Born: Edinburgh, Scotland, September 10, 1871
Died: Sussex, England, March 24, 1940
Trained as a farmer and a lawyer, Adams found his life work as a city planner in his late twenties when selected to manage Letchworth, England, the first "garden city." He became Town Planning Inspector when England's first Town Planning Act was passed in 1909, and was the founder and first president of the Town Planning Institute (1914).
Invited to become an advisor to the Canadian government, Adams drafted planning legislation and developed plans for Canadian cities and rural areas (1914-1921), including a plan for the reconstruction of Halifax following its destruction by explosion and fire in 1917. While in Canada, he made a number of visits to the United States where he became a member of the American City Planning Institute, lectured on civic design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1921), and became well known to leaders in American planning.
Returning to London, Adams formed a partnership with Longstreth Thompson that engaged in planning a portion of Greater London.
He came to New York in 1923 upon the urging of Charles Dyer Norton to provide technical guidance to a study of the region funded by the Russell Sage Foundation. Appointed general director of plans and surveys, he lead a staff of 150 engineers, architects, and city planners in preparation of The Regional Survey (Plan) of New York and Its Environs, which was released in 1929. This plan, the first large-scale data-based plan produced in America and the plan in which the full range of economic, social, and physical approaches to regional planning found their first expression, covered over 5,000 square miles and allowed for a population of 20,000,000 by 1965 in a super-metropolis; a great "city-state."
Upon termination of the study (1930), Adams served as associate professor of city planning research at Harvard University (1930-36), where he taught Harvard's first comprehensive planning courses, being recognized at that time as the leading city planner of both the United States and Britain.
Electronic Version by Stephen Best