City Planning and Architectural Associates

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The firm of Jim and John Webb, City Planning and Architectural Associates of Chapel Hill played an integral role in the urban renewal process in Durham, producing multiple maps and renderings of what would be destroyed, and what the Brave New World post-urban renewal would look like.

While it would be unfair to lay any major portion of the blame for urban renewal at their feet (there are plenty of responsible parties)  the ~modern city planning ideas that came out the City and Regional Planning Department at UNC Chapel Hill (where Jim Webb was faculty) were a problematic source of the ill-conceived ideas. UNC was at the forefront of so-called "rational planning" and "regional planning." The former gave unwarranted conviction to ideas about planning - grounding them in the social/economic intellectual framework of mid-century, and making them 'serious' by contrast to the earlier design-oriented planning professionals.  The latter de-emphasized traditional urban centers.

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