Invisible Cities: Lewis Mumford, Thomas Adams, and the Invention of the Regional City, 1925-1929 AndrewA. Meyers DepartmentofHistory ColumbiaUniversity "Americanssense that something iswrong with the places where we live andwork and go aboutour dailybusiness." So beginsa recentjeremiad by authorHoward Kunstler on the "environmentalcalamity" we callthe suburbs [Kunstler,1996, p. 43]. Criticspoint to fundamentalaspects of post-war planning,such as zoning,highway dependence, and decentralization,as the determinantsof ourcurrent suburban landscape. But how did business come to the suburbs,and how did zoningcreate the "EdgeCities" we havecome to both love and hate?Long before urban renewal,the interstatehighway program,Levittown and Edge Cities, a coherentaltemafive to the "congested city"already dominated popular, professional, and political discourse. The new idealof the "regionalcity" projected a rationallyplanned and zoned city which segregatedresidential, commercial, and industrial uses, as well as socialclasses. The new metropoliswould be anchoredby a concentratedcentral business district,connected by expresswaysto concentric,low-density residential and industrialsuburban tings. Most importantly,the whole ensemblewould be orderedaccording to a comprehensiveregional plan. It wasout of the debates over"regionalism" during the 1920s that this new urban vision emerged. In March of 1923 critic Lewis Mumford, architectClarence Stem and other like-mindedreformers formed the RegionalPlanning Association of America(RPAA), a looselyknit associationof urbanreformers. In Julyof the sameyear ThomasAdams became Director of Plansand Surveysfor the RussellSage Foundation's proposed Regional Survey of New York and its Environs, the forerunnerof the RPNY.• As a result of these efforts, the

• The RegionalPlanning Association of Americawas a looselyknit associationof like- mindedindividuals from a varietyof disciplines.As a prominentcritic and secretary of the organization,Lewis Mumford became the RPAA's chief theorist and polemicist. I have used him asthe primaryspokesperson. An excellenttreatment of the collaborafivenature of the RPAAis KermitC. Parsonsunpublished paper, "The CollaborafiveGenius of the Regional PlanningAssociation of America,"August, 1993. I wouldlike to thankProfessor Parsons for sogenerously sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of Steinand the RPAA. The Regional Planof New York wasitself a productof manyhands. Adams became Director of Surveys in 1923,but hisofficial role wasas coordinatorand synthesizerof the work of dozensof peoplein severalcommittees. For the sakeof simplicityI haveused "RPNY" to standfor the organizationthat producedboth the Surveyand the Plan,as well as for the successor organization,the Regional Plan Association. BUSINESSAND ECONOMICHISTORY, Volume Twenty-seven, no.2, Winter 1998. Copyright¸1998 bythe Business History Conference. ISSN 0894-6825.

292 THE INVENTION OF THE REGIONAL CITY, 1923-1929/ 293

"regionalcity" emerged during the late 1920sas theplanned response to the problemsof the Americanindustrial metropolis. While the City Beautiful movementat the turn of the centuryhad identified many of the sameurban problems,the regionalistsdrew upon new understandings of city functioning, governmentalactivism, and the natureof advancedcapitalism to proposea completerevision of spatialrelations in metropolitanNew York.The regional- istsappropriated the nineteenth century critiques of "blight"and "congestion" but recastthem in a rhetoricand ideology that proposed a radicalrestructuring of the cityaccording to zonedfunctioning and "decentralization." Yet in 1929, upon the constructionof the RPAA'sproject in Radburn,N.J., and the publicationof the RPNY'sten-volume survey and plan, an apparentbreak occurredin the ranksof theregionalists over the fundamentalquestions: what exactlyis "theregion" and what are the true goals of regionalplanning? The significantdifference between the two groupswas that the RPNY proceededfrom an idealof metropolitanismwhile the RPAAwas grounded in a profoundlyanti-metropolitan communitarianism. WhileThomas Adams sought to rationalize,reinterpret, and reinforce the culturaland economic hegemony of NewYork Cityas a regionaland national center, Lewis Mumford called for the dismembermentof the metropolitan"city of the dead"in favorof a web of small scale "satellite ciries." The difference is summarized in the contrast of the RPNY's"diffuse recentralization" and the RPAA's "decentralization," typically opaqueterms which, upon careful examination, reveal that the RPNY sought to sustainurban industry and contain dispersal, while the RPAA legitimized the flightfrom the core. The rhetoricand modelsthese urban visionaries established and pop- ularizedcreated a new conceptionof the city whichwould dominateurban discoursefor the next half century,and yet the citiesthey imagined have becomeinvisible cities, obscured by misinterpretationand misapplication. By weildingthe conceptsof the region,congestion, zoning, and decentralization, the regionalismsof Adamsand Mumford soughtto createsatellite suburbs integratinghome and work, but to differentends. The HackensackPlan from the RPNY andthe Radburn Plan of theRPAA both employed the rhetoric of regionaldecentralization, but while the goal of theHackensack plan was mixed- userecentralization in support of themetropolis, Padburn became a harbinger of the "dormitorysuburb" and sprawl. This paper will explorethe originsand transformationof suburbanzoning in the plansand projects of the regional plannersof the 1920s,specifically the proposals for two NewJersey suburbs of New York City, HackensackMeadows, and Radbum.Like its present-day descendants,zoning, for the regionalists,was a tool for segregatingand rationalizinguses, stabili•.ing real estate values, and facilitating the removalof certainactivities from the innercity. Unlike its progeny,regional zoning was alsomeant to be a tool for increasingefficiency and integrating work and residencethrough the careful planning and creation of GardenCities. While the ideasof theregionalists laid the basis for contemporaryzoning, they also point 294 / ANDREW A. MEYERS to possiblesolutions for today'ssuburban gridlock and battlesover the environmentalimpact of suburbangrowth.

