Charles H. Cheney: The first city planner of PVE

By Monique Sugimoto and Dennis Piotrowski, Special to the News

Good architecture and attractive neighborhoods, gardens and landscaping are what make a city worthwhile they give life satisfaction. Everything else is secondary.

So said Charles H. Cheney, the first city planner for the city of Palos Verdes Estates, at the 1940 national conference of the American Society of Planning Officials. As PVE celebrates its 75th anniversary, it has much for which to thank Cheney.

Just more than a hundred years ago, city planning was not a full-fledged profession; the term was not well known and even less understood. At what would become the professions first meeting in 1909, participants, ranging from architects and landscape architects, to social welfare and civic interest groups, discussed the pressing housing issues of the day including overcrowding and congestion, poor construction and ventilation, inadequate parks and playgrounds, migration to cities and ugly advertising signs.

After this conference, city planning would sweep the country, forever changing the nations housing landscape.

Cheneys education prepared him well for this burgeoning field. Graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 1905 with a degree in architecture and engineering, Cheney went on to Paris famous cole des Beaux-Arts where for three years he studied the main cities in France, Italy, Spain and England.

In 1910, Cheney returned to the United States and worked for several years as an architect, before turning his full attention to city planning in California.

Cheney created the first statewide city planning conference in California in 1914. One year later, he was instrumental in persuading the California Legislature to pass the first city planning measure. The City Planning Law of 1915 provided for the creation of city planning commissions in all incorporated cities and towns.

Not long after, Cheney drafted a state zoning enabling act that gave unincorporated areas the right to create zones or districts. Adopted in 1917, the California State Zoning Act, was the start of designated districts for industry, business, and residential areas.

Cheney also played a major role in writing the California Planning Act of 1927, which authorized cities, counties and regions to establish master plans and appoint planning commissions. He was key to getting the language improvement and control of architecture inserted into the act, noting that it was through architectural control that harmonious development and attractiveness in a city could be achieved.

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Charles H. Cheney: The first city planner of PVE