Alexander Garvin, Famed Planner, Author, and Teacher, Dies at 80

Paul Goldberger writes in the New York Times of the death of Alexander Garvin, whose career in planning has no peer:

Alexander Garvin, a city planner, architect and author who directed the planning for the former World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks and developed the vision for a 2012 Olympics proposal in New York, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 80.

The article details Mr. Garvin's time working for five mayoral administrations in New York City.  The article also recognizes Mr. Garvin's contributions to the canon of planning literature, authoring The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t (1996) and The Planning Game (2013), and What Makes a Great City (2016).

Among the other career highlights described in the detailed obituary, linked below, are Mr. Garvin's first encounter with the work of Jane Jacobs, time spent working for Philip Johnson, creating the bid that almost brought the 2012 Olympics to New York but still transformed the city, working for the Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency that oversaw the rebuilding at the World Trade Center site, time working on the Beltline in Atlanta, and 55 years teaching planning at Yale University.