The Regional City and Town Planning

This chapter focuses on Clarence Samuel Stein's postwar concept of the Regional City as well as the maturation of his town planning ideas. Stein and his colleagues began to regularly use the term Regional City in 1927. Their early conception envisioned an amalgam of the romanticized medieval village with connections to the land combined with all the conveniences offered through new technologies to enhance modern lifestyles in distinctive, relatively small towns. Stein, together with MacKaye and Mumford, advocated for regional, even national, planning based on the ideas the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) had already promoted, including regional river basin planning, the townless highways, and state planning. This chapter considers Stein's postwar advocacy of communitarian regionalism and the rebirth of the RPAA as the Regional Development Council of America (RDCA). It also examines how Stein applied his collaborative regionalist and town planning ideals in a concrete project at Kitimat in Canada.

International Initiatives and Building a Legacy

This chapter considers Clarence Samuel Stein's legacy as a community architect, along with his postwar engagement in international initiatives in town planning. In the years after World War II, Stein found himself turning his attention toward international translations of his new town ideas. Communications with international architects, housers, and planners characterized this period, with a focus on specific projects, such as the new towns of Chandigarh in India and Stevenage in Great Britain, and broader community building concepts with housing and planning experts in places as diverse as Sweden and Israel. This chapter discusses Stein's travels in Europe to new towns as he completed documentation of his own visionary work in what would become Toward New Towns for America. It also describes Stein's involvement in town building projects in India and Israel and concludes with an assessment of his legacy in the areas of investment housing and communitarian regionalism and the influence of his community building concepts ranging from the Regional City to the Radburn Idea.

The Radburn Idea

This chapter examines Clarence Samuel Stein's interrelated community design, with particular emphasis on his Radburn Idea. It first takes a look at Stein's early large-scale unbuilt projects that demonstrate his emerging talent in site design, such as Sunnyside Park in Shelton, Connecticut, with Kohn in 1920; Fort Sheridan Gardens with Ernest Gruensfeldt; and the Spuyten Duyvil Housing Development in the northwest Bronx in 1923. It then considers Stein's development of Radburn to illustrate the benefits of communitarian regionalism: Radburn was conceived as a “complete town” for twenty-five thousand that would include “all the other facilities and conveniences which go to make for comfortable, pleasant living.” The chapter also discusses Stein's innovations in site design at Chatham Village in Pennsylvania; his design of Phipps Garden Apartments in New York City and the Wichita Art Institute; and his partnership with John W. Harris for the new town of Maplewood near Lake Charles, Louisiana.

A Thinkers’ Network and The City Housing Corporation

This chapter focuses on Clarence Samuel Stein's collaborative approach to community design with a specific focus on the formation and initiatives of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA). It first provides an overview of Stein's early connections in housing policy and regionalism, along with his marriage to Aline MacMahon, before turning to the RPAA, conceived by Stein to address housing policy, community design, and regional planning, with the goal of building a Garden City. It also examines the City Housing Corporation's (CHC) community building and design strategy as well as its innovations in mortgage financing; the New York Housing and Regional Planning Commission's (HRPC) advocacy of a comprehensive housing program; the RPAA's participation in the 1925 International Town Planning Conference (ITPC) held in New York City; and the inception of the Radburn Idea. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Stein's advocacy of communitarian regionalism and metropolitanism and the CHC's demise during the 1930s.

Early Years and Architectural Training

This chapter focuses on Clarence Samuel Stein's formative years, including the foundations of his work ethic, engagement in learning by doing, community design skills, and commitment to affordable housing. Born in Rochester, New York, on June 19, 1882, into an upwardly mobile Jewish family, Clarence Samuel Stein was the third child of Rose Rosenblatt and Leo Stein. When the Stein Manufacturing Company consolidated with two other firms in 1890 to form the National Casket Company, the Stein family moved to the Chelsea district in New York City. This chapter first provides an overview of New York City's Ethical Culture Society and its influence on Stein's early life before discussing his enrollment in 1905 at Paris's École des Beaux Arts, known for its strong tradition of architectural education with a focus on fostering excellence in design and drafting. It also considers Stein's employment in the office of Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue as well as his civic reform work in New York City.

The Architect as Houser

This chapter focuses on Clarence Samuel Stein's contributions as a houser lending consistent support for a government role in order to more effectively engage the private sector while charting his transition to promoting investment housing as a preferable alternative to public housing. Stein and his colleagues enthusiastically welcomed the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as an unprecedented opportunity to advance regionalism, new town planning, and worker housing. As a community architect, Stein favored a particular type of assisted housing—“investment housing”—a comprehensive design, development, and management approach to ensure the project's ongoing sustainability at affordable rates. This chapter first considers Stein's Hillside Homes project in New York before discussing the Resettlement Administration's Greenbelt Town program. It also examines Stein's role as consulting architect for the Baldwin Hills Village in Los Angeles.

The Garden City Idea

This chapter provides context for Clarence Samuel Stein's engagement with and translation of Ebenezer Howard's proposed Garden City and for his advocacy of these ideas in his projects, service, writings, lectures, and consulting activities throughout his career. Stein promoted Garden City as an “ideal system” for neighborhood preservation, housing reform, traffic congestion mitigation, and park design. What struck Stein about the Garden City—rechristened Regional City—was its spirit of cooperation and community, the balance between open spaces and development, and the notion that distinctive planned new towns served as the building blocks of the region. This chapter reviews the Garden City concept with a focus on its adoption and evolution in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. It also considers the initiatives of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), where Stein served as founder and informal sponsor, including the Radburn Idea.

Introduction

This book documents the life and work of Clarence Samuel Stein, an environmental designer, humanist, houser, policymaker, town planner, and regionalist whose influential career stretched from the Progressive era of urban reform through the post–World War II era of postcolonial international planning. Looking through the lens of Stein's lifework, the book explores emerging concepts in site design, housing finance and management, town building, regional development, and community planning. It considers four critical themes that informed Stein's career and legacy: his collaborative approach, promotion and implementation of “investment housing,” distinctive interrelated community design epitomized as the Radburn Idea, and his advocacy of communitarian regionalism. These themes are tied together by the concept of the Garden City as introduced by Ebenezer Howard and implemented first most notably by architects Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker. This introduction provides an overview of Stein's projects and initiatives as well as the chapters that follow.