German-born U.S. city planner who founded in 1928 the Department of City Planning at the Bauhaus, Dessau.

An original and logical thinker, his first project for a new city was essentially two cities on top of one another, dwelling houses for workers being built above the offices and workshops. Later he developed a linear form of city with housing and industrial units related horizontally.

In 1938 Hilberseimer went to the United States as professor of city planning at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, and there demonstrated further the implications of the decentralization of cities with a plan for Chicago, and in regional planning studies showing the possibilities for integrating agriculture, industry, and transportation. His writings include The New City (1944); The New Regional Pattern (1949); and The Nature of Cities (1955).