The RegionalCity

Mumford and Adamswere only the most prominentamong many reformersespousing regionalist principles during the early decadesof the twentiethcentury. The periodabounds with definitionsof the region,from whichboth the RPAA and RPNY drewliberally. Although they would come to suppresstheir common descent, both groups could trace their genesis to the EnglishGarden City movementof EbenezerHoward. Howard's vision, set downin his To-raormw:a Peaceful Path to Real Rearm (1898), and implemented in part througha seriesof projectsaround London, was of the removalof the workingclass from the congestedquarters of industrialLondon to satellite townsthat wouldcombine the bestattributes of both the town andcountry. TheseGarden Cities would be constructedthrough a combinationof philan- thropicland speculation and collective land ownership, include both residences and factories,and be limitedto 32,000residents. But it was as part of the regionalcluster that the GardenCity would truly mary] town and country, so that"each inhabitant of thewhole group, though in onesense living in a town of smallsize, would be in realityliving in, andwould enjoy the advantages of, a greatand most beautiful city; and yet all the freshdelights of the country... wouldbe withina very few minutes'ride or walk" [Howard,1965, p. 142]. Howard'sregional notion, often lost in hisconcem for GardenCity financing and civics,was that of the "SocialCity" in whicha CentralCity of 58,000 peoplewould anchor the cluster of smallerGarden Cities, separated from each otherby forestsand green belts and connected by a rapidtransit system. In combiningphysical, economic, and culturalarguments, Howard's Social City wasthe fttstcomplete blueprint for a region,and it heldparticular sway over thethought of theAmerican regionalists. The RPNY's definitionof the regionand of the role of regional planningsynthesized Howard's Garden City view with the "ecological"urban analysisof theUniversity of ChicagoSchool of Sociology.Robert Park, Emest Burgess,and Louis Wirth formedthe core of a groupof Chicagosociologists whopioneered the study of "humanecology," the scientific study of the"orderly andtypical grouping of (thecity's) population and institutions" according to naturallaws of groupbehavior and urban growth [Park, 1925, pp. 1-2]. Park and hiscollaborators set out in theearly 1920s to tum theprofession of sociology from the studyof societyas a collectionof individualsinto an ameliorafive sciencethat saw the social group as an organicunit capable of beingcontrolled throughthe benevolent manipulation of theurban environment. Their investigationsproduced the Park-Burgess"dart-board" diagram, whichsought to illustratehow the laws of groupbehavior inevitably produce a particularcity form.This form,by creatinga spatialhierarchy through land value, class,and ethnicity,in turn determinedgroup behavior.Burgess THE INVENTION OF THE REGIONAL CITY, 1923-1929/ 295 describesthe growth of thecity as "a processof distribution...whichsifts and so•tsand relocates individuals and groups by residenceand occupation" [Park andBurgess, 1925, p.64]. The naturallaws governing this growth produce a normatire model, a "half moon and dart board," that rationalized the observablesegregation of the city into five concentriczones: the central businessdistrict, home to bothbusiness activity and thd homeless population; the "zone in transition" of ethnic slums and artist colonies; the zone of workingclass, second-generation immigrant homes; a residencezone of greater affluence,and finally the white collar commuterzone. Despite semantic differences,both the RPA_Aand RPNY wouldessentially embrace the Chicago Schooldefinition of theregion, and both would focus primarily on theproblem of "congestion"in theregion.

