The new city architecture and urban

renewal

Author

Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

Date

1967

Publisher
[publisher not identified]

Exhibition URL

www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2593

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—

from our founding in 1929 to the present—is
available online. It includes exhibition catalogues,
primary documents, installation views, and an
index of participating artists.

MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art

 The New City:
Architectureand
Urban Renewal

--
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

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 THE MUSEUM
OF MODERN , u.
Received
 LIBRARY
THE MUSEUM
OF MODERN ART
This exhibition was made possible by the generous
support of the folloiving foundations and individuals:
The J. M. Kaplan Fund, Inc.
The New City: Received

Frances and John L. Loeb Foundation

van Ameringen Foundation
Architectureand
Mrs. W. Vincent Astor
Mrs. Douglas Auchincloss Urban Renewal

An exhibition at
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
January 23-March 13, 1967

Copyright © 1967 The Museum of Modern Art

Library of Congress Catalogue Number 67-28526
1

A Perspectiveon Planning
Sidney J. Frigand former deputy executive director of the new york city planning commission

Considering that cities have been in existence some In somewhat jarring contrast to this celluloid
eight or nine thousand years, urban planning is a reverie is the chromium image of New York that is
relatively new field of study. While individual aspects designed in Detroit. Typical of this are the ideas
of urban life have been under scrutiny by scholars explored at our World's Fairs, where we are told to
for centuries, the city as a totality had eluded us as expect a high-horsepowered Valhalla, with glass-cov
a subject for comprehensive analysis. ered bugs whizzing along 36-lane superhighways;
All is now changed, however. World-wide popula helicopters whirring overhead like flies over a trash
tion movement toward our urban centers is reaching can ; and moving ramps connecting structures shaped
avalanche proportions. It is estimated that by the like bagels, mushrooms and Cadillac fins. Omitted
year 2000, some 275 million Americans will be liv somehow in this great megalopolitan mish-mash of
ing in our cities. This roaring cascade of new people, the future is any indication of what in the world
new problems and the complications of old problems these buildings are for. Or, for that matter, what the
has swept upon the local scene a new crop of "urban city is for.
affairs experts" and, of course, their anti-beings, the I have been somewhat cruel in depicting these
urban affairs critics. images, not because there isn't some validity in many
The combined speculations of experts and critics of these yearnings, but because they have a delusory
have evolved a new art form. Learned tomes and quality that diverts us from the realities of the city
searing articles on our cities are being put out each today— and its real promises for tomorrow. I suspect
day. Most of them seem to have troubled titles. Words that our civic daydreams are a symptom of impend
like "death," "shame," and "necropolis" have be ing maturity. We are growing up as a city, and we
come ominous prefixes to the fair municipal name. are now being seized with the same sense of awe
And the city of New York, which is built on superla and terror that grips the adolescent who suddenly
tives, has become the standard for such critical self- realizes he has come of age and must take on the
scrutiny. responsibilities of manhood. As James Morris, an
The very size and grandeur of New York seem observant British journalist, noted in his recent book,
to have a hallucinogenic effect upon those who seek Cities: New York "is no longer the gauche nouvelle-
to project the city's future. There is enough of New riche of her lingering reputation. She has achieved a
York to kindle the fires of imagination in every mind civilization if not as mellow, at least as close-knit and
—and every mind runs its course of individual tastes, complete as the culture of the old European capi
prejudices and dreams. Which New York are we tals. . . . Power weighs heavily upon her shoulders
planning for? nowadays, and makes her a rather terrifying place."
Is it the glamorous, musical comedy city in which
all the women look like Doris Day and wear frilly The Bad Seed
aprons over imported Italian knits? Where everyone
lives in technicolored duplexes with antiseptic chil The city of New York was conceived as a specula
dren, precocious dogs, and dark-skinned servants tive real estate venture by the Dutch, who discovered
who are wise, warm and witty, but never seem to at an early date that their raggle-taggle offspring was
have families, friends or reasons for being? going to run her own life her way.
Others have suggested that a popular fantasy-ver It is amusing to note that the first master plan for
sion of Greenwich Village might be the prototype for the city was prepared on April 22, 1625 in Holland,
our City of Tomorrow. Here we find a city which, probably by the very same group of planners who
as Roger Starr once described it, "is like an old would produce the Great Plan of Amsterdam in 1640.
Grace Moore movie." This is the place with lovely This master plan for New Amsterdam was handed
old brownstones and happy-go-lucky landlords, an over to the Dutch West India Company for imple
cient tenements with joyous people all hanging mentation by an engineer with the improbable name
out of the windows singing to the passing truck driv of Cryn Fredericxsz. By the following year the plan
ers. It is the city where teenagers say "golly" and was abandoned. From that point on, planning has
"gee," where all decisions are made at little town been sitting in the back seat while the city careened
hall meetings, and where butchers, bookies and exis into its future.
tentialists all join hands and dance among the back The matter of land economics and the topography
alley garbage cans. of Manhattan island have also conspired against

