Designing Modern America: The Regional Planning Association of America and Its Members FROM THE PUBLISHER
This fascinating book examines the Regional Planning Association of American (RPAA), a loosely organized association of ambitious and influential planners who hoped to guide the new urban and industrial developments of the early twentieth century and thereby design a radically improved America. After discussing the roots of this effort in the Progressive and World War I periods, Edward K. Spann traces the development of the RPAA from its formation in 1923 through the decade of its greatest effort (which ended in 1934) to its decline and ultimate demise in the late 1930s. Taking a biographical approach and drawing on both published works and private correspondence, the book focuses on the richly varied thoughts and activities of the leading members of the RPAA regarding significant aspects of urban and regional planning. This work should appeal not only to students of city and regional planning, of architecture, and of environmentalism, but to all those interested in the intellectual developments of the period between 1914 and 1938, especially as they relate to an important phase of modernization in the United States.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
An historical examination of the Regional Planning Association of
America (RPAA), an association of urban and industrial planners
formed in 1923 and disbanded in the late 1930s after a long period of
influence on the US landscape. The RPAA members had significant
impact on urban and regional planning and are duly profiled along
with their major projects and ideas, including the emergence of
community housing in World War I, Benton MacKaye's rural
reconstruction, Lewis Mumford's efforts to advance planning idealism,
regional planning in New York state under Alfred E. Smith, and the
controversial early years of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Home
