Members' 25-Year Reminiscences

Joe Feinberg, AICP

Gaithersburg, Maryland

In 1954, after a brief stint in industry, I thought the public sector might allow for a more rewarding career. Having majored in political science at Lake Forest College (Illinois), I proceeded to explore graduate studies in government at the University of Chicago. In thumbing through the graduate catalog, I happened upon the university's interdepartmental program in city and regional planning. For me, this was a startling revelation.

Upon my return from Korea in 1951, I had had staff assignments in plans, training, and operations, and thought I'd explore possibilities in city planning not too long after I had gone on inactive duty. After all, "planning" was "planning" even though the context might be different. The civil service announcements, however, clearly indicated the need for a background in engineering or architecture. So it was indeed a startling discovery to come upon the Chicago program, the only one of 12 programs in the country which had a socio-economic base rather than one grounded in physical planning.

With the likes of Rexford Tugwell and Harvey Perloff, the Chicago program made for a most impressive and interesting introduction to a profession then dominated by planners coming out of M.I.T and the Harvard School of Design. It was unfortunate that this groundbreaking program was shortly to become a budget casualty.

While social planning had been much in evidence in the history of planning through the works of Patrick Geddes and others, contemporary planning, at the time, was predominantly physical. As a consequence, I had reservations. I did not want to become a "second-class citizen" in the planning profession. After being hired by planner Bob Lillibridge at the then Chicago Land Clearance Commission (and then joining ASPO and the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, NAHRO), I proceeded to do further graduate work at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) at the urging of Earl Bluestein , then the agency's senior planner. Earl had previously been a member of the IIT faculty under Ludwig Hilbersheimer, and it was most fortunate for me to have had him as both friend and mentor.

(Having joined ASPO, it was always an interesting bit of symbolism for me that, as a youngster, I had played on the building site of 1313 just prior to construction.)

Having fallen behind my contemporaries due to four years in the service, on the threshold of marriage, and feeling that, with my increasing salary, I might be pricing myself out of an entry level planning position (which I felt essential), I departed Chicago in 1958. I was hired by Joe Heikoff, a Ph.D. out of the Chicago planning program, and then head of the Syracuse (New York) Department of City Planning. I had my introduction to the more conventional city planning activities of planning, zoning and subdivision review. By this time (1959), I had been elected as an Associate Member of AIP and began to feel more confident of my role in the profession.

There followed work in county and regional planning, while managing the Syracuse office of Blair Associates, planning consultants, then five years with the New Jersey Division of State and Regional Planning, under B. Budd Chavooshian. During this period, I gained Member status in AIP (1965). As a supervising planner, I directed one of the first Community Renewal Programs and did missionary work selling communities on the need for planning. Even more significant to me at the time was the opportunity to both write and direct the studies (under the general direction of Katharine Elkus White, later to become Ambassador to Denmark) leading to the creation of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (DCA) in 1967.

Next, as executive director of the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency, I had the opportunity to manage the city's urban renewal program. Guided by previous experience, I avoided most of the pitfalls that plagued this program nationally. Most important, in this respect, was working toward a viable program of citizen participation in the planning and execution of projects that would result in approximately 6,000 units of low- and moderate-income housing (through both new construction and rehabilitation). (It was also during this period that planner Sidney Willis and I chartered the New Jersey Chapter of NAHRO, of which I became the second chapter president).

Upon departure from Jersey City, and after a brief tour with Ed Logue's New York State Urban Development Corporation, I was invited in 1972 to serve in the administration of governor William Cahill as director of the Division of Housing and Urban Renewal within the Department of Community Affairs. How I, as a registered Democrat, received this appointment in a Republican administration is best left to a separate treatise, but so would my reversion from division director to bureau chief after the Democrats came back into office.

While very creditable work can be attributed to DCA, it remained a disappointment to me never to be able to help achieve a more integrated approach among federal, state, and local programs, something which had been a stated objective when many years previously I worked toward the establishment of this department.

Throughout the ups and downs of over 36 years of experience in the planning profession, the philosophy of the Chicago program has been ever present in my planning values. So it was very satisfying to me, as I became a charter member of AICP in 1978, to see how our professional organization, over the years, achieved a more balanced approach among the physical, economic, and social aspects of planning, and became increasingly influenced by the principles of equity planning and Tugwell's democratic theory of planning.

Following retirement from New Jersey state government in 1991, I was recruited by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to work in its hazard mitigation program. I've also continued doing volunteer work in housing and open space preservation that began in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, where I had served on the planning board, one year as chairperson. Overseas technical assistance, under the auspices of various NGOs, has had me in eastern and central Europe and South Africa, which along with some professional writing, has kept me quite busy "in retirement."

(On a more personal note, I should add that one of our four children became a planner. Daughter Valerie Feinberg Evans received her master's in planning from the University of Texas-Arlington and is a member of AICP.)