2
planned urban development in New York. The slim and drive-ins compete for attention ; and, perhaps of
pencil-shaped island was first settled at the very tip. greatest concern, pedestrian rights to the use of the
Expansion could take place in only one direction— city are now considered secondary to those of the
"out of town." As a result, the demand for coveted auto. Yet, despite its voracious appetite for land,
center-city land sent prices soaring. By the time whether it is moving on highways or stored in expen
George Washington completed his second term of sive garages, the motor vehicle as we know it today is
office, lots at Broadway and Maiden Lane were selling an inefficient means of transportation in our city.
for $20 to $22 a square foot. At those prices redevel
opment became a more attractive venture than new A Matter of Magnitude
development in the hinterlands.
The aspect of economic return has dominated the Perhaps the most challenging of New York's char
building patterns of the city. Few structures were acteristics in terms of planning are its size, its scope
built that did not either represent a business venture and its density. As a city grows larger there appears
or a physical expression of wealth—as in the case of to be a geometric progression of complexity. New
the Fifth Avenue mansions and town houses which York is more than two Chicagos or four Philadel-
proliferated in the latter part of the 19th Century. phias. Statistical comparisons can be dangerous in
That so many of these elegant eclectic showplaces making plans and allocating resources. When, for
have been razed for new structures is indicative of example, the city decided to attempt an urban re
the ruthlessness of the market to satisfy its thirst for newal project near the Bowery, it had to consider
profit returns. Even the impregnable Vanderbilt first the problem of homeless men who traditionally
clan, which in its heyday housed its cousins and its have frequented the flophouses and the adjoining
sisters and its aunts in 60 town houses and mansions streets in this area. This is nothing new to other
throughout the city, has surrendered all but a few cities. But the fact that New York can attract some
to the Tishmans, the Urises and the latter-day land 17,000 homeless men—a city in itself—meant that an
barons. The city's push for front-office lebensraum entire bureaucracy had to be developed to deal with
has resulted in the postwar construction of some the problem.
75,000,000 square feet of posh new space, more than We call New York a city, but it is very much a
all the existing office space, old and new, in the 22 vast city-state— and a welfare state at that. In popu
next largest cities of the country combined! lation, it is larger than any of the Scandinavian
nations (whose cities, our critics tell us, are much
Space and Motion ahead of us in planning) and larger than 65 percent
of all the sovereign nations of the world. Its budget
This cannibalistic way of life is not the only fac ary expenditures each year are greater than India's
tor which complicates planning in New York. The or, for that matter, of 72 percent of all the countries
city's unique geographical setting plays a key role. on earth.
Consider the logistics involved in transporting the Bigness is not a naked phenomenon in the city.
2,225,000 workers into the nine-square-mile central We are concerned with the interrelationships among
business district of Manhattan which is accessible great numbers of people, places and things all in
only by river crossings. The highly concentrated busi close proximity. When combined, they produce a
ness core dictates that mass transit move 90 percent whole much greater than its many parts. The genius
of the rush-hour travelers into this area (a feat tanta of the city is the ferment created by these interactions,
mount to evacuating the entire state of Kansas each which make New York the pacesetter in ideas and
day). And in the same period, 600,000 autos, trucks tastes, the financial and commercial capital, the
and buses find their way in and out of the area south center for arts and culture and communication, and
of 60th Street. the spawning ground for new industries.
The city's unsuspecting accommodations to the
motor vehicle have resulted in serious civic conse People and Power
quences: carbon monoxide pollution has reached
alarming proportions; civic design has been domi The "muchness" of New York is exemplified by its
nated by a tangle of arterial spaghetti; public ways population mix. It is a city of minorities, any group
have become eyesores as billboards, service stations of which makes up a respectable city of its own. The

