In 1916 he began a collaboration with the German planner and critic Werner Hegemann and in 1922 they published a seminal work of city planning, "The American Vitruvius: An Architect's Handbook of Civic Art".
After Hegemann returned to Europe in 1921, Peets practiced on his own for the next decade, continuing to write about topics ranging from Baroque cities to tree care.
[3] During the Great Depression, Peets joined the U.S. Farm Resettlement Administration (1935–38) and served as chief of the site planning section for the U.S. Housing Authority until 1944.
His planning projects include several with Hegemann, among them the new towns of Kohler, Washington Highlands Historic District in Wauwatosa, and Lake Forest, Wisconsin; Wyomissing Park, Pennsylvania; Park Forest, Illinois; Bannockburn, Maryland; and Greendale, Wisconsin, one of three greenbelt cities developed by the Resettlement Administration in the 1930s.
Peets designed Greendale around a central green space that terminated in a town hall based on the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia.