Who was Holly Whyte? Richard K. Rein’s excellent 2022 biography, American Urbanist: How William H. Whyte’s Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life, attempts to list his many personae: “magazine editor, author, urbanist, urban anthropologist, filmmaker, pundit, public intellectual, politician (unelected and behind the scenes), consultant, teacher, mentor (to, seemingly, hundreds), as well as husband and father.” Born in 1917, he served in the Second World War at Guadalcanal.