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1913-1978 |
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Professor |
A native of Cleveland, Professor Wheaton was educated at Princeton and held the Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
He was an international authority on housing and on urban-development policy. He served as Dean of the College of Environmental Design from 1968 until 1976, when he returned to full-time teaching.
A leading figure in urban research in the years following World War II, he was founder and initial director of the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at Berkeley.
Nationally and internationally Wheaton was one of the most highly respected and admired people in the housing and urban-planning fields. He was intimately involved in setting the foundations of this country's post-war policy with respect to housing and urban renewal. He played a continuing role as a major advisor both to the executive and legislative arms of the United States Government on matters of housing policy. He was involved in the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And the point of it all for Wheaton was social equity, balancing social wrongs, and doing right for people in terms of where and how and in what they lived.
As Dean, Wheaton guided the College of Environment Design through a period of turmoil during the late 1960s. He led with strength, with common sense, and with good humor. He cared for the departments that make up the College at the same time that he pressed them to plan and to do more than they had been doing.
Bill Wheaton, a warm, smiling, basically happy, and extraordinarily bright human being, was a consummate professional, an outstanding teacher, an advisor to many, and a colleague and friend to those who spent time with him.
When the nation's housing shortage was severe in the years immediately following World War II, Wheaton served as Special Assistant to the Administrator of the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency. For the first
Wheaton served, with ambassadorial rank, as United States representative to the United Nations Committee on Housing, Building and Planning. He was State Department advisor on urban development and a founder and Member of the Board for International Planning and Development Co-operative, a professional association with worldwide planning practice. His international consulting activities included work in India, Southeast Asia, and Japan where he provided advice for the United Nations Program in Regional Planning at Nagoya.
Wheaton was a forceful advocate of better housing for low-income families, and he was among the nation's leading authorities on monetary, fiscal, and market techniques for lowering housing costs. Seeking to improve the living quality of American suburbs, he was a long-time proponent of new towns to be built by public corporations in accord with unified environmental designs. An active participant in debates on California's growth policies, he had long advocated programs to direct new urban growth into planned settlements. At the time of his death he was writing a treatise on the comparative costs of urban growth in Europe and America.
Beyond his accomplishments, Bill Wheaton was the professional's academician. They loved him. They listened to him. They knew he listened to them. Practicing professionals knew he was sympathetic with city planning and in him they had an understanding friend.
Bill Wheaton was a wonderful teacher. His way of expecting people to know things made students want to know because it would be good and fun to know, not because of duty or grades. He mentioned authors, books and ideas in ways that made students want to know them too. It is generally agreed that he was one of the premier professors of difficult studio-workshop courses. His loving students are legion.
To student and professional alike, Bill Wheaton was a constant, available advisor. His door was always open. He kept track of available positions and would steer people to them. He was a one-man, unpaid employment service for hundreds of people.
Finally, Bill Wheaton was a positive, inventive colleague of the faculty. He came to meetings, accepted any assignment, worked on issues to completion, debated issues, and accepted decisions, once made. In short, he was a fully participating member of the faculty.
Professor Wheaton leaves his wife, Margaret Fry Wheaton, a member of the city planning faculty at Sonoma State College; his sons, Professor