Planning’s End? Urban Renewal in New Haven, the Yale School of Art and Architecture, and the Fall of the New Deal Spatial Order

Abstract

This article argues that the movement against urban renewal emerged not only in the streets of American cities, but also in the halls of American universities. In response to the extensive redevelopment of New Haven in the 1950s and 1960s, students at the Yale School of Art and Architecture, and especially in the Department of City Planning, marshaled an extensive critique of their expanding university’s role in this top-down reconstruction. In the plight of impacted communities they found a parallel to their own frustrations as students. Envisioning a more “relevant” design pedagogy that deemphasized the role of the professional and lent greater power to the grassroots, students forced the hand of Yale president Kingman Brewster, Jr., who sought to protect the expertise and bureaucratic process he viewed as essential to liberalism. In their confrontation lay a fundamental shift in the order of urban redevelopment—and thus in the order of the modern city—in the last years of the 1960s.

Revisiting Civic Architecture and Advocacy Planning in the US & Italy: Urban Planning as Commoning and New Theoretical Frameworks

“…During the period that preceded Tunnard's appointment, Yale University had acted as a principal partner and consultant in the city's urban renewal efforts 18 . During this phase, Arthur Row was the Chairman at the Department of City Planning at Yale University and a top-down approach concerning urban planning was dominant.…”