Albert Z. Guttenberg, FAICP

Emeritus Professor of Urban and Regional Planning
BA, Harvard College, 1948

Emeritus Professor Albert Z. Guttenberg graduated from Harvard College in 1948 with a BA degree in social relations (sociology, cultural anthropology, and social psychology).  He was a practicing planner in Portland, Maine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. before joining the planning faculty at Illinois in 1964.  As a scholar, he is best known for his seminal work on land use classification, as well as for his innovative interpretations of urban and regional structure and the history of American planning.  Recognition of Guttenberg’s scholarly contributions include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Cornelius Gelderman Fund Award from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, a Fulbright Travel grant to Rome, Italy and election to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners. Professor Guttenberg retired from the Department in 1989, but has remained active, pursuing his research interests both in the U.S. and abroad.

Contact Information
Room 111, Temple Buell Hall 611 Taft Drive
Champaign, IL 61820
Room 325 Noble Hall
Phone: 217.333.3890
Fax: 217.244.1717
E-mail: a-gutten@uiuc.edu

Current Research Areas

• Planning Rome, Italy: How to adjust to one another, the three co-existing Romes: the ancient city (still mostly underground), the Renaissance city, and the always emerging modern world city.


• Planning history: Continuing expansion of the interactive planning timelines on the APA website. My aim is to incorporate into those timelines always more information from the course I taught for almost twenty-five years: The Development of American Planning Thought.


• “What is planning”?: Exploring planning’s diverse roots in language, in the social sciences, in the social gospel, in American cultural history.

Selected Publications

“Urban Structure and Urban Growth”, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Volume XXVI, Number 2 (May 1960), pp. 104-110.

“General Concepts of the Comprehensive Plan”, Philadelphia Comprehensive Plan. Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 1960.

Explorations into Urban Structure, Melvin M. Webber, John W. Dyckman, Donald L. Foley, Albert Z. Guttenberg, William L. C. Wheaton and Catherine Bauer Wurster, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964

New Directions in Land Use Classification. Chicago: American Society of Planning Officials. 1965.

Transnational Land Use: Toward Conceptual Framework and Taxonomy of Issues (with R. Nanetti): Land Economics, February, 1974.

The Woonerf - A Social invention in Urban Structure. Institute of Traffic Engineers Journal. October, 1981 [PDF]

"Abusivismo and the Borgate of Rome", in Spontaneous Shelter: International Perspectives and Prospects, (Carl Patton, ed). Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.

Land, Space and Spatial Planning in Three Time Regions. In Spatial Information Theory: A Theoretical Basis for GIS. (Andrew Frank and Irene Compari, eds.), Springer –Verlag. 1993.

The Language of Planning: Essays on the Origins and Ends of American Planning Thought. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993. [Excerpts available for viewing on Google Scholar]

Pathways in American Planning History. An interactive thematic chronology viewable on the web site of the American Planning Association since 2000.

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