Immigration and Early Practice: 1921–1929

Uncomfortable with the Communist regime in Hungary following the First World War, at the invitation of a relative, he immigrated to the United States. Segoe quickly found employment with a consulting group, the Technical Advisory Corporation (TAC), which had only recently entered the area of planning consultation. It was as an employee of TAC that Segoe came to Cincinnati for the first time. His assignment was to direct the technical work on projects in Dayton and Cincinnati. This work yielded the Official City Plan of Cincinnati, Ohio (1925), the first comprehensive plan for a major city in the United States, as well as a similar plan for Dayton (1926). A Cincinnati Newspaper noted that, “…Segoe is a thorough student of economic, social, and industrial situations

and backgrounds. He is intelligent, broadly trained, and imaginative. He is in no sense just a physical planner.” After these projects, he already held outside contracts as an independent consultant. Working with the attorney Alfred Bettman, the chairman of Cincinnati’s planning commission, who was Segoe’s long term mentor, they developed the “Segoe-Bettman theory” of planning, which the American Institute of Certified Planners has cited as the theory of the comprehensive plan. While Bettman had a better sense of the political environment, Segoe had a better sense of planning as a process, so both individually and together, they made important contributions to the formulation of the Standard City Planning Enabling Act, published by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1928.