University of California, Berkeley, California, by T. J. Kent Jr., Associate Professor of City Planning and Chairman of the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California

At the outset I want to express the appreciation of the faculty of the Department of City and Regional Planning of the University of California to The Town Planning Review for the opportunity of presenting the following report on the Department’s program to an international professional audience. We look forward to a lively exchange of views as this series of the Review’s articles is augmented by reports from other centers of education and research in urban planning situated throughout the world. The policies and program described here have been developed to meet the needs primarily of California and the Western United States. It will be interesting and valuable for us to learn if experience elsewhere is resulting in similar policies and programs, or if political and social values in different parts of the world are so varied that a common approach to the problems of planning education is not possible, perhaps not desirable, today.
In order to assist the reader who is not familiar with the conditions in California that made possible the establishment of the University program in city and regional planning in 1948, an attempt has been made in the first two sections of the report to provide sufficient background information so that the program may be viewed in its historical perspective.

The Urbanization of California, 1850-1950
During the last hundred years California, which is roughly the size and shape of Sweden, has been transformed from a collection of frontier settlements - some Spanish, some Indian, some very recently established by goldrushing citizens of the United States - into a highly developed urban and modern agricultural state. Its population increased from 92,597 in 1850 to an estimated 10,800,000 in 1950. More than 3,890,000 persons of the 1950 total carne to the state during the last ten years, and the current rate of growth continues to be high.
For purposes of local government California is divided into 58 counties within which are situated 304 incorporated cities. Twelve of the counties and 124 of the cities are located in the two great metropolitan regions of the state, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. It is estimated that these two regions alone contain more than 7,000,000 people, or 64 per cent of the state’s total population. The other cities, several of which have more than 100,000 people, account for an additional nine per cent of the population, leaving only 27 per cent living outside the urban centers.
The economy of the state, although basically dependent on agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and the tourist trade, is characterized by an exceptionally high proportion of workers employed in distribution, trade, and service activities in the urban areas. Leaders of business, political, labor, and educational groups seem to be in general agreement that continued growth and expansion depends on the ability of Californians to further develop their urban economy and urban way of life. Thousands of individual properties in the older cities, portions of which still look like temporary mining towns, are being modernized and vast new areas adjacent to the existing urban centers are being built up. Thus, from the city planning point of view, the need for urban planning work in California today is obvious and the opportunities for doing an effective job are abundant.

Growth of City and County planning Activity, 1920-1950
The rapid increase of the population has caused the city and county governments of the state to be concerned continuously since their establishment with major questions of public policy posed by large scale physical development problems. For decades city and county legislative bodies themselves dealt with these problems as best they could without the assistance of planning commissions or professional staffs. There were, however, numerous special studies and plans made during the early years by outstanding planning consultants, such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Daniel Burnham, and Werner Hegemann, who were employed usually by private civic groups. Not until after 1920 was the first official planning commission established on a permanent basis.
Between 1920 and 1930 interest and activity in long range, comprehensive, public planning by local government increased very rapidly. Many new planning commissions were set up and California became one of the most important employment centers in the United States for persons interested in professional planning work. The major problems that received attention during this time included zoning, subdivision control, highway location, and the protection and development of shoreline and recreation areas. In 1929 the state legislature passed the local planning enabling act which, although it has been amended several times, is still the basic local planning law of the state. The concept of an advisory citizen commission appointed by the legislative body to do long-range planning for physical development has not been significantly changed in twenty-one years. Since the depression of the 1930’s the scope of planning commission activity has been broadened as the problems of the cities and the unincorporated urban areas of the counties have become more complex. Planning programs today are concerned with urban redevelopment, housing, decentralization, and mass transit problems in addition to those mentioned above. In several communities planning commissions are called upon annually to participate in the programming of capital improvements so that public facilities built by the local governments will more closely conform to the long- range development plans recommended by the commissions. Also, there is a growing awareness on the part of the planners themselves of the economic and social implications of their work.
There are today more than 246 local city and county planning agencies in the state. Many of these agencies have large, permanent, well balanced professional staffs and are firmly established within the framework of local government. Others, however, are still in the organizational stage. The work done by private planning consultants and their staffs covers a wide range of technical and general problems, and there is a specialized demand for planners that is now being created by the expanding programs of the local housing authorities, the newly established redevelopment agencies, and certain federal and state agencies and private business and research organizations. Thus the character of work being done by the 189 practicing planners who are members of the California Chapter of the American Institute of Planners, and who constitute more than one-fourth of the entire membership of the national Institute, ranges from that of the “general practitioner” to that performed by the “specialist.”

Establishment of Department of City and Regional Planning, 1948
As a result of the steady growth of local planning activity and an increased awareness of the shortcomings of the urban communities of the state as places in which to work and live, the Department of City and Regional Planning was established in July 1948 in the Graduate Division of the University of California. The two primary objectives of the University in taking this action were, first, to offer training to graduate students from related undergraduate fields who desire to enter the planning profession, and second, to undertake research into the fundamental problems of urban growth and development.
The policies and program of the department which, it is hoped, will enable the University to move toward the objectives stated above, have been determined by the Faculty Group in City and Regional Planning on the basis of general policies laid down by the faculty of the University. The nine-man Group is composed of the department chairman, who also serves as Group chairman, and members of other departments whose interests and work have brought them into contact with city and regional planning activities. The departments represented on the Group include economics, law, landscape design, architecture, civil engineering, art, business administration, and philosophy. There are, of course, many members of the University faculty in other departments, such as political science and sociology, who are interested in this new field and who work with the department staff on matters of common concern.
The establishment of the department in 1948 and the appointment of the Faculty Group by the Dean of the Graduate Division in March of 1949 was preceded by more than ten years of discussion and debate and by efforts on the part of interested departments and individual faculty members in related fields to organize introductory city planning courses for undergraduate students. Several such courses were successfully developed during this period and are still offered. However, interested faculty members were unsuccessful in their efforts to expand the work of the University in this new field until a proposal was made that recognized the fact that city planning is a distinct professional field and could not be properly provided for in a piecemeal manner by several University departments representing related fields. Following the end of World War II, the President of the University appointed an Advisory Committee to work with him in carrying out the recommendations presented in a report prepared by the general faculty Committee on Educational Policy. These recommendations, which were submitted in 1946 and are now the basic policies of the new department, called for the establishment of an independent department at the graduate level and the development of a two-year curriculum leading to the degree Master of City Planning.
During the 1948-49 academic year a memorandum was prepared by the department staff describing in detail the proposed two-year graduate curriculum intended to lead to the new professional degree. The proposed curriculum and the request to establish the degree were formally approved in the spring of 1949 and in the fall thirteen graduate students from six universities representing nine different undergraduate fields began their work in the new department.

