has made it abundantly clear that the former supposed limits to city planning have become myths. It has become hard to name a profession which has not some unique contribution to make to the search for a better environment. If all are to pull their weight effectively, vigorous practice is needed in the difficult art of collaboration. And, secondly, we must have many broad and varied resources and talents to draw upon. Only perhaps in the university will it be possible to find such a team. But resources of manpower must be supplemented by outstanding libraries and facilities for research which are the tools of the scholar. At Harvard the direction of the curricula in planning is in the hands of a Council whose membership is striking evidence of the willingness to break down departmental walls and to share experience in a common cause. The Council includes, besides the Chairman, three public administrators in Professors Gaus, Lambie, and Wheaton, the latter a specialist in housing, a political scientist in Professor Friedrich, two economists, Professor Seymour Harris and Professor Abbott of the Business School, two geographers, Professors Whittlesey and Ullman, a sociologist, Professor Parsons: two architects, Dean Hudnut and Professor Gropius, and an engineer, Professor Wagner.
The same, collaborative spirit guiding the work in city planning will be found also in the work for the degree of Master in Regional Planning. By regional planning I refer to those larger areas, such as the Tennessee Valley or the Pacific Northwest, rather than to the metropolitan regionalism of the New York Regional Plan Association, which is to my mind merely city planning writ large. The same Council guides the student in regional planning. The emerging profession of regional planning, despite the promising efforts of Geddes, MacKaye and Mumford, is perhaps historically and technically less advanced than the science and art of city planning. It has been said, and with some modicum of truth, that “we are only in a period of regional study rather than regional planning.” This is not to deny the achievements of the TVA but rather to note with humility the vast unexplored areas of knowledge of this field. We therefore approach the education of future participants in the spirit of explorers. Among the differences which we would note is that regional planning is less focussed upon problems of physical design than is the more areally limited city planning. If less focussed upon physical design, it is perhaps more concerned with administrative problems and broad plans for economic and social development. The skills involved do not so much differ in kind as in the emphasis given to each. The development and execution of regional plans involve participation of a variety of agencies, federal, state and local, public and private. For this reason the function of regional planning is closely related to public administration. Special competence in this field has become a requisite for regional planners. The Council has joined, therefore, with the Graduate School of Public Administration in the inauguration, still partially experimental, of a joint curriculum leading at the end of three post-graduate years to master’s degrees in both public administration and regional planning. The program involves a shift of emphasis in the case studies away from the city to the region. and in the seminars away from local administration, zoning or urban redevelopment to those vaster problems of resource development. More specifically, seminars in fiscal policy and public finance, regional location of industry, agriculture and forestry, regional sociology and conservation of natural resources replace in part work in urban land economics, municipal government, urban geography and urban housing.
Yet the university is more than merely a convenient avenue into a profession. It is the hallowed ground where scholars strive to advance man's knowledge and his lot. For it is the fellowship of students that creates an atmosphere sympathetic to the cultivation of an inquiring spirit. At Harvard. men who have already attained professional stature and whose intellectual bent has urged them on to independent research are helped along this path. The Ph.D. is awarded to those hardy and creative students who have shown a capacity to advance the frontiers of knowledge of the planning profession.
Such advanced work, cultivated assiduously at Harvard since 1929, has borne significant fruit in many publications which have had a far-reaching influence on the evolution of public policy and have greatly widened the administrative and technical “know-how” of the profession. Students. professors and special research fellows have contributed to the Harvard City Planning Studies. Among these studies are found Mabel Walker’s Urban Blight and Slums, Thomas Adams’ The Design of Residential Areas, Bettman, Bassett and Williams’ Model Laws and Bartholomew’s Urban Land Uses. The latest volume from the Press, Hudnut’s witty and penetrating essays on Architecture and the Spirit of Man, adds a philosophic note to the more technical studies. Through such publications the University attempts to discharge a portion of its obligation to society in opening ever- widening vistas of our future cities.