Margarita Piel McCoy: A Trailblazing 50 Year Career in the Planning Industry

The Margarita Piel McCoy Collection documents the career and accomplishments of Margarita Piel McCoy, the first female to chair a city planning department in the United States, and the first female professor of urban and regional planning. Materials in this collection showcase McCoy’s trailblazing 50-year career and her efforts in creating and encouraging professional opportunities for women and minorities in the planning industry. The collection is now open for research in Special Collections & Archives.

Margarita Piel McCoy was born in New York City on May 25th, 1923 to Margarita Schiele and Rudolf Alfred Piel. Her parents were both from families that worked in the brewing industry. She married Alfred McCoy in 1941 and worked as a Sunday school teacher and stay-at-home spouse until she began her 50-year career in the planning industry. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English at Boston University in 1944, and was elected a member of the Planning Board in Sudbury, Massachusetts in 1959. After following her husband to army bases and assignments across the United States, an abrupt divorce left McCoy alone in Los Angeles, in debt, and unemployed. McCoy audited night classes to gain the necessary skills required for the coursework of a planning education. She then earned her master's degree in 1970 from the University of Southern California. She deferred her admission into USC’s doctoral program in 1975 to accept a position as professor in the Department of Urban Planning at California Polytechnic State University, Pomona—a brand new program at the time. McCoy worked fifteen years as professor and seven years as department chair.

McCoy was keen on creating a more equitable and diverse community of students and professional planners. She modeled this by being the first female professor of urban and regional planning, and the first female chair of a planning department in the United States. She served as a director (1979-82) of the American Planning Association (APA) and founded its Planning and Women Division. As a member of the Planning Accreditation Board and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), she inspected many United States planning schools and advocated for affirmative action plans to create more opportunities for the advancement of minorities in the planning industry. By the time she retired from Cal Poly Pomona, three of the eight professors in her department were women. The collection documents these accomplishments through professional correspondence, conference notes, and presentations on multiple planning subjects.

After retiring from academia in 1989, McCoy dedicated another ten years of her life to private practice, advising on development plans focused on balancing growth, preservation, and protection from natural hazards. After retiring from private practice, she served nine years on her local planning commission at the City of La Habra Heights, held over three hundred hearings, and won widespread public support for more control on growth. Margarita Piel McCoy received several awards throughout her planning career. In 2005 she received the Contribution to Women Award from the American Planning Association. In 2006, she received the American Planning Association National Women Planning Award, and in 2008 she received the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy Alumni Guardian Award. In 2018, McCoy was nominated for the American Planning Association National Planning Excellence Planning Pioneers Award .

McCoy passed away on March 31, 2016 at the age of 92. Her trailblazing career in the planning industry has inspired the excellence of future generations of female students and minorities in the planning industry.

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