The CongestedCity Look at the greatcity in its entirety:the turbidmass of traffic blockingthe streetsand avenues,the slow-movingcrowd of peopleclambering into street-cars,elevateds, subways, their arms pinionedto their sides,pushed and packedlike catde in ill- smellingcars... Look at the dingyslums of the EastSide, Long IslandCity, the stockyard neighborhoods. Why the greatcity? What arewe puttingin andwhat arewe gettingout? How longcan we standthe strainsand difficulties thatare peodiar to ourla•ge congested centers? [Stein, 1976, p. 66] The specterof "congestion"haunted the invisiblecities of Adamsand Mumford.But what exacdywas it? The term, inheritedfrom the housing reformersand patrician planners of an earlierday, had become by the timeof its adoptionby theregionalists conflated with the notions of '%light,""slums," "overcrowding,""concentration," "mobility," "density," and "traffic jams." The elasticityof theterm permitted a great&gree of ostensibleconcord between the RPNY andRPAA at the levelof critique.Although neither Mumford nor Adams often felt the need to correct such rhetoricalconfusion, it is clear that theirattacks on congestion actually contained two distinct concerns, one economic, the othersocial. The economiccritique of congestionaddressed a perceived crisisin the distributionof goods,and resulted in calls,grounded in Frederick WinslowTaylor's principles of scientificmanagement, for moreefficient loca- tion of industry,for reductionsin buildingdensity, and for improvementsin transportation.The socialcritique of "blight"and "slums" addressed popula- tiondensity, living conditions, health, and the negative social effects of realestate speculation.By synthesizingthe urban critiques of housingreformers, patrician planners,and Taylorite managers under the aegis of regionalplanning expertise, bothAdams and Mumford legitimized and popularized an elitediscourse that woulddominate the twentieth-century conception of themetropolis. Therewas essential agreement between the RPNY andRPAA overthe natureand impact of economiccongestion. The concentrationof bothindustry 296 / ANDREW A. MEYERS and exchangeon Manhattanproduced a crisisin the distributionand move- mentof goodsand workers. The grid streetsystem, bequest of the Commis- sionersof 1811, could not absorbthe increasedautomobile and truck traffic, andthe public transit system would require vast expenditures to accommodate growingdemands. As residencewas pushedfarther from the centerby commerceand risingland costs,Manhattan's monopoly of commercialand productiveactivity required longer and longercornmutes. These inefficiencies contributedto higherprices for goodsand larger investments in publicinfra- structure.Both groupsagreed that the solutionwould require the relocationof industry,reductions in buildingdensity, and improvementsin transportation, althoughthey would differ on thenature and extent of such"deconcentration." In Volume I of the RegionalSurvey, Columbia University economist RobertMurray Haig based his critique of congestionin the regionupon what he poeticallytermed the "friction of space"resulting from poorly arranged uses [Haig,1927]. Haig's monograph established the economicfocus of theproject with lucidanalysis and often elegantprose. His mandatewas to answertwo relatedquestions: 1) whatwas the economic basis of urbanconcentration? and 2) wheredo things"belong" in urbanareas? Drawing on an ecologicalmodel, he analyzedthe "competitive struggle for urbansites," hoping in theprocess to "glimpsethe outlinesof an economicallyideal pattem or plan." For the purposeof surveyingthe placementand movementof variousindustries, he brokeup theregion into three zones that corresponded roughly to theChicago Schoolmodel: 1) Manhattansouth of 59thstreet, 2) a twenty-mileindustrial zone, 3) the outlyingarea. His surveyof the changein the numberof employeesin various industries in thethree zones suggested to Haig that while the "advantagesof centralizedlocus are undeniable for manyof the functions carriedon in the region,"other activities could be moreprofitably conducted outsideof thecenter. At the sametime those industries that by virtueof their ownidiosyncrasies truly benefited from a centrallocation were often prevented from locatingor expandingin the center.Thus over-concentrationof all economicactivity in the centerwas producing a dragon both the production and exchangeof goods.This "frictionof space"resulted in part from bad concentration(congestion) and in partfrom bad deconcentration (sprawl), and was manifestedin increasedcornmuting time, costsof transportationinfra- structure,land prices, and traffic, all of whichwould eventually make the New York regionan inefficientpiece of "productiveeconomic machinery" unable to competewith "othermetropolitan machines." The socialaspect of theproblem of congestionbecame a cornerstoneof regionalistideology. Speculation and population pressure may have engendered congestionand blight, but, in Parkand Burgess' view, these forces had become part of the organicsocial structure of the city.For Burgess,the intensityof economiccompetition and social stimulation in thecongested metropolis led to an increasein the destabili?.ingeffects of what he termed"mobility" the "changeof movementin responseto a newstimulus or situation." THE INVENTION OF THE REGIONAL CITY, 1923-1929/ 297