Education: The Two- Year Graduate Curriculum in City Planning
The graduate curriculum in the field of city planning is designed to offer related courses of instruction that will enable students to develop and combine a broad understanding of the physical, social, and economic aspects of urban planning with a degree of technical skill such as to qualify them for positions on the staffs of city, country, or urban regional planning agencies, or in the offices of planning consultants. The program requires a period of at least two years of study, including a three months’ period of internship in a planning office, preferably undertaken during the summer between the two graduate years. The first year of study includes courses in the history, theory, principles, and practice of city planning and in the social sciences and design. The second graduate year consists of seminars and laboratory courses dealing with planning law and administration, practical planning problems, and advanced city planning theory. Normally students will take additional courses in related fields during the second year.
Experience has demonstrated that mature students who desire to enter the planning profession are able during the two-year graduate period to learn the principles and techniques of city planning and to develop, during the same period, a satisfactory understanding of the basic concepts of the arts and sciences of design and of the social sciences, particularly economics, political science, and sociology. A sound educational program for training city planners requires a broad grounding in these fields. It is recognized that modern society and, in fact, modern educational programs generally, encourage the development of specialists who are concerned with only a small portion of one field. Despite this dominant trend, the proposed curriculum in city planning is oriented in the opposite direction: it aims at the development of ability on the part of the student to synthesize, correlate, and coordinate. The obstacles that stand in the way of the successful development of such a curriculum are not ignored.
“From the point of view of quantity alone, the basic education needed by the planner presents obvious difficulties. Enumeration of the fields of knowledge in which he should feel at home has sometimes led to the conclusion that it is an impossible task; yet it must be clear that such a conclusion cannot be accepted. One thing is certain, we cannot treat all fields of knowledge of concern to the planner as though he were required to be a specialist in those fields. To do so is to misunderstand the essential function of the planner; and hence to pervert the education process as it applies to him. At the same time, he must know enough of the varied subject matter with which he is involved so that he will be able to co-ordinate the different elements of a planning program, and will know when to get more specialized advice and how to use the results” .
The requirements for admission to the Graduate Division, Northern Section, of the University of California, for the purpose of undertaking work leading to the degree of Master of City Planning are as follows: (1) A bachelor’s degree from a recognized college or university in a field related to city planning, together with an academic record and background considered satisfactory as preparation for graduate study in the field of city planning; and (2) completion of at least a one-year college course, or its equivalent, in each of the following five fields: economics, political science, physics, English, and mathematics, including the introduction to calculus.
It is expected that most of the students who will apply for admission to this field of study will have done their undergraduate work either in architecture, landscape architecture, or engineering, or in the social sciences, with a major in some field such as sociology, economics, or political science. The two-year curriculum has been designed with this in mind. Students who have had a general liberal arts course during their undergraduate years may apply for admission, but normally they will be required to undertake a program that will last longer than two years. Experience has shown, however, that satisfactory programs can be developed for such students, and that the students so prepared have been able to engage successfully in professional work. Every student’s program of study is considered individually and the major advisor recommends a definite curriculum, including electives, based on an evaluation of the student’s undergraduate training and practical experience.
There are three groups of courses that are drawn upon in organizing programs for individual students: required courses in city planning; courses in related fields that may be required; and elective courses in city planning and related fields. The required courses in city planning consist of four seminar and four laboratory courses, all of which are offered by the Department of City and Regional Planning. The seminars are concerned with the history and theory, legislation and administration, and principles, methods, and techniques of city planning; the laboratory courses offer academic experience in the application of the city planning principles, methods, techniques studied in the seminar course to theoretical and practical city planning problems. The objectives of the latter course are to familiarize the students with the range and types of problems that characterize contemporary city planning work, to enable them to develop skill in city planning methods and techniques, and to offer them an opportunity to learn to work as members of a co-operative technical staff group.
The courses in related fields that may be required consist of six courses in the social sciences and five courses in the fields of design and engineering. The social science group is comprised of courses offered by existing departments in urban sociology, principles of public administration, social philosophy, urban land economics, statistics, and public finance and taxation. The courses in the fields of design and engineering are: municipal engineering, introduction to landscape architecture, site planning, art, and introduction to architecture, The background of each student will be the determining factor in deciding which of these eleven courses will be required. Substitutions of certain courses, such as economic geography or social psychology, in place of some of those listed above may be arranged.
The elective courses in city planning and related fields consist of those graduate and undergraduate courses of particular interest to individual students which are offered by the many departments of the University. The University offers a wide variety of general and specialized work in both cultural and technical fields of study and has a large number of departments engaged in work of direct interest and importance to students of city planning. The Department of City and Regional Planning will itself offer some elective courses in response to the need for specialized work in subjects such as urban redevelopment, housing, and large-scale urban design.

