The next fifty years; Prologue to the Future

Frequently we hear people discussing the filth of the slums the blight created in the slums by the inhabitants there up. I claim. That the fact cats who have created the blight of Appalachian are in the blight of many other parts of our country are equally to blame for Morse and that they should be held responsible to how those 50000 people here hundred thousand people there half a million somewhere else. It is a matter of great public concert and cannot be left to any one individual or corporation or any group. And I urged that this matter be considered as an important part in the design of the new American dream. The old American dream is dead. We no longer have free

land free water and free air which we can use in any way in which we want. The new American dream must be built on the plans and the programs developed by the scientific humanist who is thinking in terms of the future as it can be and as it should be and not the past as it has been and cannot and must not be continued speaking on urban planning needs during the next 50 years. That was Dr. Carle Feis Pioneer's city planner. No less statue but in a different discipline. Is Robert C. wood undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development. Dr. Wood is a former associate director for the state of Florida's legislative reference service and has served as an assistant government professor at both Harvard and

MIT. To continue our discussion on American future needs Dr Robert C. wood. I for one approach this topic in the assumption that it still has relevance. There is a role for public and governmental action. The public planning public administration public action essential ingredient in the process of good city building and taken together with the vital and increasing private action properly employed and brought up to date their potential is considerable. So today I want in my summary remarks simply to put. Two propositions before this audience. First there is some basis for reasoned optimism and confidence as we face the generation of city building that has been the theme of this conference. And secondly the one of the key determinants along with investment and

along with public support is the self-discipline and the new capacity that those of us who profess to be professionals in this game come to apply to our new assignments into our new pass. And the degree to which we follow Max Weber's instructions and in vocation of the ethical responsibility and the capacity for professionalism may indeed be the basic determination of how much and how quickly we accomplish. Let me first take up the proposition of the basis for some confidence as we begin the process of the next generation. I am aware of the fact that it is fashionable today to speak of urban America in terms of a laundry list of problems ranging from violence and social disorganization to apathy and alienation. I am aware that a series of crushing commentaries can be made

in terms of the ascetics and the economic functioning of the American city. But I believe there is another side of the coin. And some of the hopeful signs include the fact that we have first of all begun to think in terms of cities as a whole. As cough eyes indicated distinguished from housing from health and other city related problems that we have gone beyond the process of physical development. You know something about the human condition of people living in a large American urban communities. And that we have begun the process of building up the capabilities to execute as well as to design the city. Let me paint make it perfectly clear that I join John Birchers in his conviction that the job ahead in city buildings will take money and investment. But I would observe that the first step along that long road of an adequate level of investment is a full funding of the present appropriations

that are before the Congress and that are not exactly sailing through on an overwhelming tide of consensus. And I must say that I do not share his view that the outcome of the investment in the American America is to be correlated with the other public investments at home and abroad. So but with that. Commitment of reason and optimism behind it I would play a second ingredient in components that we have building blocks and which are on which to move. And that is that we have begun one thousand sixty and sixty one in 65 and 66 to put together some of the components that hopefully comprise what the president has termed a national urban strategy. And four of its points I think are of special relevance to this audience. The

first is a 1966 model cities program that proposes to make livable again entire neighborhoods in our older cities and to reclaim the opportunity for residential urban life. Simply put it is one way to proceed along the Avenue of the John Birch it outlined to try for critical experiments of critical masses. To be prepared to accept failure and mistakes of significant size and to as that innovation the total comprehensive planning that development be done at the local will and at the local initiative. And then to respond on that basis with the four way of federal Wades with a supplemental grant that makes a beginning of a block grant. And I think other prescriptions along with coffee

ice was was directing his attention. It is a program of which our hundred and ninety three cities have made their commitments and which we will be responding as soon as we can appropriately and responsibly determine the order of magnitude in which our program will be funded. But it does I think represent a new effort. To move in changing the entire environment of large neighborhoods up to 10 percent of the area's cities. And these I believe will challenge the imagination and the talent and the nohow and the energy of all of us in the business today. Alongside with model cities of the two other. Program elements of the present posture of the administration. One is the Metropolitan incentive development of title two of the 66 act. And

