Portrait of a Consultant in Hard Times: John Nolen, 1928-1937

摘要

John Nolen was one of the first planners to build a national consulting practice focused on new towns. However, his office began to struggle financially in the late 1920s. Despite a thirty-year record, Nolen had no paying private-sector clients after 1931 and finally had to downsize his office. He survived on New Deal contracts for a while. But eventually he could not obtain work even from the Resettlement Administration, where his former proteges were implementing his ideas. Modern new town ideas from Clarence Stein were ascendant. Seen as a relic, Nolen died without a single project pending in his portfolio.