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Rouse on the August 24, 1981 cover of TIME.

James Wilson Rouse (April 26, 1914 - April 9, 1996) was a pioneering American real estate developer, civic activist, and later, free enterprise-based philanthropist.

He was born in Easton, Maryland. He attended college and law school during the Great Depression; after graduating in 1937 he worked for the Federal Housing Administration and in 1939 he was a partner at a mortgage banking firm called the "Moss-Rouse Company", which would eventually become the Rouse Company.

After World War II he became involved in Baltimore, Maryland's efforts to rehabilitate its slums. This led to his participation in Dwight D. Eisenhower's National Housing Task Force starting in 1953. He introduced (or at least helped popularize) the term "urban renewal" to describe the series of recommendations made by that task force.

In 1958, Rouse built Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie, Maryland, the first enclosed shopping center east of the Mississippi River. His company coined the term "mall" to describe the development, which was an alternative to the more typical strip malls usually built in the suburbs. Although in retrospect, many attribute the rise of the shopping mall as a major contributor to the decline of the city downtown core, Rouse's focus at the time was on the introduction of malls as a form of town center for the suburbs.

In the 1960s Rouse turned his focus on planned communities; his crowning achievement during that decade was Columbia, Maryland.

Statues of James W. Rouse (right) and his brother, Willard, in Columbia, Maryland by artist William F. Duffy. Willard RouseIII, Willard's son (James's nephew), was another notable real estate developer. Photo taken by Jeff Kubina.

Starting in the mid-1970s and continuing into the 1980s he shifted focus to what he ended up calling the "festival marketplace"; of which the Faneuil Hall Marketplace was the first and most successful example. Completed in 1976, the Faneuil Hall Marketplace ( comprising Quincy Market and other spaces adjacent to Boston's Faneuil Hall) was designed by architect Benjamin C. Thompson, and was a financial success, an act of historic preservation, and an anchor for urban revitalization. However, at its inception, it was considered a highly risky venture, and many critics felt it was doomed to fail. Rouse's innovative business vision looked obvious in retrospect, but it was a bold contrarian move with few friends at the outset.

Other examples of Rouse Company developments include South Street Seaport in New York City, Market East in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Harborplace in Baltimore, Maryland, Waterside in Norfolk, Virginia, St. Louis Union Station in St. Louis, Missouri, Downtown Portland's Pioneer Place [1], and the Riverwalk of New Orleans. This focus led TIME magazine to call him "the man who made cities fun again."

After forty years at the Rouse Company, he retired in 1979. Soon afterwards, he and his wife founded the Enterprise Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation funded in part by a for-profit subsidiary, The Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., and focused on seeding partnerships with community developers that address the need for affordable housing and associated social services for poor neighborhoods.

Through his daughter Robin, he is the grandfather of actor Edward Norton.

The Rouse Theatre in Wilde Lake High School is named after James. In May 2006, an approximately four-mile stretch of Maryland Route 175 between Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 29 in Columbia, Maryland, was named after Rouse and his wife, Patty.

He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995.

• Remembering James Rouse from the website of The NewsHour
• Spring 1988 cover story on Rouse from Blueprints magazine
• Wye Island by Boyd Gibbons is a book about a development that James Rouse planned but which was never built in the Chesapeake Bay. The first half of the book covers Rouse - both professionally and personally. Wye Island is an informative, compelling book for activists, economists, sociologists, and general readers.
• Better Places, Better Lives: A Biography of James Rouse by Joshua Olsen is the authoritative biography of James Rouse. National Public Radio interviewed the author about the book.

Merchant of Illusion: James Rouse, America's Salesman of the Businessman's Utopia is a more critical treatment of Rouse's life that has been widely praised in academic reviews.