Stein, Clarence S.

Clarence Samuel Stein's career as architect, housing reformer, and regionalist spanned the first half of the 20th century. Stein (1882–1975) built a considerable network among the major architects, urban critics, policymakers, and planners of his day and promoted his socially progressive ideas through his design, committee work, speaking engagements, and writings. While his individual buildings ranged from the Art Deco Wichita Art Institute to the Romanesque Temple Emanu El, designed with partners Robert Kohn and Charles Butler in New York City, he is best remembered for the town of Radburn, New Jersey, which he designed with collaborator Henry Wright. The traditional architectural styles he favored reflected his training at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris (1908–1911), but his site plans were influenced by modern European design.

In 1923 he founded the Regional Planning Association of America, an informal network of intellectuals committed to improving the physical and social environment through development of distinct, interconnected new towns incorporating the garden city of Ebenezer Howard and new technologies, primarily the automobile and widespread electrification. To implement their concepts, Stein, Wright, and real estate developer Alexander Bing formed the City Housing Corporation (CHC) and began work in 1924 on Sunnyside Gardens in Queens. As chair of the New York State Housing and Regional Planning Commission from 1923 to 1926, Stein argued for government intervention to increase the supply of affordable housing and engaged Wright and conservationist Benton MacKaye to draft a report advocating a statewide plan for New York.

Initiated in 1928, the proposed new town of Radburn, just 16 miles southwest of New York City, reflected the desired qualities Stein called the Radburn Idea—a hierarchical transportation network to separate pedestrians and local and through traffic; a variety of housing types organized within superblocks and oriented toward interior parks that connected the community; schools, shopping, and other facilities easily accessible to residents and intended to foster socialization. While the Depression bankrupted the CHC, thus terminating development before completion of the project, Stein continued to advocate this ideal, most notably as consultant to the Resettlement Administration in 1935 on the Greenbelt Towns.

He also implemented new federal housing programs, designing early public housing such as Hillside Homes in the Bronx and war worker housing in Pittsburgh. Further, Stein used his personal connections to federal housing officials to consult on and lobby for programmatic and policy changes. He contributed to only one completed project following World War II—as planner from 1951 through 1953 of the industrial new town of Kitimat in western Canada. Writing his landmark 1957 book Toward New Towns for America, Stein influenced the new town movement abroad, particularly in England and Sweden, and corresponded with significant architects and policymakers into the 1960s.