Langley Keyes, professor emeritus and champion of affordable housing, dies at 86
Langley Keyes, professor emeritus of urban planning and former head of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), passed away on Tuesday, February 25. He was 86.
Keyes studied at Harvard University for his undergraduate education, earning a bachelor of the arts in History, Magna Cum Laude, in 1960. Upon graduation, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, traveling to Oxford University where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics from 1960 to 1962. Returning from Oxford, Keyes continued his studies, completing a doctorate in city planning in 1967, joining the MIT faculty shortly thereafter. “While I was a senior during my undergraduate education I was considering where I would study urban planning. I was given a list very similar to what I would recommend to students now: MIT, Harvard, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Penn. When I visited MIT in 1967, the ink on Lang’s diploma must still have been drying and he was already a member of the faculty. Meeting with Lang demonstrated the type of planner who went beyond drawing on a map with colored pencils, you could hear his passion and connection with practice and the communities he worked with and on behalf of,” said Phillip Clay, Professor Emeritus of Housing Policy and City Planning and the former chancellor of MIT. “After my visit to MIT, in no small part due to my interactions with Lang, I knew MIT was the place for me. Lang championed the idea that folks in the academy needed to get out and meet people – and test their theories with those people before they could even think about writing and teaching about those ideas. That ethos continues to live on both in the department and within the wider MIT community.”
Connecting Theory and Practice
Emblematic of Keyes seamless transition between practice and academia was his role as leader of the housing focus area of the Boston Model Cities Program. Started in 1966 under President Lyndon Johnson, the Model Cities Program sought to develop new methods to reduce urban poverty, reimagine municipal governance, and provide social and physical renewal to cities in the US. By combining public and private resources the Model Cities Program aimed to center community engagement and input in the deployment of housing and community development experimental projects.“Lang’s work for the Model Cities Program was informed by his commitment to listen to different segments of a community when engaging with thorny public policy issues. He recognized that a community is not a monolithic entity; it is composed of many distinct and varied voices, all with different opinions that need to be heard to successfully design and implement interventions,” said Rachel Bratt (PhD ’76), one of Lang’s early doctoral students and Professor Emerita and former chair of the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.“ Coming on the heels of the early Urban Renewal program of the 1960s, and the destruction of what was thought of as a “slum area,” the West End of Boston became the counterpoint for future urban development initiatives. Lang and other early observers were committed to making sure that community voices, particularly those of the most vulnerable and poor residents, which had had little input in the earlier programs, would never again be absent in the planning process.”
In 1971 Keyes authored The Rehabilitation Planning Game: A Study in the Diversity of Neighborhood (MIT Press), an influential book presenting three case studies of urban renewal in the Boston area, which demonstrated the agency available to communities at the margins during the urban planning process. Keyes’ work challenged the conventional thought that communities were the subject of the planning process and recast communities and neighborhoods as agents of change; able to resist, negotiate, and shape the outcome of city planning and development processes. Together with fellow DUSP faculty colleagues such as Mel King, Lloyd Rodwin, Bernard Frieden, Phillip Clay, and Lawrence Vale, Keyes’ scholarly and professional work on the relationship between planning, communities, and housing - particularly stable and affordable housing - helped to shape the intellectual focus of the department and the field of urban planning. “Lang’s legacy is especially meaningful at this time when we face so much outside pressure to reshape and repurpose the goals of government, academia, and public service. Lang was one of the very first PhD graduates of DUSP and his professional views were shaped by the problems of displacement and loss of community resulting from ‘urban renewal’ efforts in the 1950s,” wrote Joseph Ferreira, Professor (Post-tenure) of Urban Information Systems at MIT, in a remembrance. “Lang was a key moral compass to the leadership of the department. He was always open to new ideas and methods for framing and analyzing urban planning challenges, but he kept his eye on the ball regarding understanding who benefited from proposed changes, and examining whether they strengthened communities and built social capital. He was a wonderful colleague and an inspiration to many at MIT.”
Keyes also co-edited The Counterfeit Ark: Crisis Relocation for Nuclear War (Ballinger, 1984) with Jennifer Leaning, a volume which examined the US Federal Emergency Management Agency’s plan to mitigate the fallout of a possible nuclear war during the Cold War by relocating individuals living in areas at high risk of direct thermal and blast effects and sheltering them in low-risk rural areas. The contributors examined the underlying assumptions of these civil defense efforts in crisis relocation planning and argued the plans offered a false sense of security because the plans could not achieve the intended goal of saving 80% of the American population after a 6,600-megaton nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.
In 1992 Keyes published Strategies and Saints: Fighting Drugs in Subsidized Housing (Urban Institute Press), which examined efforts to confront drug crime in subsidized, urban housing developments through strengthening the social bonds of impacted communities. Utilizing seven case studies across three cities, Keyes offered a detailed analysis of the policies and circumstances which contributed to challenges for healthy and safe public housing as well as the strategies that residents and members of impacted communities deployed to empower their communities in the efforts to reclaim their homes.
