Urban and Regional Program

Since 1955, when the Foundation's Urban and Regional program began, it has assisted the activities of various universities and civic groups in research, training of urban-affairs personnel, and public enlightenment on metropolitan problems.

This year the Foundation made a grant for a frankly experimental effort to establish an urban counterpart to the rural extension programs that link farmers, county agricultural agents, and the educational and research facilities of land-grant universities. Rutgers University received $750,000 for a program that draws on faculty members from various departments to develop undergraduate and graduate courses in urban affairs and for extension work that may eventually include a system of urban agents in selected New Jersey communities.

Experts in the urban-affairs field have long felt a need for a reference center for the rapidly expanding but scattered urban-research activities of scholars and civic groups throughout the country. The Foundation granted $225,000 to the Institute of Public Administration for a clearinghouse for research on metropolitan problems. The Institute will hold regular conferences at which the experience and findings of different communities and research programs can be shared. It will further expand the clearinghouse function of the Conference on Metropolitan Problems, an association of twenty national civic and professional organizations, through bibliographic aids and information services. Other activities will include conferences of specialists in the principal academic fields that deal with urban problems, joint meetings and research projects with professional and civic organizations, and exchange visits by American and foreign urban experts.

From an appropriation of $250,000 last year, a number of grants were made in 1959 for clinical, or case, studies of civic-action and governmental-reorganization programs. The recipients and the subjects of study are: Yale University, urban renewal in New Haven; the University of Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Study Commission; Syracuse University, decision-making in emergent metropolitan areas; Sacramento State College Foundation, the Sacramento metropolitan area; the University of Houston, the metropolitan reform movement in Harris County, Texas; the University of Miami, metropolitan government in Dade County, Florida; the University of Washington, metropolitan services in the Seattle area; Northwestern University, campaign for governmental reorganization in the St. Louis metropolitan area;