Select Bibliography of Writings Related to the Career of Norman Krumholz with Annotations

Introduction | Cleveland City Planning Commission | Director of Community Development | Center for Neighborhood Development | The Cleveland Foundation | Informal Learning and Civic Relationship Building | Leadership and Distinguished Service to the American Planning Association | Rome Prize and Transition to Levin Faculty | More on Levin Faculty | Contact Us

Norman Krumholz’s reputation as an influential city planner for the City of Cleveland and revered professor at the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University rests firmly on his “Equity Planning” approach. Yet, to weigh the full measure of his contributions, one must also consider his service as Cleveland’s Director of Community Development, program officer at the Cleveland Foundation, the first Director of the Center for Neighborhood Development at CSU and work with a range of civic institutions such as Cleveland Housing Network, Cleveland Neighborhood Development Corporation, Greater Cleveland Transit Authority and Cleveland Housing Court.

Norm Krumholz was a gifted communicator and a prolific writer. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, the oldest journalism program in the United States approximately a decade before obtaining a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Cornell.  From all that Norm has written and much that has been written about him by others, we have carefully selected pieces we feel best capture the breadth of Norm’s work.  These are arranged sequentially to show the progress of Norm’s thinking, his professional career, the many professionals he helped develop, taught or with whom he collaborated over the course of his career since his 1969 arrival in Cleveland.   Rather than a mere listing of citations, we include salient quotes and make annotations that help convey main points or add context.

This annotated bibliography is intended to serve as a useful reference for succeeding generations of Levin College faculty, students and area practitioners interested in the wide scope Norm’s career. Hopefully, along with the ongoing Krumholz Lecture Series and Norman Krumholz Endowed Scholarship, it will help keep his tremendous legacy of Norman Krumholz a lively part of our Levin community.  

If you have questions or suggestions for content to add to this repository, please contact us here. »

-- Dr. Beth Nagy and Robert Jaquay

Cleveland City Planning Commission and the origins of “Equity Planning” (1969-1979)

Clavel, Pierre. Krumholz Early Papers. Available at https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/40858.

Pierre Clavel, a planning professor at Cornell, collaborated with Norm to advance the equity planning approach in U.S. graduate school classrooms and within the APA. In 1985, Clavel curated a collection of ten unpublished speech scripts delivered by Norman Krumholz at civic forums, professional planning conferences and campus classrooms from the time he became Cleveland Planning Director in 1970 until publication of the Cleveland Policy Planning Report in 1975.  “The thread that runs through these papers is the encounter between social justice ideals and the real world of city hall and local institutions: the regional planning agency, the capital budgeting process in city hall, the transportation agencies in the city.” Clavel posted these papers on the Cornell ECommons site.

Cleveland City Planning Commission, Cleveland Policy Planning Report (1975). Available for download online at ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/40857; https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu; onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbing/book/lookupid?key=ha000148646; and numerous other sites.

The Cleveland Policy Planning Report is the seminal document for those seeking to understand Norm’s influence upon Cleveland and the planning profession. The Cornell abstract states, “On page 9 of Cleveland Policy Planning Report, its second page of text, the Cleveland planners stated:

“Equity requires that locally-responsible government institutions give priority attention to the goal of promoting a wider range of choices for those Cleveland residents who have few, if any, choices.” With this they provided a rationale for what had already become a series of recommendations and actions like the closer spacing of bus routes in poor neighborhoods, the inadvisability of subsidizing downtown office development that did not directly serve Cleveland residents, and the retention of the city’s municipal electric utility that provided lower rates and thus moderated costs imposed by the city’s larger private utility. Planning Director Norman Krumholz then advocated the equity goal professionally as “equity planning,” and it won “Planning Landmark” status from the American Planning Association. When co-author and Principal Planner Ernie Bonner left the city to become planning director for Portland, OR, he established a website the text of the Cleveland plan on a website at Portland State University while adding a memoir describing its creation and effects.”

Bonner, Ernest. “Ernie Bonner’s planning journal” Portland State University (1997), see page 7, available online at http://dxschola.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontext.cgi?article=1057&context....

