Moment of Silence"?uGrady Clay, 96
(Nov. 5, 1916 – March 17, 2013)

Executive Editor, ASLA's Landscape Architecture Magazine
(1960 to Jan. 1984)

Grady Clay, MA, Hon. ASLA

Grady Clay, 96, a journalist and a leading national authority on urban design who wrote for The Courier-Journal and became the executive editor of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) , passed away Sunday, March 17, 2013 after developing a blood clot.

Architect Steve Wiser, a board member of the Central Kentucky Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, told the Courier-Journal that Clay was "one of the nation's leading urban design thinkers," a man who set "a high standard for quality design and for making Louisville a better place in which to live."

Clay was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He received his undergraduate degree from Emory University (1938) and his master's degree in journalism from Columbia University (1939).

In the summer of 1942 he jointed the U.S. Army, serving in the 786 Tank Battalion in Europe. "In retrospect," he writes, "they [the tanks] were nothing but mobile coffins, because even the front armor of those light tanks were an inch and a quarter, which might turn a 50-caliber bullet, but certainly not an explosive shell." He achieved the rank of captain and received the Purple Heart.

He was then recommended for overseas duty with Yank, the Army weekly, or as he commented, ""?(R)?transferring me from tank to Yank." He was the assistant officer-in-charge of the European edition of YankYank. For more go to https://oldhamcountyhistoricalsociety.org/blog/archives/156.

He worked for a time at the Urban Journalism Center at Northwestern University, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1947, and a research associate to the joint Center for Urban Studies sponsored by Harvard and MIT.

Clay was The Courier-Journal's real estate and urban affairs editor until 1966. It's said Clay coined the phrase "New Urbanism" in an article in Horizon magazine in 1959, and was a long proponent of the development of walkable, mixed-use communities. As early as the 1950s he warned about the impact of the expanding interstate highways system for cities across the country, and helped write standards for sensible urban planning. He served as president of the American Planning Association.

He began as an associate editor for Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) in 1957, and ultimately became its executive editor. During his LAM years the publication went from a quarterly to six times a year, and spun off Garden Design as a separate magazine in 1982. https://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2013/03/18/grady-clay-the-agitator

"Grady drove the magazine in a radical new direction with great bravura and humor. The times demanded it, given an exploding population, rampant development and rising environmental concern," said Bradford McKee, the current editor-in-chief of LAM. "He was also among the first to support the New Urbanist movement as seen in his landmark July 1959 article for Horizon, "Metropolis Regained'. His visionary approach still influences our thinking on urban planning today."

ASLA honored Clay with the Olmstead Medal (1999), named him an Honorary Member (2006) and awarded him the Bradford Williams Medal (2006). Clay was among the panelist who chose Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

He was the author of Close Up: How To Read the American City, Right Before Your Eyes: Penetrating the Urban Environment; Real Places: An Unconventional Guide to America's Generic Landscape; and Alleys: A Hidden Resource. His commentaries were featured regularly on WFPL radio for years, with many of them incorporated in his book Crossing the American Grain.

The "Grady Clay Papers" (1937-1999) are on file at the University of Louisville.

Clay's collection of correspondence, off-prints, research files and other material related to Landscape Architecture Quarterly and Landscape Architecture and to professional associations and activities in the fields of design, landscape architecture and environmental studies are archived at Loeb Library at Harvard.

Clay is survived by his wife, architect and planner Judith McCandless, and sons, Grady Clay of Denver, Ted Clay of Ashland, Ore., and Peter Clay of Cortez, Colo.