Regional Planning Association of America

The Regional Planning Association of America ("RPAA"), formed by Clarence Stein was an urban reform association developed in 1923. The association was a diverse group of people all with their own talents and skills. The goal of this group was to “connect a diverse group of friends in a critical examination of the city, in the collaborative development and dissemination of ideas, in political action and in city building projects”. Throughout the ten-year span in which the association lasted, five leading members contributed to this goal. Clarence Stein, Benton MacKaye, Lewis Mumford, Alexander Bing, and Henry Wright were the essential backbone of the RPAA. Originally an idea of Clarence Stein’s, through a series of introductions and acquaintances in Washington DC in 1918, the Regional Planning Association began to form.

Clarence Stein attended the Ethical Culture Society’s Workingman’s School, which influenced his interest in the city life and social responsibility through its teaching. Stein was closely influenced by the founder of Ethical Culture, Felix Adler, and teacher, John Lovejoy Elliott, in involvement with movements and committees, such as the Hudson Guild Settlement House and the Progressive Reform movement in New York City at the turn-of-the-century. Therefore, Stein’s enrollment at Workingman’s School proved to be of strong influence on his later interests and achievements. The very principle of the Ethical Culture Society being “that an individual’s growth toward excellence comes from furthering the unlike excellence of others”, exemplifies the basis of Stein’s life achievements through the RPAA.

Stein first met future fellow RPAA members, Henry Wright and Alexander Bing, in Washington (in 1918) through a friend, Charles Whitaker (editor of the JAIA). In 1920, Stein became the Associate Editor for Community Planning with the Journal of the American Institute of Architects and soon later discovered the idea to create the RPAA including his friends at the JAIA office, including Lewis Mumford, as well as many others. The group included members in various fields of study from architects to union leaders, city officials to writers, and engineers to sociologists. And so, on April 18, 1923, the first official meeting of the Regional Planning Association of America was held. The association began with only a total of eight people present at its first official meeting but it soon grew.

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