Education for the Emerging Field of Regional Planning and Development

G ROUP counseling on the need for a more scientific and comprehensive program on research and service in the field of regional planning and development seems to me to give evidence of an eagerness among us to attempt to achieve some common use of terms, some clarifying of our thinking about experience, which have for us an urgent importance for the better conduct of our research, teaching and administration. We know that here the auspices for such an effort at communication are better than we could find anywhere else, so long and distinguished has been the work of scholars of this University in so many phases of regional studies in a section-I use an old term which some of you may think inappropriate-in which regional studies, policies and programs have attracted world-wide attention. I must therefore at once qualify the title assigned to me to state my view that regional planning and development are not "emerging," that they are as old as the Republic, and that the achievements here at the University of North Carolina prove that such a field of study and teaching exists. For I take it that we are here precisely because when we use the words "regional" and "planning" we are not communicating with one another with enough exactness, in spite of the tremendous work which Howard W. Odum and Rupert B. Vance, for example, have done on regions, or the mounting literature on the wordl "planning." But in this day of limited resourcc-s and endless needs, in which every activity of our universities must be carefully scrutinized and appraised so that priorities can most wisely be determined, and personnel, materials and time most effectively allocated and applied, this effort to define our terms has a basic importance. Furthermore, when we consider the tasks of public housekeeping today on every level of government, the analysis of functions performed, of organization and procedure for performing them and of the positions and personnel required needs to be undertaken continuously if our research and teaching is to have intellectual validity and vocational efficiency. I shall therefore devote my essay here-and it is literally an essay in the sense of an attempt to share with you fellow essayists in a search for a common understanding-to stating what I think planning is, and then what the peculiar factors are which are contributed when we add to it the word "regional," and finally job analyze this combination of words to see whether there is a concrete task of education regarding the things thus defined that is a responsibility of universities. This is a difficult task. I wish to be as succinct as possible, and I fear that I may sound arrogant in my use of terms and meanings. If so, I am sorry; for I say in all humility that my views on these terms have changed with new experience and study, and I feel that I am groping, and that they are inadequate, now. As I said at the start, that is one reason why I am grateful for the invitation to attend this Conference; I know I shall be able to improve them, from our discussions here. Let me add two more introductory comments: I know my views are not original and are borrowed from many sources; and, however tentatively I hold the views on regional planning, I do think that formulating as exact meanings as possible and using them in research, instruction and administration is a great responsibility. We hear so much talk of economic determinism and pressure groups and trends and such general factors that it is useful to remind * A paper presented at the Conference on the Need for a Program of Graduate Education, Research and Service at the University of North Carolina in the Field of Regional Planning and Development, Chapel Hill, November 18, 1950.