New Exhibit to Celebrate the Life and Work of Regional Planning Pioneer Ladislas Segoe

The Western Hills Viaduct and Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal are two important landmarks called for in the 1925 Official Plan of the City of Cincinnati.

Created by urban planner Ladislas Segoe along with local lawyer Alfred Bettman and fellow planners George B. Ford and Ernest P. Goodrich, the plan is monumental in that it made Cincinnati the first major United States city to have a comprehensive urban plan. A new exhibit,

In the Public Interest: The Life and Work of Regional Planning Pioneer Ladislas Segoe (1894-1983

), which will run in the Phillip M. Meyers, Jr. Memorial Gallery, Feb. 15-April 5, with a public opening reception planned for 5-7 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 19.

With numerous other groundbreaking achievements including supervising the first federal study of urban America and writing the most influential planning text of the first half of the 20th century, Segoe had a long, successful career in city planning spanning over four decades and through interesting times for U.S. cities including the Great Depression, WWII, urban renewal of the 1950s and civil unrest in the 1960s.

Spending most of his career in Cincinnati, Segoe lectured at the University of Cincinnati from 1938 through 1942. In addition to plans for the city of Cincinnati, Segoe and his associates created comprehensive plans for numerous U.S. cities both local (including Middletown, Dayton and Mason) and across the country (including Detroit, Lexington and Tucson).

“Segoe was one of the most important of the early professional planners in the United States,” said David J. Edelman, professor of planning and director, Master of Community Planning (MCP) program, in the

College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning

. “In the 1920's, Segoe and Alfred Bettman pioneered comprehensive planning, which guides the profession to this day. He advocated regional planning and developed the idea of a growth boundary around cities to limit urban sprawl. Few, if any, have contributed more to planning practice.”

In the Public Interest

includes maps, sketches and images that show not only Segoe’s professional work, but that also give insight into the man – his travels, love of fitness and marriage to opera soprano Vilma Czittler. The exhibit is the result of international collaboration that has involved many faculty, experts and staff across the University of Cincinnati, Cornell University and the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Segoe’s complete collection of professional and personal papers is housed in UC Libraries’

Archives and Rare Books Library

and in the Cornell University Archives.

After displaying at UC, the exhibit will travel for display at Cornell University in the fall of 2015 and at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in the Spring of 2016. It was produced with significant support from the Ladislas and Vilma Segoe Family Foundation. For more information, contact Jennifer Krivickas, head of the

Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art and Planning

at

jennifer.krivickas@uc.edu

or by phone at (513) 556-1319.