3
heterogeneity of New York is as much a part of its in its volatile Greenwich Village setting are classic
heritage as its laissez-faire development attitudes. examples of this dilemma. In each case the growth
Back in 1643, a Jesuit missionary who visited New needs of the university are being expressed by the
Amsterdam noted that "there were men of eighteen taking of more land—a problem which probably
different languages. . . requires a new look at the "urban campus" and its
The diversity of the city's population today is not community implications.
only measured in ethnic affiliation, but in ideology Economic pressure groups range in character from
as well. After years of sitting through public hear the powerful, wealthy and well-organized union
ings at City Hall, I can safely conclude that if there groups to titular and ineffectual local chambers of
is anybody anywhere against anything, he lives in commerce. Business is not well organized in New
New York. Citizen protest has become a well-mas York. Some few exceptions, such as the builders'
tered art. The organizational sophistication of New and real-estate groups or the Downtown Lower Man
Yorkers has found its way into every neighborhood, hattan Association, have had an active role in shap
every civic group and every special-purpose organi ing the destiny of the city.
zation. If the skills are missing, there are public- The difficulties of industrial and business organi
spirited Hessians available to do battle. zation in New York stem from the varieties of busi
Special community alliances on specific issues are nesses and their comparatively small size. New York
ad hoc, in most part, and defensive in nature. For is the largest manufacturing center in the world, but
long-term, programmatic community efforts we must it represents a sprawling mosaic of small industries,
turn to the so-called "do-good" organizations, whose most of which hire less than 30 employees. On the
pressures are as persistent, if not as heated, as their other hand, the unions are clearly visible to the public
single-issue-oriented counterparts. New York has any and can express their interest not so much in vote-
number of civic-minded organizations which have getting ability as in their power to strike and para
played a behind-the-scenes role in shaping the city's lyze all or part of the city. It has become one of the
future. Ironically, most of these groups have little paradoxes of New York that a good number of our
representational strength — often their active mem unions are looked upon as the right wing in our
bership roster is small and they must rely on powerful spectrum of pressure groups.
letterheads and a few wealthy or articulate spokes Perhaps the newest and most publicized source of
men to sustain their influence. pressure comes from the ghettoes of the city. The
At the other end of the civic spectrum are the "new voice"— strengthened by governmental pro
militant, taxpayer-type organizations whose concerns grams and a variety of self-help organizations— has
are focused usually upon a specific geographic area. made clear its desire to participate in the city's
These are conservatively bent groups which temper decision-making process. It is a voice crying out
the thrusts of the do-gooders. Often, the leadership against poverty, bad housing, vice, addiction, crime
of these groups will claim to represent 300,000 and all the outrages that society deals its poor. It is
Queens homeowners, or all of Brooklyn's taxpayers, a voice that will grow louder, not weaker, if we refuse
or every American Indian in New York. to answer.
Another element in the municipal pressure cooker Despite the array of pressures— and this is hardly
is the city's vast institutional complex. Approximately a complete listing— the city has no such thing as a
one third of all the city's developed properties are clearly defined "power structure." Whom do we talk
tax-exempt, a somewhat jarring statistic which points to in New York? Can we find the faceless syndicates
up the huge holdings of our non-profit institutions. that operate giant businesses or own the land in our
Despite their non-taxpaying status, these forces play city? It was interesting to note that part of the dowry
a powerful role in the city, since many of them (hos of Princess Irene of the Netherlands was an impres
pitals, universities, religious institutions) have a sive chunk of Downtown Manhattan real estate—
continuing appetite for physical expansion. another tribute to the long-range planning abilities
The clash between community interests and insti of the Dutch.
tutional interests often cannot be resolved to the It would appear that the best we can hope for in
mutual satisfaction of both. The friction between New York is control of a small percentage of the
Columbia University and its Morningside Heights outstanding stock in our city's future. Like some
neighbors and the problems of New York University major corporation, if we can consolidate even a frac-

