THE MAKING OF URBAN AMERICA

—A History of City Planning in theUnited States. By John W. Reps '43.Princeton, N. J.: Princeton UniversityPress, 1965. 574 pp. $25.00.

A disturbed urban America which finds it necessary to assemble a White House Conference on Natural Beauty to see what might be done to save its cities from the blight and suffocation of modern living would do well to explore its historic development to discover the values and forces that have shaped its environmental past. In short, it would do well to look to precisely the kind of study that John Reps has produced in this book.

This visually stunning and fascinating work, which contains over 300 rare plans, maps, and views of many historic American towns and cities, represents a labor of love that has involved more than a decade of research on the part of its author, a Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University's College of Architecture. In an effort to examine the forces that have shaped city planning in the United States, the book encompasses a broad chronological sweep that extends from the early Colonial and Tidewater communities along the Atlantic Coast, through the pioneer frontier settlements and the emerging industrial and railroad centers of the 19th Century, to the rebirth of the modern city planning movement at the turn of the present century.

In the preface to his study, Professor Reps explains that his chief interest is that of discovering to what extent city planning is rooted in the nation's tradition and what forces have actually governed the form of America's cities during the past 400 years of our historic urban growth. Although the study makes it abundantly clear that America has enjoyed a city planning tradition that extends back considerably further than this reviewer had ever realized, its most significant lesson is to be found in its emphasis on the fact that attractive and visually healthy communities are most basically a reflection of enlightened citizen values.

A significant case in point well known to all Dartmouth readers is that remarkably lovely New England town of Woodstock, Vt. (One of the major virtues of Reps' book is that it covers many smaller communities - including a 1869 plan of Woodstock and an 1884 view of Dartmouth's more immediate neighbor, Lebanon, N. H. — as well as such larger giants as New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and the like.) As Reps explains, Woodstock's qualities of "fitness, serenity and congruity" were not the result of any elaborate technical expertise which involved detailed plans, regulations and administrative controls. Rather they resulted from:

a feeling of responsibility both to immediate neighbors and the greater community to build wisely and well. Our ownera contrasts sharply in outlook and output. It would not be unfair to suggestthat if Woodstock were to be planned today (its) two church sites ... would beoccupied by gasoline stations, and thecentral green would no doubt be setaside as a metered parking lot.

While this handsome and informative book will obviously be welcomed enthusiastically by today's city planners and urban scholars, it would be a pity if its influence was confined to the professionals alone. Because this study provides such a wealth of evidence on the imaginative and diverse approaches which many of America's historic communities have taken in an effort to guide and control their environmental surroundings, it deserves the attention of all those who care about the kind of communities they live in today. Indeed, it is not too much to say that Reps' study deserves a place beside the works of Dartmouth's other great urban scholar, historian Carl Briden-baugh '25, by virtue of the role it plays in making us more fully aware of the richness and vitality of our urban heritage.

Associate Professor of Government