In service of the MIT community
Keyes served as department head for DUSP from 1974-1978, leading the department through a period of financial difficulties while nurturing twenty junior, tenure-track faculty and balancing increased interest from city governments, media outlets, and prospective students. “When I joined the DUSP faculty 35+ years ago, Lang was at the heart of the place in every sense,” wrote Lawrence Vale, Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, in a remembrance of Keyes. “In 2002, a full 24 years after he stepped down from the role of department head – he cheerfully took on the title of associate department head, when I became department head. He remained a source of both wisdom and community-building throughout the remainder of his career.” During his time on the MIT faculty, Keyes was named a Ford Professor. The Ford Professorships are awarded to tenured faculty to recognize their outstanding contributions as leaders and innovators in their field. His scholarship wove together practice, theory, research, and teaching: often occurring in real time as he and students engaged in events shaping the Greater Boston region. One such project, the creation of the Madison Park Development Corporation in Lower Roxbury, recognized and sought to empower the knowledge of community members who did not hold formal degrees. Lang and Phillip Clay leveraged Oscar Newman’s 1972 Defensible Space, the use of design to prevent crime and help reclaim urban spaces, to provide intellectual rigor to local knowledge, helping the community advocate for design elements which continue to enhance resident’s lives. “An absolute legend has left us. Lang was a towering giant in the fields of community development, housing and resident-centered planning. The profound impact of his work continues to be felt around the country and particularly in Massachusetts where his vision for community economic development laid the cornerstone for a multigenerational movement that continues to bear fruit. His understanding of planning for people, planning with heart and planning as a form of restorative justice recentered a field all but captured by developers,” wrote Karilyn Crockett, Assistant Professor of Urban History, Public Policy & Planning. “Talking to Lang was both sobering and uplifting and somehow left you feeling more focused, ready, capable. My last conversation with Lang included his forever co-conspirator, Tunney Lee. I don’t remember everything we talked about, but I do remember the riotous laughter between Lang and Tunney as they recalled the many meetings, projects and bureaucrats they had survived, sometimes barely. In that moment, Lang’s wisdom, generosity and warmth were on full display and DUSP felt like a glowing north star. May his life continue to guide and inspire us all.”
“I was lucky to have had Lang as my advisor; he was always there to provide guidance and support, while also challenging my ideas and assumptions. After I received tenure at Tufts, Lang and I started to collaborate as true colleagues, critiquing each other's work and bouncing ideas off one another. I recall how stimulating it was to work with Lang on projects related to the management of nonprofit-owned housing and on studies of the resident services programs offered by these groups. Lang brought his care and passion to all his relationships – with students, faculty, friends, family, and professional colleagues. Virtually everyone working in the housing field in the Greater Boston area knew and respected Lang,” said Bratt. “He invested in, and nurtured those relationships and, as a result, he was a formidable actor in our community, and beyond — for many decades — always energetically advocating for decent, affordable housing for all.” In addition to his work at MIT, Keyes served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Government Land Bank; Special Assistant for Policy Development at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Communities and Development; the Director of the Housing Development for Boston Model Cities Program; and as Associate Director of the Greater Boston Community Development, Inc. “Lang has been an important figure in my life since I took a first-semester introductory course with him in 1980,” said MIT alumna and Chief Executive Officer of 2Life Communities, Amy Schectman (MCP ‘82). “After I finished my degree at MIT, both Lang and I worked with the Dukakis Administration in Boston, working closely and strategizing about how to advance key parts of the housing and economic development agenda while supporting each other as allies. When I returned to work at MIT, Lang quickly became my thought partner and sounding board. In the six years I worked at MIT, we had many interesting and even heated debates about so many topics—all relating to what we do to prepare our folks to make a difference in the world effectively. Even later in my career – at the Boston Housing Authority, the Town of Brookline, and with 2Life – Lang and I retained our regular conversations and the relationship of sounding boards for ideas, opportunities, and challenges we were facing. Throughout that relationship I was able to see how much he cared about students he taught - often coming to visit them at their workplaces via his bicycle - and how much they benefited through his knowledge and tutelage. He will be greatly missed.”
Keyes was predeceased by his older brother Eben Wight Keyes. He is survived by his loving family: his wife Nancy Gray Keyes; his sons Cameron and Justin; daughters-in-law Kris and Maura; and granddaughters Tegan, Tess and Grace, to whom he was known as Papoo.
A service honoring Keyes’ impact at DUSP, MIT, and in Greater Boston will be held at the MIT Chapel on June 23rd at 2pm. Gifts honoring Keyes’ memory may be given to MetroHousing Boston, the DUSP Fund for Excellence in Public Service, or 2Life Communities.