The mobilityof citylife, with its increase in numberand intensity of stimulation,tends inevitably to confuseand to demoralizethe person.For an essentialelement in the moresand in personal moralityis consistency,consistency of the typethat is naturalin the socialcontrol of the primarygroup. Where mobilityis greatest,and where in consequenceprimary control breaks down completely,as in the zoneof deteriorationin the modemcity, theredevelop areas of demoralization,of promiscuity,and vice [Buxgess,1926, p. 69]. In creatinga prescriptionfor combatingthe socialaspects of blight, RPNY socialplanner Clarence Perry translated the ChicagoSchool analysis into a radicaluxban corrective, the "NeighborhoodUnit," whichguided the communityplanning strategies of boththe RPNY andRPAA.Park had pointed to increaseddependence on the automobileas a causeof the traditional neighborhoodcollapse [Park, 1934, pp. 21-39]. It wasthe most vivid, and literal, exampleof themobility both decried and praised by the Chicagosociologists. Perry'smajor innovation was a strictseparation of throughtraffic from local traffic.The socialand psychological mobility identified by Buxgessbecame in Perry'smodel a puxelyphysical automobility and was to be constrainedby segregatingregional, local, and neighborhoodcar traffic.In the diagramof "NeighborhoodUnit Principles,"the highwaysand arterialstreets create boundariesto reinforce,rather that diffuse, the introspective character of the neighborhood.The neighborhood ispenetrated by a fewlarger roads, but these too are interrupted.In the internalstreet system Perry sought to segregate traffic so as to defy the centripetalforce of automobile.The cul-de-sacs, interiorparks and T-intersectionswere devicesdesigned to protectthe residents'moral well-being from automobility and from the concomitant social illsof uxbancongestion. It wasbut a smallstep from Perry's RPNY proposalsto the RPAA's actualdesigns. Even though Perry did not becomean activecontributor to the RPAAuntil 1928,just before construction on Radbuxnbegan, Mumford and Steinacknowledged the close affinities between the "Radbum Idea" and Perry's neighborhoodunit concept in theRPNY [Mumford,1989, p. 15;Stein, 1989, p. 150].At Radbuxn,Stein and Wright synthesized the interior parks and cul- de-sacsof Perry'splan to producea system of overlappingyet distinct networks of automobileand pedestrian circulation. The functionalsegregation was made completeby underpassesthat enabled pedestrians to walk the entire develop- mentwithout having to crosstraffic at streetlevel. By adoptinga superblock strategy,consolidating building lots onto large blocks while minimizing the area devotedto streets,Stein and Wright were able to createa communitygreen spaceon the interiorof the blocksfor the residents'exclusive use. This internal "privatepark," essentiallyan inversionof the GardenCity's external "greenbelt,"was shielded from car trafficby housesarranged on cul-de-sac 298 / ANDREW A. MEYERS

streets.Both Perry and Adams heaped praise upon Radbttm, suggesting that it shouldbe themodel for newdevelopment outside of thecentral city.

