Paul Davidoff and Planning Education

Abstract

While he is often remembered as a tireless advocate, few modern planners remember Paul Davidoff as an educator. In the mid-1960s, Hunter College of the City University of New York conducted a nationwide search for the best possible candidate to develop and head the school’s new graduate program in Urban Planning, and they selected Paul Davidoff. The author of “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning,” who inspired a generation of young planners to represent the disadvantaged, saw himself as a “planner–scholar–professor” who could shape the field by changing the way that planners were taught. This article looks closely at the founding of the planning program at Hunter to explore Paul Davidoff’s relationship to and interest in the field of planning education, as well as his ability to use this program to implement his educational ideals.