A social history of planning and land use: White Plains, New York, 1900-197

The following thesis traces the social history of planning and land use between 1900 and 1972 in White Plains, New York, a suburb of New York City, thirty miles north of Manhattan and the county seat of Westchester. This study examines the social origins and development of planning from its inception in the City Beautiful and civic improvement movements of the early twentieth century through the increasing involvement of the local government during the nineteen-twenties to the massive intervention of Federal urban renewal. The manuscript concludes in 1972 with the displacement of approximately 1,000 small businesses and 1,200 families from the lower-central city.;In White Plains planning originated and evolved as an effort on the part of realty interests, major merchants, elite civic organizations and homeowners' associations to reduce the community's immigrant and African-American working-class housing and land-use patterns. The search for social homogeneity which tied together urban and suburban planning objectives and periods of economic growth and decline provides this thesis with its major focal point.;Other areas of research include an investigation of the relationship between political and economic power and the planning process and an analysis of the social costs and benefits of planning from the 1900's through the renewal era. Major attention is paid to the impact of planning on the city's small business community and its ethnic and racial minorities. The social protest which the planning process engendered also is examined.;A study of the history of planning in White Plains exemplifies national trends: from the City Beautiful movement of the early 1900's through the housing reform debate of the late thirties to the transformation of the central city during the renewal era, White Plains' planners responded to and participated in national planning developments. Only through an in-depth study of the planning process within specific communities can we begin to understand the social context of planning and the way in which municipal governments have used planning and housing reform to mold and remold the social geography of our nation's communities.