this still to be funded. But still to move beyond the range of Metropolitan Planning the Metropolitan action to respond to those communities who again had local initiatives and again local Arbet has joined together 10 basic regional wide plans investment programmes and we respond to supplement only with supplemental assistance of dissent. And finally Title 10 of the new legislation gives us for the first time what call is rightly called on a beginning of a new community programmes but makes it possible for new ways to be established by which private enterprise can go forward with the new technology and with new architecture and with new configurations of populations. These principle programs model cities metropolitan development and its new communities join with the rising set of efforts to deal with

the chronic and persistent problem of low cost housing in the American community. And so rent supplements and turn keys and a whole host of other programs now move to strike that persistent problem. The American scene. But they do I think give us some reason for believing that we need not start from scratch. And they do I believe provide a simple basic philosophy to give options for urban living to allow better choices and more freedom for urban residents as to where they want to live to work. Finally leisure and hands to no freedom. I design off the drawing board enact the new legislation some funds available more on the way have special implications for the urban professionals. And this takes me to my second proposition of the afternoon that we are now challenge as much by the conditions and

opportunities in terms of examining our own capabilities the adequacy of our concepts management philosophy our skills and our adequacy of numbers as we are in any other area. And here they need to match action with legislation is I think the overwhelming priority. We have learned enough in the last 20 months how much or just when I think kids are required. When we came into office and metropolitan development the average length of time for our locality to have a response. How many of the programs on the Charlie Hart metropolitan development guy was 18 months. By system of priorities that are now under way we can at least give a yes and no answer even if asked to be No. In five months and shortly that will be three. We have had an urban renewal. The opportunity to shift to a

position where we now have enunciated and applied national goals that speak to the priorities of providing low cost housing jobs for the poor. And a special assistance to area is our intention as the first pass in the renewal process and this is a far cry from the past administration of these programs. Nine communities representing over 400 million dollars. Have found their reordering of their priorities since June the sacking when that program was underway. Public housing has found it possible and Majnun techniques to move from turnkey one where we began the experiment of moving private enterprise into the construction of a public housing to turn key to where we move to the process of inviting them in a participatory basis to deal with where the management to turn key three of

last week where we hold out the possibility for the first time of home ownership. Through the public housing process. And even the most absurd and oldest of our agencies the Federal Housing Administration has found an increasing drumbeat of innovation living in its regulations of June to begin to insure and weigh the economic value criteria for homes and pension and slum areas to its family counseling plan which last week in one office alone took over 900 inquiries to present the happy working relationship with the insurance industry and the disposition of at least part 1 billion farms. These are. Beginning at camps not of the innovative capacities of Hudson

set again but simply tempos of the pressures of the time. I what has to be done in management and administration. I think at all levels if we are to respond to the opportunities that were before us. And let me simply identify those that concern us all the need I think to begin to practice what we preach. When we say that social and fiscal planning have a can have a capability of being joined together the need to practice what we preach when we say that planning and operations have in some way to be joined together. The need to move forward in the expansion of recruitment and training. And here are the figures. As all of you are painfully aware of between supply and demand. Indicate the shortages ahead. I would only pause to suggest here that these are not novel in the experience of developing new programs in America.