4
tion of the stockholders, we can get something done. York finds hard to satisfy. A study by the Regional
Change is an eternal quality of New York. Since its Plan Association a few years ago showed that 90 per
inception the city has been buffeted by waves of new cent of the new plants constructed in the New York
people, new functions and new outlooks. It is in the Metropolitan region were located outside of the city.
nature of the change and in our ability to deal with As a result, we have experienced a loss of some
it that we begin to find new problems. 100,000 manufacturing jobs. Fortunately, the vitality
The ease with which populations can shift in our of the city is such that we have more than overcome
modern era was pointed up dramatically in the last this deficit with new jobs, mostly in the areas of gov
census enumerations, when we learned that two out of ernmental and general services.
every five persons over the age of five lived in a dif Though the city's job market continues to grow, the
ferent house in 1960 than in 1955. This mobility nature of these jobs is often mismatched with the
plays havoc with statistics and should prove a caution skills (or lack of them) of the resident labor force.
against allegiance to "facts. ' For example, the same The educational and training prospect is not bright-
1960 census showed a slight drop in New York's ended by the facts that one out of every ten adult New
population over 1950. What this "net ' figure does Yorkers is functionally illiterate, more than two mil
not tell us is that more than two million people moved lion adults never got as far as high school, and the
in and out of the city during these ten years. We saw likelihood that 30 percent of the young people in
a huge emigration of middle-income white families school today will be high school dropouts.
almost matched by swelling numbers of Negroes and The technological changes that have stirred our
Puerto Ricans resulting from immigration and natu national pride have had little effect in improving the
ral increases among these groups. In assessing the quality of urban life. We have developed the capa
impact of this movement upon the city, we must not bility to go to the moon but we don't know how to get
be snared in "statistical nets.' We do not feed, clothe, rid of our garbage. We have automated whole indus
hospitalize or transport "net people. It is the actual tries, hut we can't lick the problem of air pollution or
people at any given time living in New York who develop a safe, versatile, efficient and inexpensive
require city services. means of urban transportation. In short, we have not
There is another aspect of movement which is per yet developed the technology of the city.
haps more significant than physical flow of people— The most visible aspect of change in New York is
the struggle for "upward mobility." The polarity of in physical plant. While the city has continually dem
the large city finds affluence and poverty coexisting in onstrated remarkable regenerative powers, large por
such an order of magnitude as to sharpen the tensions tions of the older inner core show the ravages of time
among the "have-nots." The poor in New York may and neglect. The oldest and worst housing in the city
have statistically higher incomes than the poor in is occupied by those families least able to compete for
Appalachia, but the poverty gap is greater in the city. better housing in the open market— the growing num
While most of the newer immigrating families can be bers of the elderly, minority groups and large-sized
physically mobile, once enmeshed in the life of the low-income families. With more than a quarter of a
city they find they are both socially and economically million housing units in advancing stages of decay, it
paralyzed. is obvious that anything short of a massively aided
Today New York must find the means to aid one city-wide effort will be impotent. The matter is fur
out of every five households in the city to keep pace ther complicated by the fact that the city's aging
with our society's surging requirements for a decent industrial loft space, which is most in need of replace
living standard. The alternative is to accept the pros ment, too often is occupied by firms which supply
pect of an ever-increasing ghettoization of large seg jobs to the same lower-income segment.
ments of the population who, in turn, will be almost In the face of these tides of change, we must con
totally incapable of contributing to the growth and sider the increasingly frustrating role of municipal
betterment of society. government. The traditional corporate boundaries of
Changes in the nation's technology have had a pro our city have no rational relationship to the patterns
found effect upon our city. Automation has created a of urban growth. The city remains the focal point of
radical change in the job market. The nature of pro our modern society, but because of accidents of politi
duction has shifted from tall buildings to horizontal cal jurisdiction, it has less and less control over its
layouts, creating a demand for cheap land that New urban "overspill" into the surrounding region. The

