Georgia Institute of Technology, by Howard K, Menhinick, Regents’ Professor of City planning in the Georgia Institute of Technology

A two-year graduate curriculum in city planning leading to the degree of Master of City Planning was initiated this September in the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. The program has its roots in two undergraduate city planning courses which formed a part of the training of architects. These courses have been given for the past several years by Professors I. E. Saporta and Richard Wilson under the sponsorship of Professor Harold Bush-Brown, Director of the School of Architecture.
The new graduate city planning instruction is made possible by a grant from the General Education Board with financial and other support from the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia and from the officers and faculty of Georgia Institute of Technology. Through the University Center in Georgia, the program is drawing upon the staff resources of other institutions of higher education in the region including Emory University in Atlanta and the University of Georgia in Athens. The city planning program is located in the School of Architecture which has just moved into a large, modern architectural building completed this past summer.

City Planning Co-operation in the South
Georgia Institute of Technology last fall requested the assistance of the Southern Regional Education Board in developing a cooperative graduation program of city planning instruction, research, and service in the South. The Southern Regional Education Board was created by fourteen southern states  that have approved a compact under which they obligate themselves to work with each other and with colleges and universities and other agencies concerned with higher education to the end that by joint effort they may more rapidly advance knowledge and improve the social and economic level of the southern region. The Board is comprised of the governor of each of the fourteen states and three other representatives appointed by each governor. It is required that at least one of the appointees from each state be an educator.
The Board has identified the field of city planning as being of great significance to the region, of high cost, and of limited student enrollment, and, therefore, as a field which should become an essential part of the developing southern regional education program. 
Georgia Institute of Technology and the universities of North Carolina and Oklahoma, which are the only three institutions in the fourteen southern states that offer a Master’s degree in planning, are now cooperating with the Southern Regional Education Board in a joint planning program. Other interested institutions and agencies of the region are invited to join with these three institutions and the Board in identifying the principal city planning problems of the South and in formulating and participating in instruction, research, and service undertakings that will contribute to the solution of the problems. It is anticipated that planning program emphases in the three initially participating institutions may differ somewhat and that the institutions will thus supplement each other.
States that do not wish to develop in their own institutions graduate programs in city planning but prefer to concentrate their resources on graduate programs in other fields for which they consider themselves especially well equipped will have the privilege of sending their residents who wish to study city planning to any one of the three institutions that have elected to develop strength in this field.

Programme Emphasis at Georgia Institute of Technology
The focus of the planning instruction at Georgia Institute of Technology is upon the problems of small and large urban communities and their metropolitan areas. However, appropriate attention is given to problems of state, regional, and national planning and resource development because of their obvious bearing on the planning and development of cities.
The concentration on the problems of urban communities was decided upon because Georgia Institute of Technology is located in the heart of a great region that is now growing industrially and urbanizing at a rate much more rapid than the United States as a whole. The cities of this region, like the cities in regions elsewhere that have been underdeveloped but are catching up rapidly, have an unparalleled opportunity to avoid many of the mistakes of urban growth that characterize cities in the more highly urbanized areas of the world. Another consideration in the selection of the urban planning emphasis was the fact that Georgia Institute of Technology has at its very doorstep an unexcelled urban planning laboratory in the Atlanta metropolitan region, which has a present population of about 700,000.
Georgia Institute of Technology aims to give its students a basic understanding of cities, the history of their origin and subsequent development and of their planning, their problems and their opportunities as well as a grounding in the best current planning policies, techniques and methods for the solution of present problems and the realization of future potentialities.
For most students, two years of work will be required for the Master’s degree-five quarters of course work, a final quarter for a thesis and a summer in the office of an approved planning agency or planning consultant. The thesis may consist of the solution of a planning problem in a near-by city, undertaken on invitation of the appropriate city officials with the report of the findings and recommendations made both to the city and to the School.
The heart of the city planning curriculum is a group of design problems in a series of courses entitled “Problems in City Planning”. Most of the problems will be laid in the urban communities of the region. The problems are paralleled by concurrent seminar courses dealing with the same subjects. Thus tied together are problems and seminars in land-use planning and zoning; in residential, business, and industrial district design; in major street, railroad, transit, and utility system layout; in airport, school and public open space planning; and in most of the major elements that, taken together in all their complex relationships, comprise a city. For example, the problem of the planning of a small town is directly related to seminars in which the final projects are a system of local government, a public finance program; and a zoning ordinance. The solution of the physical problems of an urban redevelopment project is paralleled by a seminar course which identifies the human problems involved in the project and develops possible solutions.
Because cities are planned for people, special attention is given to the needs and desires of people and to techniques for enlisting their participation in the planning process. For example, a course entitled “Planning for People” and a second course entitled “Economics of Urban Development” give the student an insight into the social and economic purposes, organization, and functioning of cities. They develop techniques for appraising the probable effects of alternative city plan proposals upon the lives of people and upon the economic resources of the community.
In addition to training in city planning design and graphic presentation, attention is given to the development of skill in speaking and writing and to the use of the tools of statistical analysis.

Student Selection
Enrollment in the new program is limited to twenty graduate students so that the instruction may be hand-tailored to meet the needs and desires of each. Students who have a bachelor’s degree and who were in the upper half of their classes are admitted as candidates for the Master’s degree. Georgia Institute of Technology aims to have in its city planning program a group of carefully selected students of varied backgrounds - architecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering, geography, economics, sociology , public administration, and the humanities. Men with training in each of these professions and disciplines have unique contributions to make to city planning. The Institute hopes also to have always a number of students from other countries, particularly those countries that are advanced in planning. These men will be able to contribute to the American students’ knowledge of planning policies and techniques in use in their countries. The visitors will, in turn, gain an understanding of the planning experience of cities in the United States. A diverse group of this type, working together as a team, will develop habits of interdisciplinary as well as international collaboration-practices that should prove of continuing usefulness to them in their subsequent professional careers. The ultimate objective of the program is the education of planners who are equipped not only to serve immediately as useful members of a planning organization but who also, in the years ahead, may become leaders in the improvement of the urban communities with which they are concerned.