CITY PLANNING SCHOOL OPENS THIS FALL WITH SEPARATE FACILITIES

The following are excerpts from an article on the School of City Planning which will appear in this morning's issue of the Alumni Bulletin.

A School of City Planning, the first in this country, has been opened at Harvard this fall, with the aid of the Rockefeller Foundation. The plans for the new School call for an organization similar to that of the School of Landscape Architecture and the School of Architecture, and the three will be housed in Robinson Hall and in the Old Fogg.

A chair of regional planning, just established at Harvard by James F. Curtis, '99, in memory of Charles D. Norton, will be the nucleus about which the new School will be formed. No incumbent for the chair has yet been appointed.

The new School will be a graduate professional school, coordinate with the existing schools of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. The function of the School will be not only to train men to be professional city planners, but also to give a sound conception of city planning to students who intend to be architects, landscape architects, engineers, or leaders in other public enterprises.

Research Important

Research and the publication of information useful in city and regional planning will be one of the principal activities of the new School. Those who are sponsoring its foundation feel that one of its greatest values will be the opportunity it offers the community to secure information on the complex subjects which must be considered in forming and carrying out a regional plan.

Harvard University began twenty years ago to give courses in city planning. In 1909 special instruction in the principles of city planning was announced and given by the Faculty of the School of Landscape Architecture. That School, if not the very first, was among the first in the world to give collegiate instruction in city planning. In 1923 an option in city planning, leading to the degree of master in landscape architecture in the specially designated field of city planning, was established in the School of Landscape Architecture.

Improve Instruction

It is now proposed to improve the technical instruction and to broaden even further the scope of this study. Other courses adapted to the needs of students in city planning as general education or specific preparation for their work will be arranged with the cooperation of other departments of Harvard University, and students will be enabled to secure the assistance of experts in allied fields. Professors of fine arts, history, economic history, government, particularly municipal and state government, public finance, and public utilities, will open to the students of the new School courses which bear upon city planning or carry further in some specific direction the education of each student according to his particular needs. The Faculties of engineering, education, law, the School of Public Health, the Graduate School of Business Administration, and, of course, the Schools of Architecture and of Landscape Architecture, offer courses which will contribute to the work of the new School.

Thirty Harvard Planners

About thirty men who have been trained at the Harvard School of Landscape Architecture are now engaged in city planning, either as public officials or as private practitioners rendering consulting services to cities and towns.

Twenty publications on city and regional planning have been produced by the Harvard School of Landscape Architecture or written by those directly connected with it. The chief editor of City Planning, the official magazine of the profession, is Professor Henry Vincent Hubbard of the Faculty of Landscape Architecture at Harvard. Professor Hubbard received a grant last year from the Harvard Milton Fund for a field study of city, planning and zoning progress in the United States, the results of which will be published in a few weeks in a substantial volume entitled "Our Cities Today and Tomorrow," by T. K. and H. V. Hubbard.