The same kind of shortages faced oceanography at a time when it became a national program and we will find transitions in mid career new ways and new means to move all kinds and all sorts of people into the job and city building. Once we set our minds to it the need to go forward and really try to understand is John Birch it indicates the meaning of the computer and Systems Analysis not in its superficial sense not in the gadgetry but in trying to understand what a complex system is and how it can be shaped and guided. And here we hope that at heart we made some small beginning on that day in the Woods Hole conference of a year ago last year when we brought down the hard side and the source side together and the first African on that side. And finally of course I think it will be time to remind all of us of. What we have been telling each other for some years that we have somewhere to find our way into the

decision making process how to combine politics and planning to find mechanisms that go beyond organizations and they follow the flow from idea to execution. It is on this note that I think I would like most because so far in the 20 months in which I have been in office I have observed some revolutions and some responses in the urban scene and I've observed the day of reckoning coming to the American city. I have lived through the first urban committing to hold hearings in the Congress of the United States and then seen five other city committees rapidly followed suit. I have observed budget join with the budget joined with the other domestic Alliance budgets to go up two and a half times as rapidly as the total the total budget of this country. And I have seen more than 30 odd major pieces of legislation proposed concerted to get us along this way. But most of

all I've seen the beginning of fragile and still uncertain alliance that goes beyond the professional planet. The professional government employing the professional urban is. To brace the business community to embrace of the housewife in a whole series of groups that two or three or four years ago never thought much about the city and it seems to me that the preservation and the extension of that alliance of moving it from fragile Confederation into a strong Federation is one of the greatest challenges we have before us. For I observed and struck and struck again and again by how much energy Africa and commentary is devoted to critiques in detail among natural allies and how little seems to come in joining together in a common path this is I think the final determination of where the American city circa 2000 will be and whether or not the alliance is joining

in a powerful and then keeps itself with integrity to its commitments. The remarks of a veteran political scientist in both the scholarly and practical manner Robert C. wood under secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Another vantage point is expressed next by educator and author John E. Cohen Hoban professor of English at Barnard College and a member of the Royal Society of Arts in Great Britain. DR JOHN Cowen Hoban. One of the things that strikes me is that the conference seems to be concerning itself with an airboat future as if that in a city huge. Granite cities offer us a great many problems I've come back that I don't live in the city I don't wrong as the 50 years that Vance

drove us to think of ourselves stories fall apart. Selves because I've moved as New Yorkers seldom saw the city. We lived on the fringes of it commuted to work on the fringe of it and retreated again from it in the evening. And I don't think that if we think largely in terms of city planning that we're going to be dealing with the essential problem that is involved. I'm living now in Vermont and what appears to be a very charming and beautiful community a small village pretty look at beautifully situated lots of fresh air fresh water all of desirable things that the planners want to give all of us. They have a young man smashing windows in there just as they do in Ross.

And as senselessly perhaps more senselessly. What I'm concerned therefore to discover is in conceiving of planets can we. Sure the basic issue which is the right to do. Each goal was to make life meaningful it doesn't make it meaningful to have good water and a comfortable room to sleep then with lots of fresh air. Something else makes it meaningful which no amount of rebuilding our cities can provide and it is this that it seems to me it was mentioned a few times this morning but this tended to be slighted and perhaps by calling attention to it we can get people who are involved in planning to tell us more about what they're thinking along those lines. That's what I would like.

Reacting next on our program is a man whose reputation rests in the American home building industry. Indeed Leon in Weiner is president of the National Association of Home Builders and active urban renewal advocate. He has this to add. To begin with. We've typed in a delightful experience for layoffs. Is there a plan or a formal professional sense of the word. Nor are frankly up quite to the wonderful humor of our friends here in this panel. It's been my pleasure to be with since lunch. I wasn't sure whether Mr. fries was talking about this scientific you Minister humorist. In the course of this all the scientific humanist that he spoke about I believe those of us who are rather occupied with the problem of providing the environment in which our people live would claim a great great put a great claim upon that name whether we're a corporation or a

partnership for individuals. I think that the question of course that we're talking about here is. What will be the measure of our success and how will the future look back and see whether or not we have really accomplished what we're talking about because I think one of the things we forget in the course of this is that the final measure of success whether it be the programs that Dr. Wood outlined as being in the works or in our planning process are the results and the results measured in terms of people people for whom basically I think we're talking about from the very beginning and that we're trying to design environments transportation and all of the other things for people. Now I think that I certainly agree that the full emphasis upon the city structure itself will not answer our problem the exploding population of our nation cannot physically be housed in the core areas of

