Portrait of a Consultant in Hard Times

Abstract

John Nolen was one of the first planners to build a national consulting practice focused on new towns. However, his office began to struggle financially in the late 1920s. Despite a thirty-year record, Nolen had no paying private-sector clients after 1931 and finally had to downsize his office. He survived on New Deal contracts for a while. But eventually he could not obtain work even from the Resettlement Administration, where his former protégés were implementing his ideas. Modern new town ideas from Clarence Stein were ascendant. Seen as a relic, Nolen died without a single project pending in his portfolio.

The Value of Planning: Views from Management Consultants

“…12. While this has received scant attention, an exception is Fulton's (2017) detailed analysis of the decline of John Nolen's consulting practice, including his reliance on government contracts. 13.…”

Shifting Agendas: Private Consultants and Public Planning Policy

“…Veselý (2013) has argued that fields where the private sector provides greater salaries, such as finance, energy, and environment, demonstrate higher levels of policy advice outsourcing, compared with those without a strong consulting marketplace. Studies of very early consultant practices show a reliance on public-sector contracts, with public work forming the only source of income during economic downturns (Fulton 2017). These interactions between market and state have also been noted in the increasing complexity and scope of projects.…”