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Former St. Louis Planner Charles Kindleberger to Teach Course at St Louis University

August 10, 2007 Grad School 10 Comments

Charles Kindleberger, an urban planner briefly with St. Louis County and with the City of St. Louis from 1976-2005 will be teaching a course this Fall called Planning and Development in St. Louis: Successes, Failures and Lessons Learned. From the course description:

How has the St. Louis region of the 1950s changed over the last fifty plus years? What is better? What is worse? How many of the changes were inevitable? What might we have done differently? This fall PPS 560-02 will examine St. Louis, both the city and region, from diverse perspectives. Taught by Charles Kindleberger, this will be an opportunity to learn and think about St. Louis in the context of state and national urban policies and politics.The class will examine the strengths and weaknesses of St. Louis – what we do well and what is more difficult – and the impact of specific development decisions made over the last fifty years. There will also be a practical component that focuses on writing staff reports, presentations and data sources.

This is my first time having a course taught by someone with their own wikipedia entry (of course wiki didn’t exist when I was an undergrad):

He served the city of St. Louis in a variety of capacities from 1976 to 2005. First, he was director of the Community Development Agency (CDA) Planning and Programming Division. Later, he served as CDA acting executive director. By the 1990s, he was Director of Research in CDA; and after 1999, in the Planning and Urban Design Agency (PDA), a new agency created from the restructuring of CDA. He retired from this position June 30, 2005.

Kindleberger was instrumental in the advancement of information technology applications within St. Louis city government. In particular, he helped initiate the development of the St. Louis Community Information Network, and promoted the development of Geographic Information Systems within St. Louis city government.

His father, also named Charles Kindleberger, was a “distinquished” economist. You can read more about him from Wiki and from MIT, where he taught for over 30 years (yes, that MIT).

Well, as you can imagine, I registered for this course right away. Wednesday nights this semester will be interesting indeed!

  • http://metropolitanrural.blogspot.com Curtis

    Very cool. Look forward to hearing how things go with this one!

  • Jim Zavist

    It should be interesting, especially if and how any “spin” is applied to decisions made during his tenure. Hopefully, however, it will focus on successes as well as “challenges” . . .

  • john

    Do you really believe that an accurate and honest review of the past can be presented by an ex-insider, especially given the imbalance between successes and failures? No doubt though about the temperature of after-class debates. The father as economist greatly believed in expanding the role of government to solve our problems. The demise of the USSR and the StL region proves the inherent contradictions and predictable failures of such central planning concepts and policies. Keep us abreast as I would be interested in his perspective anyway.

  • Jim Zavist

    An “ex-insider” will either lean toward CYA or will divulge “where the skeletons are buried”. Given the clarity of 20/20 hindsight, combined with the security of retirement and a pension, I would expect at least a few “juicy tidbits”. If nothing else, there may be some explanations about why some decisions were made.

    [SLP --- 'Chuck' spoke to one of my classes last Spring and I was very impressed ---- he has neither an ax to grind nor is his covering up past decisions.  I believe the class will be very informative on the city's mindset at the time.]

  • mixeduse

    Seeing an ex-STL city official go on to teach in higher education isn’t new. Let’s not forget about Clarence Harmon teaching a class on government over in Illinois.

  • Thor Randelson

    Steve,

    I look forward to hearing more about this class over the coming semester through your postings. One favor to ask, when the reading list is up for this class, please post it here.

    Thanks.

  • http://www.springfieldwesley.org SMSPlanstu

    Steve,

    For those of not at SLU or in STL during the school year, is there a way for you to share some of the knowledge from this class. Many of us may be versed on STL history and national history of planning movements, but maybe this professor may have new material to present separate from James Neal Primm or the researcher-writer at MHS.

    [SLP --- I'll see what I can do.  My first priority, as you can imagine, is to pay attention in class and actually learn something.  I'm not sure what to expect out of reading assignments and such.  Given his experience, he probably needs to write a book.]

  • curious

    I’m wondering–why did you put quotation marks around ‘distinguished’ when writing about Kindleberger’s father? I read the Wiki entry and it looked interesting and impressive. What am I missing?

    [SLP --- Uh, because I was quoting one of the sources that I was referencing.  It was not meant as a slight.  That is why I had full quotes.]

  • http://artsci.wustl.edu/~jgfrank/ Joe Frank

    Chuck has been teaching at SLU for a couple years now, actually. Of course, many of us in the urbanist blogosphere (myself, Steve Shapiro, Brian Horton, etc etc) once worked under his tutelage, as part of his often massive summer internship teams.

    His retirement was a great loss for City government. I wish he WOULD write a book! A compliation of his past memos would be enough for me! ;-)

    And yes, his father’s “Manias, Panics, and Crashes” is a staple of many courses on international political economy; it’s sitting on my shelf right now.

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