5
outward movement of people and jobs from the urban In New York if we are to use the yardstick of physi
core has extended the city's sphere of influence, while cal change used in other areas, we too can make
sapping the source of its economic strength. Clearly claim to "good planning." The City's public housing,
there is need for greater home rule—a matter which aided housing and public improvement programs in
undoubtedly will be pressed at the forthcoming Con the past two decades are in many ways remarkable
stitutional Convention in Albany. At the same time, it achievements. We have built enough public housing
is equally clear that the manifestations of urban to shelter the entire population of San Francisco. We
change are beyond the ability of any municipality to have built more than 200 public schools in ten years,
handle alone. and we have built billions of dollars worth of other
The changing city is perhaps best typified by the public improvements within the same span of time.
public's attitude toward the urban environment. Once As Edward Logue noted in his recent report sub
the city was a place in which everyone marked time mitted to Mayor Lindsay, the achievements in New
until he could get out. It was a stopping-off place, a York would probably have solved the problems of
place to be used, and abused, a "nice place to visit but most other cities.
not to live." We saw generation after generation However, for better or for worse, in this city the
reared in the city, but with no proprietary interest in daily press, the public and our officials all look upon
its well-being. City Hall was a symbol of the faceless New York as they would the Augean stables. What
monarch who ran New York—it was never "our" remains to be done is our measure of achievement—
parks, "our" museums, or "our" schools; it belonged and that can be disheartening at times. Nevertheless,
to "the city." "looking ahead" is the official job of the City Plan
There is more than a spark of urban culture kin ning Commission.
dling now in New York. There is a recognition— or is The seven member Commission and its Depart
it resignation?— that the city is here to stay and that ment of City Planning— which is the City's technical
most of us are part of it. The New Yorker is no longer planning arm—are afforded broad powers under the
satisfied with subsistence living. He expects every City Charter in mapping, zoning, master-plan devel
thing from comprehensive health and welfare services opment, capital budgeting, and site and project ap
to happenings in the parks. He wants cultural and provals. As a review body, the Commission considers
artistic outlets, open space and green space, and he proposals in all the aforementioned areas. It holds
wants better design to tame the hostile urban environ public hearings and reports its findings to the Board
ment. And he has asked "the city" —overwhelmed as of Estimate for final action.
it is by the combined forces of change— to make this Planning is done at many levels in the City. The
new level of life possible. Commission is responsible for formulating the broad
planning policies from which specific projects
The Outlook for Tomorrow emerge. These projects may be proposed by any num
ber of public, quasi-public or private sponsors. As a
It has become apparent that planning, in its tradi case in point, the Commission in 1964 put forward a
tional sense, has not been terribly successful in the comprehensive plan for port development. On the
cities of this country— and especially in New York. basis of this guide, specific plans are now being for
Neither the garden cities of Ebenezer Howard's Eng mulated by the Port Authority for a superliner ter
land,- nor the planned development of the highly so minal on Manhattan's West Side; by the Department
cialized Scandinavian countries are easily adaptable of Marine and Aviation for container ship piers in
to the erratic social, political and economic climate of Brooklyn and Staten Island ; and by the Planning
America. Commission, itself, in the development of the Lower
In this country, planning has tended to become Manhattan waterfront.
synonymous with Federally aided renewal actions This approach departs from past efforts of the
and other demonstrations of physical housecleaning. Commission to develop "master plans" which inevi
Those cities which have been able to achieve signi tably proved to be too rigid or too circumscribed to
ficant physical changes are thus the products of guide future development adequately. Often these
"good planning," regardless of whether the changes plans dealt with only physical design considerations,
bear any relation to social problems, economic needs, rather than assessing the important trinity for sound
or many of the other human requisites which good planning: fiscal resources, land resources, and the en
planning must serve. ergies to achieve results.

