The key to urban redevelopment is creating small units of public housing throughout a city, Richard Lee, mayor of New Haven, said last night.

Lee, who is credited with the most successful urban redevelopment program in the country, urged an end to clustered public housing which "Just replaces the old ghetto with a new sanitary one."

Lee told an audience in Burr B that although decentralized units of public housing are harder to maintain, the Department of Housing and Urban Development now considers them an effective means of integrating as well as preventing the deterioration of neighborhoods.

Major Role

Planners and architects played the major role in the New Haven redevelopment program, Lee said. However, he noted that the planners' work is severely handicapped unless the political administration understands the city's problems and their efforts to solve them.

As for his own role in redevelopment, Lee said that "the mayor educates and inspires the architect." He called New Haven a "gallery of great architecture."

Longest Mayor

Lee attributed his success in obtaining federal funds to the "continuity of his program." He has been mayor of New Haven 14 years, which, he said, is a longer term than that of any mayor in office today.

Lee was first elected 1952, and in his own words "renewed and rebuilt" the city of New Haven. Much of the worst slums of New Haven, near the waterfront, were razed early in Lee's tenure. He is about to begin renewal of the Hill neighborhood, but is opposed by citizen's associations made up of Negroes and Puerto Ricans in the area.

Lee spoke to a crowd of about 50 students, most from the School of Design.