Ernie Bonner, principal planner at the Cleveland Planning Commission from 1969 until 1973, recalls his time in Cleveland in a short section entitled “Trying to save the world from a cubicle in the attic at Cleveland City Hall”. Bonner recalls being influenced by his teaching at the University of Wisconsin and field trips to Milwaukee’s Menominee Valley just before starting his tenure in Cleveland, stating:

"There [Milwaukee] we had concentrated a lot of attention on the non-physical aspects of urban planning: poverty, crime, education, etc…I don’t remember now spending any time whatsoever on things like zoning and subdivision planning and official maps – the usual tools planners use to guide new development and rehabilitation. And, in Cleveland, these tools can equally be ignored. Zoning basically excludes undesirably uses from zones – particularly undesirable uses from single family residential areas. It works well where solid, well-kept residential neighborhoods want to exclude apartments, rest homes, retail outlets, etc. It does not work well in producing these kind of neighborhoods, it works well in protecting those which already exist from encroachment of non-residential uses. In Cleveland, of course, it was a useless tool. We didn’t have good neighborhoods which wanted protection from non-residential development, we had neighborhoods full of vacant and vandalized buildings, neighborhoods where any kind of development would be welcomed but no developer would dare to venture. There were a few plats to be subdivided, but these were few and far between…In short, Cleveland did not seem to be the right place to practice mainline city planning.”

Krumholz, Norman; Cogger, Janice and Linner, John. “The Cleveland Policy Planning Report”, Journal of the American Planning Association. (1975). Available online at: http://doi.org/10.1080/01944367508977672.

In the leading academic journal of the planning profession, Krumholz and colleagues at the Cleveland Planning Commission explain their new approach and structure of the main body of the report:

“The Report follows a simple format. The first section explains the Commission’s goal and the philosophy underlying its policies. The second section describes the way in which the commission and its staff pursue the goal of the agency’s day to day operations. The final section sets forth objectives and policies in four functional areas – income, housing, transportation and community development.”

Pierre Clavel, “Norman Krumholz (1927-2019): Working for Equity Inside Government” Blog post on ProgressiveCity.net. Available at: https://progressivecity.net/single-post/2020/01/02/norman-krumholz-1927-1919-working-for-equity-inside-government.

Pierre Clavel, a planning professor at Cornell, collaborated with Norm to advance the equity planning approach in U.S. graduate school classrooms and within the APA. His memorial contains a quote that touches upon Norm’s career-long genius to attract and nurture talented planners and community development professionals:

“Krumholz had been attracted to the Cleveland position by Mayor Carl Stokes who offered a chance to remake the planning function in response to the economic and racial issues impinging on cities. He used Stokes’ position as the first black mayor of a major U.S. city to hire the best young planners he could find, starting with Ernie Bonner – then Janice Cogger, John Linner and Doug Wright – and put them in the city hall attic, a floor above the main planning department space. He told them to think, and come up with a plan that could seriously confront the city’s issues.”

“Norman Krumholz Interview, 21 July 2006” (2006) Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 951003. Available online at:  https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/243.

In this wide-ranging interview, conducted by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Norm Krumholz (between 1 minute, fifty-one seconds and five minutes and thirty-five seconds) discusses the Planning Commission’s role in negotiations for creation of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit System, diversification of funding sources and the impact upon the transit-dependent population of Cleveland. Both an audio file and transcript of the interview are online.

Notes on the Krumholz Tenure as Director of Community Development (1979)

The 2012 paper, “Rethinking the Future of Community Development” discusses Norm’s decision to target the CDBG funding to neighborhoods through CDCs.  By 2012, there was a recognition that funneling the block grant through Council members to CDCs had some unintended consequences, and in some neighborhoods, Council members were misusing the funds and their CDCs were largely ineffective. With Block Grant funding levels shrinking, Norm and Kathy Hexter authored this paper, suggesting a new model that we presented at CNP’s annual meeting and parts of which have since been implemented.     

Krumholz and Hexter (2012) “Rethinking the Future of Community Development”. White Paper.   

https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/urban_facpub/87/ 

Swanstrom, Todd. The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich and the Challenge of Urban Populism. (1981)  Temple University Press. (See pp. 192-193 and Chapter 8 footnote 45, pg. 291.)

Todd Swanstrom worked in the Cleveland Department of Community Development during the late 1970s as he was finishing his Princeton doctoral dissertation which he later published in book form.  Swanstrom provides an interesting account of the short tenure that Norm Krumholz served as Cleveland Community Development Director.

“Kucinich started on the right foot with the neighborhood groups, appointing Krumholz as Director of Community Development. Generally, Krumholz was highly regarded by neighborhood activists as one of those rare city planners sensitive to neighborhood needs. As a planner, Krumholz did not hesitate to use politics to further his policy goals, but he was not committed to Kucinich’s political ambitions nor was he close to Kucinich’s inner circle. Perhaps Krumholz’s major contribution during his short tenure at Community Development was the targeting of block grant expenditures. It was his professional judgement that targeting would increase the effectiveness of the block grant…The new target areas were selected by Krumholz and his staff on the basis of a number of objective planning criteria, such as majority low and moderate income, high proportion of owner occupied housing, and low levels of foreclosures, abandonments and welfare dependency. But there was one final criterion that was political: the existence of active community organizations. The community groups would serve as a kind of buffer between Community Development and City Council, Krumholz reasoned. By putting pressure on city government for service delivery, the Alinskey-style community groups would, in effect, enforce the targeting strategy. Moreover, in Krumholz’s view, it was easier to work with neighborhoods that were already organized. Community groups could, for example, exert peer pressure to persuade recalcitrant owners to fix up their homes.”

