Labor Organizing and the Rise of Regional Planning
With waves of new migration shaping the growth of American cities, activists and organized labor groups challenged housing crises through rent strikes and the construction of cooperative housing. At the same time, regional planning became the dominant planning principle for shaping American cities.
1920
Marcus Garvey & UNIA
1920
The nation’s urban population (54.3 million) exceeds the rural population (51.8 million) for the first time.
With over 700 branches in thirty-eight states, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was among the largest member associations of African Americans in our nation’s history. Garvey’s philosophical and organizational principles blended economic and political Black nationalism and catered to a transitory population during the Great Migration. To promote unity, he emphasized the need for African Americans to take care of themselves and their communities to “do the work that success and independence demanded.”
UNIA is an early prototype of community development and organizing, insofar as it raised a political consciousness and pride in its people’s heritage while also developing training programs that educated and fostered individuals for economic independence.1
Image: Gordon Parks via the Library of Congress
Jewish Activism & Rent Strikes
New York City’s housing shortage following World War I was so severe that landlords raised rents by nearly 140% due to steep competition. The shortage was caused by stagnant housing construction due to the redirection of building materials to the war effort, inflation in the cost of those materials, and the higher cost of labor.2
Image: International Film Service via the New York Times
The city’s first rent strikes took place in neighborhoods of the Lower East Side, Brownsville, and Harlem, when predominantly Jewish tenants organized over 25,000 apartment dwellers. A rent strike of over five hundred buildings in the city put social pressure on local political representatives. Although strikers would eventually fail to make permanent changes to the city’s housing system, their actions inspired future generations of activists. Landlords claimed that rent strikes were organized by socialist instigators, while activists countered that the housing conditions and rising rents drove tenants themselves to radicalize.
In 1920, Republicans in control of the New York State Legislature feared electoral defeat, so they enacted legal restrictions on evictions and adopted rent control requiring landlords to charge reasonable rents. While the public overwhelmingly supported rent control, landlords lobbied against the measure by questioning its legality. Their challenges weren’t successful, and the political power of the tenants in the 1920s kept the emergency rent control laws alive until the start of the Great Depression, when it was allowed to lapse.3
1924
Governor Al Smith names a then-unknown planner Robert Moses head of both the Long Island State Park Commission and the New York State Council of Parks. Moses would oversee the state’s parks system for the next four decades.
1925
Cincinnati, Ohio becomes the first major American city to adopt a comprehensive land use plan.
1926
Union Labor and Co-op Housing
With New York City still feeling the effects of the housing crisis, organized labor groups led an initiative to provide affordable housing opportunities to their working-class members. The unions pooled resources, secured financing, and collaborated with architects and builders to construct cooperative apartment complexes. Notably, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) spearheaded such efforts, building the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx. These housing projects were not only affordable but also integrated various amenities like community centers and green spaces. Additionally, the roots of community banking can be found in ACWA’s Amalgamated Bank, which is still the largest union-owned financial institution in the country. The ACWA pioneered union-led urban development during a transformative era for New York.4
Image: The Forward
1928
RPAA, Planning Recommendations, and a View of the Metropolis
As editor of the American Institute of Architects’ journal (1913-1927), Charles Harris Whittaker used his platform to advocate for greater spending on government housing and community planning at a time when funding was strained due to World War I. Philosophically, Whittaker saw architecture as having an inherent responsibility to humanitarian service. He cultivated an association with other major urban thinkers like Clarence Stein, Lewis Mumford, Benton MacKaye, and Henry Wright. Eventually, the group would go on to form the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), which resembled an influential network more than a professional organization.5
The newly founded organization first made it into the professional conversation in the American City Magazine’s second volume, published in 1923. While each member of the collective had their own interests, responsibilities, and trades, they all had an appreciation for the principles of regional planning and English garden cities. They implemented some of their ideas in real planning projects such as the New Deal’s Tennessee Valley Authority, and planned residential developments in Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, New York and Radburn, New Jersey.
Image: Rockefeller Archive Center
Image: Rockefeller Archive Center
1929
DOW loses 11% of its value on “Black Tuesday,” beginning a chain of events leading to the Great Depression.
The organization dissolved in the early 1930s, after the founding members decided to continue their practices individually. Their ideas on community planning, environmental consciousness, and regionalism would later become influential during the rise of community planning in the 1960s.6
Footnotes
- Amnifu R. Harvey, A Black Community Development Model: The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League 1917-1940 (1994) ↩︎
- Robert M. Fogelson, The Great Rent Wars: New York 1917-1929 (2013) ↩︎
- Roberta Gold, When the Tenants Claimed the City: The Struggle for Citizenship in New York City Housing (2014) ↩︎
- Janet Butler Munch, Community Building at Amalgamated Housing Co-Operative (2020) ↩︎
- Kermit C. Parsons, Collaborative Genius: The Regional Planning Association of America (1994) ↩︎
- Edward K. Spain, Designing Modern America: The Regional Planning Association of America and Its Members (1996) ↩︎