Michigan Association of Planning Planning Michigan 2019 | Planning Pioneers

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W.E.B. DuBois or William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, was an African-American writer, teacher, sociologist and activist whose work transformed the way that the lives of black citizens were seen in American society. Considered ahead of his time, Du Bois was an early champion of using data to solve social issues for the black community, and his writing – including his groundbreaking The Souls of Black Folk – became required reading in African-American studies.

Rachel Carson was perhaps the fi nest nature writer of the 20th Century; remembered today as the woman who challenged the notion that humans could obtain mastery over nature by chemicals, bombs and space travel. Her sensational book Silent Spring (1962) warned of the dangers to all natural systems from the misuse of chemical pesticides such as DDT, and questioned the scope and direction of modern science, initiated the contemporary environmental movement.

Jane Jacobs was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to city building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail, that now seem like common sense to generations of architects, planners, politicians and activists.

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Michigan Association of Planning Planning Michigan 2019 | Planning Pioneers

Frederick Law Olmsted was among the fi rst to regard landscape architecture as a profession and a fi ne art – in fact, with Calvert Vaux he virtually created that profession. Olmsted was the most successful person ever to practice it in this country. He was co-designer of Central Park, leader of the campaign to protect Niagara Falls, planner of Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” of green space, and created park systems in many other cities.

Dorothy Mae Richardson--an activist from Pittsburgh’s Central North Side with no formal training in advocacy or organizing – was the inspiration behind NeighborWorks America – a congressionally chartered community development intermediary with affi liates across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. She’s regarded nationwide as the “mother of community development” for her unique, resident-led approach to neighborhood improvement.

William H. Whyte assisted the New York City Planning Commission in drafting a comprehensive plan for the city. Dedicated to documenting the progress of recently planned urban spaces, he received a grant to study the street life of New York and other cities in what became known as the Street Life Project. Along with a group of young research assistants, and with camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering research on pedestrian behavior and city dynamics.

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