The Taylorized City The metropolis...isessentially a piece of productiveeconomic machinerycompeting with othermetropolitan machines... The areaof New York andits environsmay be likenedto the floor spaceof a factory.Regional Planning designates the bestuse of thisfloor space...Unduly congested streets should be no more toleratedthan the aisles of a factoryimpassably jammed by goods in process;factories scattered helter skelter should be no more toleratedthan departmentsof a factoryscattered helter skelter [•g, 1927,p. 18]. Todayzoning is oftenequated with planning, but it wasnot •ways so. For manyof its earlypromoters, zoning, the legalrestriction of the height, densityand use of buildings,was seen as merely a means,and a ratherclumsy meansat that,to themore ambitious end of comprehensivecity and regional planning.Both Adams and Mumford agreed that zoningwas a bluntinstru- ment:Adams insisted that zoning was merely a "preliminarystep in planning." Mumfordsaw zoning as a lastresort, and often as an impedimentto good planning.Yet in the finalanalysis both regionalists embraced the principleof functionalsegregation that lay behind zoning. Indeed, their reliance upon this principlewas their most enduringand omnipresentcontribution to later planningpractice. Although Adams would wam that "The 1916 zoning law was really a temporarymeasure based on compromise"and Mumfordwould secondsuch concerns, both shared a desireto segregatefunctions in the searchfor safety,efficiency, and community. It is in the segregationof functions that the two regionalistmovements achieved their highestlevel of consensus.They promotedthe orderingof usesat all levelsof planning:at the scaleof the region,the city, and the neighborhood [Adams, 1929, p. 165]. The 1LPNYsought to establishfunctional zones based in humanecology to reif'ythe Chicago School diagram, turning Park and Burgess' description into a prescription.Zone I, the "loop,"would include Wall Streetand Midtown Manhattan.Zone II, the zoneof "transition"or "deterioration,"would include the LowerEast Side and Harlem. The zoneof workingmen'shomes would includethe outer boroughs and northem New Jersey from Newark to FortLee, andso on. Boththe reality of existingsettlement pattems, and, as we shallsee in the next section,their own philosophy concerning decentralization, would preventthe 1LPNY planners from imposing this ideal without modification, but it exerciseda profound influence upon the Plan. To makeroom for the commercialcentral city, Adamsproposed removingsome heavy manufacturing from the centralbusiness district to an industrialbelt, basinghis argumentsdirectly upon Haig's Taylorite calls for THE INVENTION OF THE REGIONAL CITY, 1923-1929/ 299 reducingthe frictionof spaceto increaseproductive efficiency. This "zoning out"of industryhas led some recent critics to blamethe Regional Plan for New York'sjob loss through aleindustrialization. The RPAAalso segregated uses and, in theend, excluded industry from theirproposed satellite cities. Although Stein and Wright sought to separate functionsthrough the plan of Radbum,as opposed to usingzoning legislation, businessand industry were still carefully excluded from the residentialzone, whichcomprised most of theplan. As Steinwould admit later, while paying lip serviceto the notionof GardenCity-style integration of workand residence, the RPAA plannersknew earlyon that Radburnwould essentiallybe a bedroom suburb. Steinexpressed a desire for functionalseparation that would become a stapleof planningdiscourse. Indeed Radbum represented an attemptto go beyondlegislated zoning - whichafter all couldbe changedwith the strokeof a pen- to buildfunctional segregation into the very plan itself. The roads,lanes, andcul-de-sacs of Radbumcould serve no otherpurpose than that for which theywere designed. Neither the novelty nor import of thisinnovation were lost on Stein: SpecializedHighways were in theirinfancy in the U.S.A.at the timethat Radbum was conceived... To planor buildroads for a particularuse and no other use requireda predetermined derisionto makespecialized use permanent... That was contrary to thefundamentals of American real-estate gambling... None of therealtors, and few of thecity planners who accepted zoning as their practicalreligion, seemed to have faith enoughin the permanencyof purelyresidential use to plan streetsto serve solelythat use [Stein, 1989, p. 47]. The argumentsfor thiscompartmentalization of the publicrealm were basedin communitarianvalues. The RPAA plannerssought the mostcomplete segregationof circulation in an attemptto defendan introspective and cooper- ativecommunity against the ravagesnot only of mobility,but of industrial capitaland the commodificationof the land.In thissense the Radbumplan representedthe most intriguingconvergence of the RPAA and RPNY: it borrowedfrom Perry's neighborhood unit the equation of throughtraffic with disruptivemobility and the desireto specializethe roadsystem to reinforce neighborhoodsentiment and local social control. During the RenaissanceLeonardo DaVinci had proposeda similar rationalizationof urbanchaos in a sketchhe drewfor a second-storysidewalk for Florence.However, these twentieth century proposals represent the greatest challengeto traditionalurbanism proposed by regionalists:the separationof functionat everyscale, the fundamental dismemberment of the public realm in serviceof twodramatically different agendas. It is bynow easy to recognizethe partsof theinvisible regional city that were realized. The critiqueof congestion andcall for segregationof uses became staples of postwarplanning, as expressed 300 / ANDREW A. MEYERS in urbanrenewal and suburbanization.The removalof industryfrom the center,the limited-accesshighway, slum clearance, and the cul-de-sacwere all ingredientsin therecipe of sprawland the postindustrial "edge city." This was theconcrete legacy of theregionalists - the projects and ideas that became part of the mainstreamconception of the city.But an investigationof the RPNY's planfor HackensackMeadows shows that the legacy of decentralizationaswe nowknow it wasbut one of manyroads proposed by the regionalists.