Swanstrom goes on to describe how the community-based groups not only took credit for the increased spending in their neighborhoods, but refused to oppose the recall of Mayor Kucinich in 1979. Consequently, after surviving recall and preparing for the upcoming re-election campaign, Kucinich political loyalist Betty Grdina as Community Development Director.  Swanstrom states, “Krumholz was ‘kicked upstairs’ – back to City Planning Director, a position of much prestige, but little power, especially in the Kucinich years.”

Not noted in Swanstrom book is that a number of talented young professionals moved from the Planning Department to the Community Development, Law and Finance Departments of the City when Krumholz became Community Development Director.  Bill Resseger, Ruth Gillet, Bill Whitney, Sue Hoffman, Don Plaskett, John Wilbur and Craig Miller all went on to long, fruitful careers in government and non-profit organizations serving Cleveland.  Through this experience of funding local development organizations, Krumholz conceptualized plans for a Center for Neighborhood Development.

Establishing the Center for Neighborhood Development at Cleveland State University (1979-1988)

Simon, Mary Ellen. The Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs: Celebrating 25 Years. (2003) Cleveland State University.

Records of the National Commission on Neighborhoods 1977-1979. The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Atlanta, Georgia.  (2021) Available at: jimmycarterlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/pdf_documents/assets/documents/findingaids/Records_of_the_National_Commission_on_Neighborhoods_update_09-22-2021_Finding_Aids.pdf.

In 1977, while still working in the Kucinich Administration at Cleveland City Hall, Norman Krumholz was appointed to the National Commission on Neighborhoods by President Jimmy Carter. By 1979, when the Commission concluded its work and released recommendations to the President and Congress, Krumholz was transitioning to becoming the first Executive Director of the Center for Neighborhood Development at Cleveland State. The Carter Library holds voluminous materials related to urban conditions in Cleveland and testimony from field hearings conducted here. On March 24, 1979, a New York Times editorial entitled “Focusing on Neighborhoods” contains this paragraph that reflects the equity perspective championed by Krumholz:

“Among the panel’s 200 recommendations are suggestions to shift more Federal community development funds to poor neighborhoods and to revise the tax code to encourage inner-city investment. But given Washington’s current mood, even the most practical and least costly of the proposals face an uphill struggle. Whatever the reports fate, the commission’s most valuable contribution is the attention it has drawn to the little-publicized rehabilitation efforts of grassroots groups like block associations and churches.”

Interim Program Consultant, The Cleveland Foundation (1980-1981)

From the time Steven Minter was appointed by President Carter as the Undersecretary of the newly formed U.S. Department of Education in 1980 until he returned to the Cleveland Foundation at the end of the Carter Administration in 1981, Norman Krumholz served as an interim program consultant to the foundation.  There are few things written about Krumholz’s brief philanthropic stint, but these pieces are telling.

Bartimole, Roldo. “Norman Krumholz Zeroed In On Cleveland’s Inequality 40 Years Ago” (June 3, 2015) blog post available at:  https://havecoffeewillwrite/?p=46176.

“The late Homer Wadsworth, as head of the Cleveland Foundation, hired Krumholz as a temporary program director. He later chuckled and told me, “That cost me a lot of brownie points,” but he called Krumholz, “a witness for truth.”

Tittle, Diana and Dooley, Dennis. The People’s Entrepreneur: Homer C. Wadsworth. (1983) The Cleveland Foundation. (At pg. 4) available at: http://www.issu.com/clevelandfoundation/docs/cleveland-foundation-homer-...

“Wadsworth’s unfailing sociability was at one with his genuine liking of people. Norman Krumholz, a former City of Cleveland planning director who worked as a special consultant to the Cleveland Foundation in the early 1980s, vividly remembers the time he arranged for a group of neighborhood organizers and residents to confer with the foundation’s director about a grant proposal. Lacking money for babysitters, some of the women brought their children to the meeting. Taking no apparent note of the youngster’s grubby hands and faces, Wadsworth led the assembly to the foundation’s conference room, where he poured coffee for the adults and pastries for the children. He might have magically plucked a quarter from behind a child’s ear (one of his many ice-breaking skills) before getting down to business.”