Research: Interdepartmental Committee on Urban Studies
Continuous research into the problems of urban areas is essential for the advancement of urban planning and participation in such research is an important adjunct to graduate instruction. In establishing the new department it was clearly understood that, because of these reasons, a broad and continuing research program should be developed. Several of the older departments of the University have as direct an interest in the evolution of a comprehensive and integrated theory of city growth and structure as the Department of City and Regional Planning. As a result of this common interest an informal interdepartmental committee on urban studies has come into existence during the past year and is attempting to strengthen the individual departmental programs by assisting in the formulation of essential collaborative research projects. The departments and bureaus participating in this work include economics, business administration, sociology, public administration, political science, social welfare, city and regional planning, and transportation and traffic engineering. It is expected that the committee will be broadened gradually to include representatives from the departments of architecture, landscape design, engineering, anthropology, psychology, jurisprudence, geography, and public health. The development of an inter-departmental research program in this broad field will take time, but the need for such a program to augment the separate studies now being made is recognized. The University of California will, it is hoped, have more to report on this enterprise in a few years. With the creation in 1949 of the research division in the Housing and Home Finance Agency of the federal government, it is possible that at last there may be a continuing and effective effort in research at the national level similar to that described above at the University of California. Several other universities have recently expanded their research activities concerned with urban growth and development and are interested in working out some better means than exist at present to facilitate the exchange of information and the programming of their research work. Members of the faculties of Columbia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, North Carolina, Chicago, and the University of California have held informal preliminary discussions on this matter and, in the spring of 1949, collaborated as members of the American Institute of Planners in the preparation of an Institute statement outlining a comprehensive program of research on the urban environment. The range and variety of the needed studies obviously are so broad that the whole program would be beyond the capacity of any single institution. It is the intention of the Department of City and Regional Planning of the University of California to co-operate with foundations interested in sponsoring research in this field and with other institutions of higher learning, particularly those having planning schools and research institutes, in developing this program. In addition to participation in the organizational efforts described above, the department during the past year has undertaken two projects on its own initiative. In each case the San Francisco Bay Metropolitan Area has been used as a laboratory. The first project is concerned with the problem of planning a system of airports and related facilities in a metropolitan area to accommodate present and future needs of the air transportation industry and private flyers; the second is concerned with the relationship between the existing industrial land use pattern in the metropolitan area and the existing industrial zoning pattern that has been created by the 69 cities and nine counties of the area acting independently. Both of these studies have been undertaken in collaboration with groups representing local planning offices and other interests and it is expected that the results of the studies, in addition to increasing the general field of knowledge and providing a test for new planning techniques and standards, will be of practical use to the groups participating in the work. It is hoped that a third project dealing with the nature of the planning function in local government may be started soon. During the past fifteen years the rapid expansion of city and county planning agencies in California has provided a wealth of experience in the application of the concept of the planning function in local government as expressed in the 1929 State Local Planning Enabling Act. In addition, cities and counties having individual charters have defined this function for themselves, and, particularly in recent years, have amended the planning provisions of their charters to broaden the scope of the planning agency. Certain divergent views as to just what the planning function should be are becoming apparent and there is need for a thorough review and analysis of the operating experiences of the 246 city and county planning agencies in the state so that the important issues involved, which are vitally affecting the entire structure of local government, may be clearly understood before further important changes are made.

The Future
As long range comprehensive planning for the physical development of our urban areas becomes more widely accepted by local government as an essential task of government, and as the city and county planning departments already established become stronger and are able to do more imaginative and effective work, special personnel needs not now clearly seen probably will develop. Thus, it is anticipated that at some future date it may be necessary to offer special training in particular phases of urban planning work. Certainly the amount of original research performed in local planning offices will be vastly increased, and a far greater degree of skill will be required in both the administrative and technical design phases of city and county planning, as the urban redevelopment, transit, housing, and other huge programs that will reshape our urban areas are carried out.
It is also expected that the department will be called upon to participate in the development of a graduate program concerned with large-scale national regional planning. The term “regional planning”, is generally used to describe two different kinds of planning activity: it means the kind of planning, similar to city planning, that is done for metropolitan regions or unified urban areas composed of several cities and counties; but it is also used to describe the kind of planning that is done for large national regions, such as the Tennessee Valley in the southeastern United States and the Central Valley of California. The department already offers academic work covering the field of metropolitan regional planning as a part of the two-year graduate curriculum in city planning. However, because of the lack of a clearly defined need at the present time for personnel trained specially for national regional planning work, no department in the University offers a graduate curriculum in this field as such. Several departments have an active interest in this matter and undoubtedly a collaborative effort will be made by interested faculty members from related departments to define more clearly the scope of the field and the type or types of educational programs that would be most beneficial for students desiring to participate in this kind of work.
In conclusion it should be pointed out that the program of the department has been very greatly influenced by the fact that it was established on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. It was recognized at the outset that, although programs in city and regional planning have been offered at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for approximately twenty years, and although new curricula have been established during the past few years at several other universities in the United States, the opportunity of this University to make a significant contribution to the field of city and regional planning is unique. Very few other institutions have such an unusual combination of factors; the University of California is a state university, and hence has a large undergraduate student body to draw upon and direct relationships with state and local governments; it is one of the older universities, with a well-developed Graduate Division and strong departments in all related fields of study, and hence has an awareness of and a vital interest in the economic and social implications of city planning in addition to the design and engineering aspects of the field; and finally, it is located in a state that is becoming urbanized rapidly, which means contact with practical problems, and in an area of the state, the San Francisco Bay Metropolitan Area, that has a traditionally cosmopolitan population, which means the students will be encouraged to maintain a lively and serious interest in the goals and objectives of city planning as well as the principles and methods.
 
 
 
 
  

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