HackensackMeadows, Radbum, and the DecentralizedCity

As a matterof fact,the [Regional]Plan involves two contradictory setsof proposals.One is for the buildingof largeneighborhood units and even gardencities in the suburbanparts of the metropolitanregion. The otheris for theconcentration of traffic andtransportation and high buildings in thecentral district below Fifty-ninthStreet in Manhattan,and the fillingup of the open areasin the metropolitandistrict...to continue the congestion andto preservethe land values that have been founded upon this congestion[Mumford, 1929, p. 242]. Conventionalhistories of regionalism,following Mumford's lead, mistakenlyargue that the RPNY favoredsprawl to satisfysuburban land speculatorsand the deindustrializationof Manhattan to servedomtom real- estateinterests, and that Adams' use of theterm "decentralization" was merely a polite coverupfor a desireto drive blue-collarjobs out of New York. Mumfordsaw the RPNY distinctionbetween good commercial concentration andbad residential congestion as a doublestandard setwing the RPNY's finan- cial masters.What he, and manyobservers since, failed to seewas that the RegionalPlan contained a clearand consistent model, obscured only by the scopeand collaborative nature of theproject and the distasteof its directorfor reductiveparadigms. That model,of a re-industrializedregion of compactmixed- usecommunities anchored by New York City,was a radicalalternative to the sprawland deindustrialization already apparent on the horizon.The difference betweenthe regionalmodels of the RPNY andRPAA canbe summedup in thejuxtaposition of the unfortunatelyopaque terms "diffuse reconcentration" and "decentralization." In VolumeII' of the RegionalPlan, "Building the City,"Adams urged that"the terms 'centralization' and 'decentralization' should be avoidedas they leadto confusionof thought."The realconcern of thePlan was the "friction of space,"identified in Haig'seconomic analysis, which Adamsexpanded to encompassboth the negative social consequences of mobility and the economic inefficienciesof unplanneddecentralization. Just as congestion had positive and negativeconsequences - social fragmentation and liberation- so too did decentralization.Adams, in a quiet dig at Mumford,decried those "social philosopherswhose gospel is 'decentralization,'no matterhow unplannedor THE INVENTION OF THE REGIONAL CITY, 1923-1929/ 301 haphazard"[Adams, 1929a, p. 34].For Adams,decentralization could relieve the socialinfirmities and economic inefficiencies produced by congestion,but it couldalso create new problems of itsown. The frictionof spacerepresented "a greaterdegree of separationmeasured in termsof time,cost, discomfort and fatigue...betweenhomes and places of work,which is injuriousto bothliving conditionsand business"[Adams, 1929b, p. 310]. Inefficientor impractical decentralizationwas just as dangerous asunplanned concentration. The closest Adamsever came to conciselystating the Plan'sbasic strategy to combatthis frictioncame in whatappears to be a critiqueof Mumford'simprecise prose: The term "decentralization" is a misnomer unless the intent behindit is to entirelybreak up compactcommunities, however well plannedand arranged...An indiscriminateprocess of so- called"decentralization" will be of littlebenefit. What appearsto be wanted is: First- Diffusedre-centralization of industrywith the objectsof lesseningthe densityof congestedcenters and of creatingnew centers. ,Yecond- Diffusion of residenceinto compactresidential neigh- borhoodsthxoughout the whole urban region integrated with the industrial sections so as to reduce distances between homes and placesof work. Third- Sub-centralizationof business so arranged as to provide the maximum of conveniencefor residents[Adams, 1929a, pp. 14%150]. Contraryto the pictureof indiscriminateexpulsion of industrypainted by hiscritics, Adams' vision for the RegionalPlan was of highlyselective and carefullyconsidered industrial relocation. Adams was skeptical concerning the benefitsof manufacturingdispersion, unless it addressedthe "friction of space" by integratingnew industrialcenters with residences,transportation, and recreation.And contraryto the Plan'sillustrations, rendered by HarveyWiley Cotbert'sarchitecture committee, Adams argued against a total removalof manufacturingfrom the core.The rezoninghe did encouragewas directed to establishingan industrial"half moon" in whatwould be ZoneIII of thePark- Burgessdiagram, the areaof workers'homes, as a meansof overcomingthe combinedproblems of highManhattan land costs, the transporthurdle of the HudsonRiver, and the "friction"of working-classcommuting. Rather than a blindreification of the ChicagoSchool bull's-eye, Adams vision was a complex compositionof industrial,residential, and recreational "wedges" that cut across the concentriczones, and engendered the "inter-penetrationof all partsof the Regionthat brings the population in convenientcontact with employment and educationcenters and recreational opportunities" [Adams, 1929a, p. 151]. Unlikelater critics, Mumford was in generalaccord with Adams on the desirabilityof movingsome industry out of Manhattan.His generalcomplaint wasthat the RegionalPlan neither decentralized industry enough nor calledfor 302 / ANDREW A. MEYERS