Informal Learning and Civic Relationship Building – the “Muffin Group” and “Baloney Lunches” (1979-2019)

Norm Krumholz loved to gather with others in informal settings to talk about ways to make Cleveland better for its residents. These klatches were not only fun and instructive -- they were a means to form collaborative relationships and nurture talent.

Around the time Norm became Director of the Center for Neighborhood Development, he gathered with a group of his peers for morning discussions about the civic landscape and opportunities to collaborate around neighborhood issues in Cleveland. Norm, Steven Minter of the Cleveland Foundation, Don Reed of Central National Bank and Lance Buhl of Sohio were core members, though many others joined to dialogue from time to time. Given the limited menu of coffee and pastry, they dubbed themselves the “Muffin Group.”

Hoping for a salon similar to the Muffin Group, Norm occasionally convened a group at the Levin College for informal lunchtime dialogues. Through these gatherings over the years, Norm kept in touch with former City Hall colleagues and encouraged up and coming professionals with invitations to join more seasoned veterans. Roldo Bartimole, one of the regulars, wrote about these gatherings, noting both that the host carried on the tradition well into advanced age and Norm’s tongue-in-cheek, double entendre name for the gathering.

Bartimole, Roldo. “Norman Krumholz Zeroed In On Cleveland’s Inequality 40 Years Ago” (June 3, 2015) blog post available at:  https://havecoffeewillwrite/?p=46176.

“Yet even now, Krumholz hosts a disparate group of people from time-to-time – from a foundation leader, school board member, land bank official, former school teacher, a want to be mayor, and even me. The meet-ups are informal and called “baloney lunches,” but it’s Norman getting discussion going on in the city, what should be going on – and how to get something going in the right direction.”

Krumholz Noted for Leadership and Distinguished Service to the American Planning Association, see: http://planning.org/apanews/9192555/in-memoriam-norman-krumholz.

“Krumholz was an APA leader, serving as president of the American Planning Association from 1986-1987 and a member of the APA board from 2002-2005. He was president of the American Institute of Certified Planners from 1999-2001 and received the APA Award for Distinguished Leadership in 1990. In 2003, he was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, recognized as a developer of equity planning, “an educator to thousand and author that has inspired a nation of planners.”

Rome Prize Recipient, Transition from Center Director to full-time faculty member at the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs (1987)

In 1987, Norman Krumholz was awarded the Prize of Rome for City Planning from the American Academy of Rome.  This year was a sabbatical year for Norm who was asked by Dean David Sweet to relinquish leadership of the Center for Neighborhood Development and upon his return to Cleveland become a full-time faculty member of the Levin. For years, Norm would regale his friends and colleagues about how he explored the ancient city by riding each and every bus line in the system, the great time he and his wife, Virginia, enjoyed shopping for fresh ingredients in open air markets for evening dinner and the interesting –sometimes comic – interactions with his interdisciplinary colleagues at the Academy. But, as John Forester attests, Krumholz used this time to advance his practical ideas for achieving equity.

Forester, John. “Norm’s Modesty: Testimonial for Norman Krumholz”. Planning Theory & Practice (2020). Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/tandf_rptp2021_633.ris.

“Norm and I were having dinner in Bertucci’s, a pizza place in Somerville; Norm was about to go to the American Academy in Rome, and I was on sabbatical leave at MIT. “Every time I start to write,” he said, “all I see is Cleveland – will outsiders care?” I told him, “Every time I write about general lessons, readers ask me, “But where is this?” In that moment, years after others had suggested that we should collaborate, Norm and I hatched the plan to write Making Equity Planning Work. He went to Rome and sent me a list of chapters with short descriptions. Two years later we had the book, and I and others were astonished at how much more Norm had to say – and show – than even his equity planning mantra “more choices for those who had few” had suggested.”

Norman Krumholz Joins the Full-Time Faculty of the Levin College of Urban Affairs (1987-2019)

Upon returning from Rome, Norman Krumholz became a regular faculty member. He carried a full teaching load, published prolifically, maintained civic involvement with numerous non-profit and local government organizations and continued to support others in their public service careers.

Krumholz, Norman and Forester, John. Making Equity Planning Work: Leadership in the Public Sector. Temple University Press. (1990)  

“In this book, Norman Krumholz and John Forester provide the first detailed personal account of a sustained and effective equity-planning practice that influenced public policy…Krumholz describes the pragmatic equity-planning agenda his staff pursued during the mayoral administrations of Carl B. Stokes, Ralph J. Perk, and Dennis J. Kucinich. He presents case studies illuminated with rich personal experience, of the Euclid Beach development, the Clark Freeway, and the tax delinquency and land bank project that resulted in a change in the State of Ohio’s property law, among others. In the second part of the book, John Forester explores the implications of this experience and the lessons that can be drawn for planning, public management, and administrative practice more generally.”  Quote from the Temple University Press web site at https://tupress.temple.edu/books/making-equity-planning-work.

