THE REGIONAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA: A VISION OF REGIONALISM (PROGRESSIVISM, FEDERAL HOUSING POLICY, 1918-1919, PLANNING PROFESSION, 1917-1932, THEORIES OF ECONOMIC PLANNING, MUMFORD, LEWIS)

The Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) was formed in 1923 to promote a new kind of city planning based on its concept of regionalism. For the RPAA, this implied wider social and cultural change, and its planning agenda represents an important progressive legacy of regionalism.;Chapter 4 follows the early career of Lewis Mumford. Mumford ended his affiliation with the socialist Left when he developed a critique of western "Progress" and modernization. He laid the intellectual basis for the RPAA by constructing a sociology of regionalism enlivened with cultural associations drawn from the American past.;Chapter 5 introduces the last two major figures of the RPAA. Stuart Chase, economist, contributed an alternative economic policy calling for increased regional self-sufficiency and centralized planning. Benton MacKaye, forester, added essential ideas of resource planning and conservation. His definition of the region as correlated with the natural watershed was adopted by the RPAA.;Chapter 6 shows how, by 1926, the RPAA achieved a definition of regionalism based on a synthesis of planning proposals in economics, conservation, land use, community, and anticipation of the revival of localism, community association, regional art and literature, and indigenous folkways. Regionalism, empowered by radicalized technical elites, would provide a basis for cultural resistance to rampant modernization.;Chapters 1-3 center on the contributions of architect-planners Clarence Stein and Frederick Ackerman to the articulation of an alternative to the rationalized city of the "Progressive planners." The "community planning" idea which found multiple sources in Progressivism adapted Ebenezer Howard's garden city and was influential in the planning of World War I federal housing projects.;Chapter 7 follows RPAA attempts in the 1920's to influence the urban planning profession. Failing here, many RPAAers found positions with various New Deal agencies. Their lack of influence reflected the RPAA's earlier failure to develop political constituencies.;The conclusion examines the RPAA's contribution to the idea of regionalism by comparing its ideas with contemporary proponents of "bioregional" ecology, appropriate technology, urban neighborhood associations, land-use planning, and conservation planning.