a concomitant decentralization of commercial businesses and residences. For theRPAA, industrial decentralization was not a meansof reducingthe "friction of space"but ratheronly one strategyfor implementingan "industrialcounter revolution...tospread the real income of industryby decentralizingindustry." By removingthe high cost of advertising,ground rents, overhead (and, as Stein wouldadmit, of unionlabor itself), less profit would go towardthe "paper value"of an industry,and more to theworker, whose wages would othenvise stagnatewhile capital values soared. These arguments can be tracedback to Chaseand his call for localproduction and consumption of goods.Absent a Marxistcritique, indignation over the concentrationof wealthin a classwas displacedonto the concentration of wealth in •pace.Without attacking the class structurethat producedsuch inequities,the RPAA soughtto rectify the situationenvironmentally. Physical decentralization would engender more even distributionof wealthand power [Mumford, 1976b, pp. 92-93]. At first glancethe RPNY GeneralPlan might appearto be a prescriptionfor sprawl,with its undifferentiated gray mass of residentialuse. It waszoned into business,industrial, residential, and recreationalareas, but the zonesproduced fingers that stretchinto other zones.It was not a mere reificationof the ChicagoSchool bull's-eye but a combinationof "wedges, belts,and nodes" that sought to synthesizethe best attributes of congestion- efficiency,urbanity, convenience - with thoseof diffusion:economy, space, andaccess to nature.Whereas the RPAA promoteddecentralization asa means of evisceratingthe central city, which they disparaged asthe "dinosaur city," or "necropolis,"RPNY plannerssaw regional "re-centralization" as a meansof sustainingthe industrial metropolis and restructuring the region to supportit. Thesedifferences are most apparent in fundamentaldivergences on thenature of satellitecities, as exemplifiedby HackensackMeadows and Radbumand regionaltransportation. If the"Satellite City" was the fruit of EbenezerHoward's Garden City, thenboth Mumford's and Adams' versions represent something of a fall from grace.Even while retainingthe rhetoricof the GardenCity, the RPAA "decentfists"had from the beginning chosen a pathto reformthat contradicted Howard'svision in significantrespects. While Howard's "Social City" required a largecentral city, the RPAAregion did not.The RPAA plannerstolerated largercities only as an imperfectstep on the way to true decentralization. Within the SocialCity networkthe satellitegarden city was to houseand employ32,000 working class residents and encompass residence, industry, and civicfunctions that were zoned but integral to thewhole. The RPAA/Radburn model,based upon the automobile and obsessive segregation of uses, projected a middle-classpopulation of up to 100,000and exiled industry to adjacent "employmentcenters." Civic functions were also suppressed in favorof an intemalizationof Howard'ssurrounding green belt. The RPAA satellitewas essentiallya complete inversion of Howard'sidea. Defenders of the RPAA's positionas that of naiveutopians point to theonset of theGreat Depression as theexplanation for Radburn'swhite collar, middle-class suburban character: the THE INVENTION OF THE REGIONAL CITY, 1923-1929/ 303 economiccollapse prevented the CHC from attractingindustry and workers and from purchasingland for a greenbelt.But, as Steincandidly admits, Radbumwould neverhave been affordable for the working-classand was plannedfrom the startto be predominanfiy,if not exclusively,residential. As Mumfordhimself noted, '%vithout an industrialbase the gardencity is onlya fancyname for a suburb"[Mumford, 1932a, p. 242]. Adams'RPNY proposalsfor satellitedries were closerto Howard's SocialCity ideal in severalimportant respects. The HackensackMeadows, todaythe location of a sportscomplex and an "edgecity" of highways,offices, warehousesand isolated condominia, was the last large parcel of undeveloped landnear Manhattan. It wasthe onlyinstance where Adams permitted his designersthe luxuryof workingon virginland (or virginweftand), and their proposalfor an industrialcommunity is a glimpseof the RPNY'sunfulfilled ideal.The plan calledfor the creationof "a communitywhere industrial, residentialand recreational areas are distributed in wellbalanced proportions" [Adams,1929a, pp. 546-547].Of a total of over 30,000acres, over 22,000 would be reservedfor residentialuse, almost 4,000 for new industrialareas, 4,400for parks,and 550 for business.A planand a seriesof fascinating thumbnailsketches illustrated an integrated satellite city of neighborhoodunits, businesses,parks, and industriesconnected by overlappingsystems of parkways,canals, and walking paths [Adams, 1929a, p. 327;c, p. 569].The neighborhoodswere based on thePadbum principle but were easily accessible to adjacentoffices and factories by public transportation. Although Adams was reluctantto publishspecific proposals for satellitecities, as speculatorscould driveup pricesbefore land assembly could begin, he overcamethis reluctance andvigorously promoted the Hackensack plan, for it wasa planthat expressed thecore of histhinking about recentralizafion: NewYork...[is] growing too muchin the ditecrionof having separatedistricts devoted to industry,business and residence..4 good•oning plan aims at thesegregation ofthese three uses, but not to the degreethat interfires udth the convenient relation ofone to the other... What is calleda well balancedcommunity is one in whichthese functionsare so rehted as to producethe highest efficiency, the mostwholesome living conditions, and the greatest economy in workand travel [italics added] [Adams, 1929a, pp. 340-341]. Adamssaw the well-planned region as an assembly of "belts," "wedges," and"nerve centers." Wedges would balance circumferential andradial develop- mentto permitwhat we would today call "mixed-use communities" that could providefor the employment and recreational needs of a residentialpopulation. Thissystem would be complemented byan array of "nervecenters" in whicha certainamount of nodalconcentration would permit "the industries,the residencesand the cultural and recreational facilities of a [satellite]city [to] be interspersedwith one another." The major exception was to bein therealm of financeand entertainment,which were to be the exclusivepurview of 304 / ANDREW A. MEYERS

