Melvin L. Feldman, 91

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Melvin L. Feldman of Providence, adjunct professor of Urban Studies at Brown University from 1970 -1991, died June 10 at Epoch Assisted Living at Blackstone Boulevard. He was the husband of Paula Libby Feldman.

Born in New York City, a son of the late Philip and Ann (Friedman) Feldman and brother to the late Phyllis Shirley Feldman, he lived in Providence since 1956, except for one year in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1967. He previously lived in Norwich, Conn., where he had graduated from Norwich Free Academy in 1941.

During World War II, he served in the Army Medical Corps. A graduate in 1947 of Brown University, where he was named to Phi Beta Kappa and where he served as the first president of Hillel, he started his graduate work at the University of Chicago. After an interruption of his academic career in the early 1950s when he became the owner/manager of the family’s grocery and bakery supply firm in Norwich, he resumed his studies and received his graduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961.

During his professional practice in the field of urban planning, he served on the staff of the Providence Redevelopment Agency, later with the firm of MKGK (San Francisco, California) and then as principal of his own consulting firm, INSTITUTE-EDUCAP. In 1970 he participated in the development of Brown University’s urban studies program, where he taught for more than 20 years. Governor Sundlun appointed him chairman of the Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage and Finance Corporation in May 1991.

He was a charter member of the American Planning Association, a charter member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and a past president of the New England Chapter of the American Institute of Planners. He chaired the Mayor’s Oversight and Review Committee in Providence during the mid-1970s and for almost two decades served on the technical (planning) committee of the State of Rhode Island. In 1986, he served as a member of the Downtown Strategy Implementation Committee. In 1990, The Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston named him to the Advisory Committee of its Affordable Housing Program.

Besides his wife, he leaves twin daughters, Karen Sue Feldman of Providence and Linda Ruth Feldman and her husband Evan Kwerel of Annandale, Va., and his twin granddaughters Jessica Ann Kwerel and Laura Rose Kwerel, of Washington, D.C.