In this enlightening retrospective, there are many highlights. A thoughtful foreword is written by Alan Altshuler, Norm Krumholz’s planning professor at Cornell, in which he poses provocative questions for the reader to consider. Altshuler ends his essay by saying, “…no planner, I predict, will be able to consider his or her education complete during the next decade or so who has not grappled with vicariously with the dilemmas Norman faced. And few planning seminars will be more lively than those organized around his account, and Forester’s perceptive commentary.” Early in this work, Norm briefly shares the important family influences upon his chosen vocation. The book is also replete with mention of the planning and community development staff (and praise for their high-caliber work) that Krumholz assembled, encouraged and supported during his decade at Cleveland City Hall and conveys his pride in their professional success.

Keating, W. Dennis; Krumholz, Norman; and Perry, David C., editors. “Cleveland: A Metropolitan Reader”.  Kent State University Press. (1995)

See: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/scholbks/47.

“Contemporary urban scholars examine the political economy, social development and history of Cleveland from 1796 to the present in this interdisciplinary collection of essays. Also included are commentaries provided by the leaders of Cleveland, now actively working to transform the city. Though the contributors do not necessarily agree on the nature of Cleveland’s problems or on appropriate solutions, together they offer a broad perspective on the reality of a great American city’s growth, decline and reinvention.” Quote from Cleveland State University’s Engaged Scholarship platform.

Its editors state, “This book is intended as an introductory text on Cleveland. Its inspiration in part has been the interest of our students at Cleveland State University and the lack of a comprehensive reader like this.” A substantial number of essays were contributed by Levin College faculty members, including: David C. Perry, Edward W. Hill, W. Dennis Keating, Norman Krumholz, Mittie Olion Chandler, Thomas E. Bier and John Metzger.  

In addition to his role as a co-editor, Norman Krumholz wrote the chapter, “Government, Equity, Redistribution and the Practice of Urban Planning”, a postscript on Christopher Wye’s chapter, Black Civil Rights”, and co-authored with W. Dennis Keating and John Metzger the chapter “Postpopulist Public-Private Partnerships”.

Krumholz, Norman and Clavell, Pierre. Reinventing Cities: Equity Planners Tell Their Stories. Temple University Press. (1994).

Keating, W. Dennis and Krumholz, Norman, eds. Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods: Achievements, Opportunities and Limits. Sage Publications, Inc. (1999).

Chakalis, Andrew; Keating, Dennis; Krumholz, Norman and Weiland, Ann Marie. “A Century of Planning in Cleveland”, Journal of Planning History (Sage Publications) (2002).

From the Sage Abstract: “A Century of Planning in Cleveland” is a permanent exhibit of various plans for twentieth-century Cleveland presented in their historical, social and economic contexts. It is part of the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affair’s initiative to educate the public about the legacy of Cleveland’s planning professionals and the significant role of planning the city’s development. The following narrative is drawn from the exhibit guide.”

This exhibit occurred in the Thomas F. Campbell Exhibition Gallery at the Levin School of Urban Affairs Building.

Krumholz, Norman and Wertheim, Kathryn, eds. Advancing Equity Planning Now. Cornell University Press. (2019). Available at: http://cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open.

Syllabi from select courses taught by Norman Krumholz at the Levin College of Urban Affairs:

• UST 660 Neighborhood Planning & Development (syllabus from Spring 2001);
• UST 607 Urban Planning (syllabus from Fall 2007); 
• UST 493/593 Cleveland Neighborhoods and Sacred Landmarks (syllabus from Spring 2004); 
• UST 250 The City in Film (syllabus from Spring 2001); and 
• UST 202 Cleveland: The African-American Experience Past, Present and Future (Syllabus from Spring 2007). 

Syllabi from all these courses may be worth review by Levin faculty as there may be lessons and methods that may be useful in succeeding years. Norman Krumholz taught some of these same courses repeatedly over the years. Syllabi from courses he taught multiple times may give insight to adjustments made over time to course objectives, written materials assigned and even his thinking about urban issues.  

Krumholz students were frequently required to venture out into Cleveland neighborhoods to observe first-hand how communities and local institutions functioned. Also, his students always received writing assignments. Depending on the course, individually they were asked to keep screening diaries, prepare technical memos, describe census-tract profiles, craft op-ed essays and in teams write papers and make oral presentations.