Obituaries : Julian H. Levi; Led Interracial Urban Planning in Chicago

Julian H. Levi, 87, an educator and lawyer who guided interracial urban planning in Chicago. A native of Chicago who earned his degrees and later taught at the University of Chicago, Levi spent his later years teaching law at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law in San Francisco. At Hastings, he proudly joined the Sixty-Five Club, made up of retired lawyers teaching there. In Chicago, he practiced law privately for 15 years and then became president of Reynolds Printasign company. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was credited with saving the Hyde Park area surrounding the University of Chicago campus, where he held appointments as professor of urban affairs and assistant to the chancellor. As executive director of the South East Chicago Commission, he led planning and implementation of urban renewal in Hyde Park, which provided a community where whites and African Americans lived side by side. He also helped draft federal and local housing laws that funded the development, which today is considered the nation’s most successful urban renewal project. In 1974, Mayor Richard J. Daley appointed him to the Chicago Planning Commission. On Wednesday in San Francisco.