Roy Lubove presents the first detailed study of the Regional Planning Association of America, whose organization in 1923 signified a sharp break with traditional housing and planning in the United States. Composed of a small number of talented technicians and social critics, the RPAA was distinctive for its uncompromising criticism of small-scale speculative housing development and planning efforts that failed to relate physical and social change within a regional framework. Lubove's study is based in part upon interviews and materials supplied by some of the founding members of the RPAA.

Roy Lubove was professor of social welfare and history at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of several books, including: The Struggle for Social Security, 1900-1935; The Progressives and the Slums; Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh, Volume One: Government, Business, and Environmental Change; and Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh, Volume Two: The Post-Steel Era.