the city. I think that while the core areas of the city are critical to us the problem of opening up and expanding the horizons into the suburban areas of our country. Stop beating slobber beer and all the other things to death. Let's get down to work to make those suburbs fulfill the kind of functions that they need to if we're going to house the tremendous. Part of our nation that's going to live there the problems of restrictive zoning in the mechanical applications a planning concept the absolute acquiescence and surrender the civic associations I had to political pressures that have existed in many parts of our country these kinds of very specific kinds of things. And I know most of you have for many of us for I've great respect for the professional planners in our nation because they have fought frankly the hard fight and have a much harder want to head up. But I think that in terms of all of this kind of planning in this kind of thinking in a democratic society that it won't be just regionalism because in every region there are sub regions as

you pointed out Mr. bar chart. And we have found that within every sub region there are still other smaller ones. And as Mark Twain put it when he talked about our favorite animal the dog he said the dog has fleas on his back to bite him in the fleas have smaller fleas and so on for night. I think it's that kind of a thing that we have to begin to answer the needs of America during the next half century are viewed in still another manner by our next guest Victor Gru an architect and planner. Mr. Grew in his senior partner of our firm he began after coming to America from Austria in the late 1930s. He is a member of the White House commission for a more beautiful America. Victor grew up in. Which the Burchett everything is paper but I don't think you see the sentence which touched me deeply and which was plain ink has not to come only from suitably cations of the mind but are so from the beatings of say hot and interesting enough this

sentence would answer some of your questions Mr. Bryant. We're not denying the profit system enterprise system but if people find something which is created right between us we see it beating up people be like and what people we like said we did buy and been ordered to kill. Here just changed slightly of payment and speech was once spoken in this country. What's good for the people will be good for profit in connection be Scarface speech which I enjoyed tremendously. He has mentioned. Our achievements of PBA is the outstanding one of our past 50 years of training experience and yes our Since the beginning you mentioned your mother and I take you back Mr. Saltus body to deans in New

York Times about the last 50 years of development in Soviet Russia. Yes not to mention that such a connection between the two scenes because Mr. Sarge 30 years basically state said what the Russian as a chief is the last 50 years. He's a core election of any patient of city be a clean space. He was most sex to many to follow procedures which is a great calm bank Efron's of ecological human and technological progress was made in a procedure. I was naked from the step foot said See ACE optimist and I believe that the Beatles with such a blue ribbon group of experts as featured on this series the next 50 years.

It is easy to say our next guest is last but not least none of our guests during the next two weeks of this series or least in anything they undertake. Indeed they represent the most articulate and thoughtful manners of pursuit in the world. Such accolades also go to Grady clay. JOURNALIST Mr Clay specializes in the relationship between man and his environment. Grady clay comments in a lighter vein. Whatever. But it wasn't somebody just thought all reasons right. So I challenge can best be expressed in a moment of dark a dark room. It goes like this and Madison take it well and super cerebral. We bring all our forces to know our speed when maybe glacier techniques in the face of good intentions we find

aspire for all of this by the right. Free translation of an old British set of dog all that really directed at journalists. You see where the word journalist should go. You cannot hope to bribe God question. Jack the news jackleg urbanist but seeing what he would do on bribery. There's really no occasion to write was a contribution from the journalist Grady clay and concludes this third program in our 13 week series exploring America's needs during the next 50 years. Next week a future filled with Change Program number for our guest will be physicist Herman con Professor Emanuel Meschini. Like your work call ogles be I'm student Claude Brown. This is Bill Greenwood public affairs director of national educational radio reporting from

Washington. Those has been another program in the end of your series the next 15 years expressing a variety of opinions on the future of the democratic environment. These moves were given at the thing if you're going to run for the American Institute of planners held in Washington in October of last year. As well as for lose my mind how it will bring you more than just right and I mean who am you as I am American University Radio in Washington D.C.. This is any are the national educational radio network.