OLIVER GILLHAM

Oliver Gillham, urban planner; at 59 An early influence for Mr. Gillham’s career choice was his great-uncle, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he saw regularly while growing up in New York’s Greenwich Village. By Bryan Marquard Globe Staff / June 1, 2008 To help explain urban sprawl and smart growth – two terms he thought needed to be more sharply defined – Oliver Gillham took a soothing, long view and a bracing close-up look. more stories like this”From the air, the distinctions between residential, commercial, and industrial areas are easily understood while town, county, and state boundaries go unseen,” he wrote in the introduction to his book “The Limitless City,” published in 2002. “Once on the ground, things can look very different. Here, one can become lost in a world of seeming sameness, where streets, stores, and houses make up places that could be anywhere in the United States – in Houston, Atlanta, San Jose, or somewhere outside of Boston or Washington. Each place can seem a limitless city – a suburban continent stretching beyond the horizon.” Nearly as limitless was Mr. Gillham’s range as an architect and urban planner. From the Harvard Square MBTA Station to new towns in India, from the Big Dig to Birmingham, Ala., he had a hand in projects that were as varied aesthetically as they were distant geographically. Mr. Gillham, whose wife died eight months ago, took his life in Newton on May 12. He was 59 and had moved to Newtonville about two years ago so his wife could be closer to medical care. The Gillhams previously lived in Richmond and Cambridge. “He would go into a city like Norwalk, Conn., or New Bedford that was kind of not in great shape,” said Candy Gander, a friend who ran the firm Gillham & Gander with Mr. Gillham for 10 years. “One of the first things he did was to obtain aerial photos of the city, so he’d sort of hover over it on a grand scale. Then he’d make these sli