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61 CHAPTER 5 William Whyte and Human Habitat William Hollingsworth “Holly” Whyte Jr. was a journalist and sociologist. His work spanned numerous disciplines, including land use, rural and urban development, sociology, regulations, and public policy. He is perhaps best known for his bestselling book The Organization Man, in which he documented the diminishing individualism in American society. He was also an astute observer of people, and his description of people’s behavior in urban settings revolutionized metropolitan design. Whyte was a humble and optimistic man, not prone to overstatement, and he had a preference for action. Holly Whyte had a unique gift in communicating his detailed observations and his insights on what made a place more livable or civil. He foresaw the decline of cities—the consequence of cheap energy, federal programs, and the social marketing of a new vision of America centered in suburbia. But by the end of his life, he witnessed a reversal of that trend and the fortune of cities rebounding, in part by his work and the others that followed to pursue development of more humane cities. The places he came to love and his proposals and strategies to protect and enhance our habitats , both in the country and within the city, are scattered throughout his writings. Through his insights into human behavior and his straightforward and commonsense principles of urban space design, William Whyte’s ideas continue to have a profound influence on land-use practices and urban design today. TOWN, COUNTRY, AND SHORELINE William Whyte was born on October 1, 1917, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, twenty-five miles west of Philadelphia. William, son of a railroad executive, spent his youth both in town and in the rich, rolling hill countryside of the Brandywine Valley. The landscape of his formative years made a lasting impression, as he would work some forty years later on promoting tools to manage urban sprawl within the Brandywine Valley and across the continent. The town of West Chester is located on the upland clay and loam soils between two drainages . West of town is Brandywine Creek and to the east lies Chester Creek, both flowing into the Delaware River. The area is rich with early American history. The country was settled by Swedes and English Quaker immigrants, who displaced the Algonquin Indians (Lenape). In 1777, before the town was established, George Washington fought and lost the largest battle of the Revolutionary War. The loss was attributed to poor understanding of where the enemy was and unfamiliarity with the territory. About 150 years later, a young William Whyte took 62| Scientist, Writer, and Activist excursions to the same countryside, enlightened by a sense of history. The town of West Chester was established at the turn of the nineteenth century. Interestingly, the county courthouse in West Chester was designed in the 1840s by Thomas U. Walter, who would later design the U.S. Senate and House wings as well as the central dome of the U.S. Capitol. The Pennsylvania Railroad, nurseries, and industry employed many of the residents at the turn of the twentieth century, and few residents worked outside of town. William Whyte grew up in the aftermath of World War I, and he witnessed the Great Depression as a teenager. Yet, at the end of his life, he looked back fondly on those times. He recalled playing war games with his cousins, using air rifles as weapons and trenches for cover. He spent his days exploring West Chester and the nearby countryside. During his youth, the town was compact and getting out to the country was easy. Whyte noted, “The country began exactly where the town ended.” He spent much of his time at his Grandmother Whyte’s home, and he and his friends often biked the trails and roads of the Brandywine Valley. William also spent time at the Chester Valley farms, owned by his Grandfather Price, and at Grandmother Price’s home on Cape Cod. The home was on the shore of a pond in Wellfleet, Massachusetts . William picked blueberries and blackberries alongshore, and he knew the paths and the beaches. He made maps of the area that he shared with his friends and family. William was a bright student. At age fourteen, he was sent to St. Andrew’s School, a secondary education boarding school on 2,200 acres in Middletown, Delaware. On the newly founded campus, William enjoyed the pleasures of life on the shores of Noxontown and Silver Lakes (a reservoir of the...

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