Manhattan.Such a schemesought to balancethe efficienciesof functional segregationwith thoseof integration,while reservingcertain activities for a regionalcenter in the centralcity. It wasessentially a metropolitanized version of Howard'sSocial City. The RPNY's Hackensackplan was not a merereificafion of real-estate interests;rather it offereda meansof sustainingthe concentrationthat supportedurban culturewhile mitigatingits worst attributes,a radical alternativeto whatwould become the dominant paradigm of post-warsprawl. The RPAAvision of a webof functionallysegregated satellite dries sought the dismembermentof urbanityitself, in favorof a romanticrural utopia. Each challengedthe market as it existed,but for differingreasons that may be traced to the contrastingagendas of professionallegitimizafion and cultural regenera- tion. The forcesdriving the transformationof New York wouldborrow the RPAA'santi-metropolitan rhetoric of dispersaland the RPNY'svisions of a cityof towersto producea "cityof tomorrow"driven by downtownoffice and suburbanresidential speculation. Generally it isAdams' RPNY, asa resultof its grandiosemisapplicafion in the handsof RobertMoses, that has been deemed moresuccessful and therefore receives the credit and criticism for theregional citythat resulted. While borrowing selectively from both, the newvision that wouldemerge was closer at heartto thatof Mumford,Stein, and the RPAA. As JaneJacobs astutely pointed out, the RPAA plannerswere aptlylabeled the "Decentfists" for their desire to define all that was urban as bad and to thin out the greatcities at all costs[Jacobs, 1961, pp. 19-21].Not onlydid the RPAA contributespecific decentralizing devices to the planningprofession, such as thesuperblock, cul-de-sac, the functional separation of trafficand use, and the townlesshighway, but mostimportantly it popularizedthe anti-metropolitan mantra of decentralization.

Conclusion:City of Tomorrow

In 1939designer Norman Bel Geddes concocted a fanciful model of the "Cityof Tomorrow"for the NewYork World'sFair which imagined cities of towersset in a landscapeof highwaysand suburbs. The modeldrew upon the regionalistideas that had percolated through the •eitgeist since the publication of the RegionalPlan and the constructionof Radburn.Yet to the extentthat it wasrealized after World War II, theCity of Tomorrowwould not be thevision of eitherinterwar regionalisms, but rather the application of regionalistideas in theservice of otheragendas. The proposals of theregionalists were static. They wereideal dries, whether imagined by culturalcritics or pragmaticprofessionals, requiringthe enginesof speculationor governmentalactivism to makethem partof NewYork's reality, in whichthey would appear in formsthat would not be recognizableto theircreators. Adams' regional decentralization without the integrationof useswould become sprawl. The RPAA'sanfi-metropolitanism shom of its socio-economicradicalism would legitimize "white flight." The fatalismof the ChicagoSchool's organic model stripped of the desirefor THE INVENTION OF THE REGIONAL CITY, 1923-1929/ 305 ameliorationundergirds the presumedinevitability of today's"gatehouse suburbs."The dominanceof "congestion"and "blight"in planningand housingdiscourse would drive unprecedented federal interventions in road building,slum clearance, and urbanrenewal. Hypertrophic central business districts,bedroom suburbs, and cul-de-sacs would all be born of an increasing relianceon functionalzoning without a recognitionof its limitations.The most intriguingomission, in bothpostwar phnning practice and planning history, is the RPNY's call for re-centralization. The RPNY's "diffusere-centralization" was a potentiallyprophetic alternativeto sprawland deindustrialization, a balance between local segrega- tionand regional integration of uses,between zoning and planning, if youwill, in which the bull's-eyeof the ChicagoSchool was mitigatedby Adams' "wedges"to overcomethe "frictionof space"that wouldresult from either excessivedecentralization or concentration. It was a prescriptionto sustainthe metropoliswhile mediating the growing spatial conflicts engendered by corpor- ate capital,speculation, and technological change. In thissense the RPAA was most"successful" in the eventualdominance of its anti-metropolitanrhetoric and its interpretationof the regionas a cruciblefor radicaldiffusion. Before this splitwas explicit,it appearedthat the well-connectedregionalists were poisedto realizethek crystalcities, but a depression,world war, and unprec- edentedchanges in America'spolitical economy would phce thek dreamson hold. Perhapsa clearerunderstanding of the alternativeslatent in regional planning,and a governmentmore willingand able to applyit, might have produceda city closerto Adams'or Mumford'svision. As we look out upon the contemporaryhndscape of homelesshess,suburban gridlock, chronic urban fiscalcrisis, and a disappearingnmal environment it is temptingto wonder.In orderto addressthese contemporary concerns it is necessary to understand that theyare not the inevitableresult of naturalforces, but the productof human will,of choicesmade under the influence of historicallyconstrained ideas.

References

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