City Views - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

what I do is geography, some historians
think it's history, some planning.
Others don't know what to make of
it," he says. "The American studies
people seem to understand best, because
that's by nature an interdisciplinary
field."
' 'My work is mainly narrative history,
'' he explains,' 'not interpretive. I
used to say that apologetically but not
any more.
"It seems to me important to establish
what did occur in the development
of American cities. So I approach
history in a different way than
a conventional historian would. I look
for the graphic material first. The conventional
historian, who relies only on
the written word, can get a terribly
skewed view. For example, according
to his writings, Thomas Jefferson
thought cities were terrible places.
Yet at the same time he was saying
that, he was helping design Richmond
and Washington and collecting city
plans and views. You have to look at
what someone is doing as well as what
he is saying.
TRAINING PLANNERS
For Reps started out as an adherent of
the views of Robert Walker, the
University of Chicago professor who
believed that planning's scope should
be broadened to include almost all
municipal government functions and
that planners should be trained as
c/αss, John Reps is described as 'a silver-tongued lecturer.' social scientists rather than architects,
engineers, or landscape architects,
as most were in the 1930s. At
most of the towns and cities described,
noting that' 'there is no com-
the American West, published the year Cornell, though, as Reps learned
book on American history on Cities of
pletely adequate substitute for such before by the Princeton University more about physical planning from
field inspection.
Press and recipient as well of a design his fellow students, he started to question
those views. "I began to realize
The year 1973 was a milestone. award from the Association of American
University Presses. In the mas-
that if the Walker principle were car-
* That's when I had to decide once and
for all between history and land policy.
I had another sabbatical coming fully challenged Frederick Jackson would be nothing to separate the plansive,
827-page volume, Reps successried
to its ultimate conclusion, there
up, and I was applying for two fellowships.
One was to the National En-
influence of the American frontier.
"I was a young Turk then. I saw
Turner's thesis about the dominant ner from the city manager," he says.
dowment for the Humanities to study From policy to planning history to the backlog of plans left on the shelf
planning history in the Southeast. the artifacts themselves—the lithographic
"bird's-eye views" that flour-
the social scientists could do better.
by the physical planners and thought
The other was to Resources for the
Future to study large-scale public ished in the nineteenth century—there
has been a progression in of planners was no more effective
But then I realized that the new breed
land acquisition. Both said yes. I chose
NEH. Since then, I have been an extinct
volcano as far as the land policy
of the things the physical planners
Reps's interest.
than the old. I also realized that many
stuff goes."
JUDGMENT
cared about are things we should care
He seems to have made the right To people who like their historians—and
planners—neatly boxed and That's a damned good thing to strive
about. A city beautiful, for instance.
choice. In 1980, the American Historical
Association conferred its Albert J. labeled, John Reps is something of an toward. A city in which all the social
Beveridge Award for the year's best enigma. "Some geographers think services are delivered efficiently isn't
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