Clarence Perry

Clarence Arthur Perry (1872 to 1944) was an American urban planner, sociologist, author and educator who devised the neighbourhood unit plan, a residential community scheme spread through the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs in 1929 and influential in planning in United States cities. Born in Truxton, New York, he studied at Stanford and finished his degree at Cornell in 1899, then did further study at Teachers College, Columbia University. He worked on the New York regional plan and the city recreation committee, where he formed his ideas on the neighbourhood unit and community life, and from 1909 until 1937 he was associate director of recreation at the Russell Sage Foundation. He was an early promoter of neighbourhood community and recreation centers. His ideas were realized in places such as Radburn through the work of Clarence Stein. He is best remembered for The Neighborhood Unit (1929) and Housing for the Machine Age (1939), and he died in New Rochelle in 1944.