6
 I
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J During the past few years, the City Planning Com for the improvement of the city. This will call for
mission has been working intensively, first to con- greater planning capabilities in the operational agen
l ceptualize a role for planning that would work in this cies and the proposed new city administrations, and
> city, next to develop a work program to fit this ap in the development of local areas. Thus we will
proach, and lastly to get the wheels turning to develop achieve an efflorescence of planning development
real products that could be translated into positive throughout the city, while at the same time strength
actions. Today the Commission staff is doing the ana- ening the central planning function.
! lytical work which will result in the first comprehen What kind of city will emerge from this approach?
sive plan for the city of New York. Chairman Donald A city in which people will be afforded maximum
I Elliott has underscored the commitment first made by opportunities to work, to learn and to enjoy the fruits
I former Chairman William F. R. Ballard that the plan of their labors under the best possible conditions. A
t will be ready by the end of 1967. city with adequate water and cleaner air.
Unlike the first master plan for New Amsterdam— We will see rational land development on the city's
and there has been little real progress in this field wasting waterfront areas and in the vacant land areas
»( r since—the comprehensive plan for New York will not of Staten Island.
attempt to lay out every structure and every roadway We can expect an integrated transportation net
in the city. Library shelves are crammed with musty work clearly related to the economic well-being of the
master plans that were technically sound, detailed to city. Innovative approaches to moving people in and
perfection, and out of date before they were com around the central business districts of Manhattan
pleted. Rather, we conceive of the comprehensive and other major business cores will be developed.
1 plan as a part of a continuing sophisticated work We will see planning for local areas carried out
process which can produce the information, analyti with full citizen participation— with knowledge that
cal capability and interrelated planning policies from resources are available to implement the plans.
which an overall strategy of city development can be We will see neighborhoods designed to meet local
U made. needs for health, recreational, cultural and educa
Perhaps the key word in the new planning ap tional facilities.
proach is "strategy." It is the ingredient that enables We will see the systematic improvement of our
a course of action to be launched which has a clear set housing so that every resident will enjoy a decent,
of objectives but which is adaptable to continuing safe home at a rent within his means.
changes, sensitive to political and economic realities, We will see planning for economic development
and to shifts in taste, demand and need. In this con that is related to planning for the training of our
text the comprehensive plan is a set of broadly based labor force.
planning policies which would represent the current We will discover new techniques, new forms, new
official expression of overall development strategy. It cityscapes to make for an exhilarating, handsome and
will be based on the vast fund of information gath wholesome urban environment.
ered by the staff and closely coordinated with the on It is a measure of consolation that this new ap
going work of other agencies. One segment of the proach to planning is being received with enthusiasm
plan will be the master plan—or development plan- in many circles. One of our esteemed colleagues,
representing the program of specific improvements Robert M. Mitchell, Chairman of the Department of
and developments recommended over a given period City Planning of the University of Pennsylvania,
of time. It will be reviewed periodically and subjected wrote recently:
to public discussion and hearings. "It seems to me that New York is on the verge of
The success of this planning hinges upon the kind setting up for the first time ... a new planning sys
of commitment to a planned approach to government tem. ... In this kind of planning there are no fiscal,
that has already been declared by Mayor Lindsay. social, or physical problems. There are, instead, prob
With a centrally located fiscal division and planning lems that have social-, fiscal and physical aspects."
agency, the city can expect a truly comprehensive Needless to say we are buoyed by Professor Mitch
approach to its programs and improvements. ell's comments. However, we are not apt to be
Thus provided with a broad policy and program engaged in any self-delusion or overselling of the
matic basis for development, the public and private planning process. We learn quickly that we are not
sectors of the city can develop specific projects that omniscient. Planning for the city of New York is a
are realistically linked to common goals and purposes humbling pursuit.

7
 Ebenezer Howard: proposal for clustered
Garden Cities, 1898

ILLUSTRATING CORRECT PRINCIPLE

OF A CITY'S GROWTH -OPEN COUNTRY
EVER NEAR AT HAND. AND RAPID
COMMUNICATION BETWEEN OFF-SHOOTS

<4>70n
Country
Country
Country

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Country, <v/ High Road

Popov*

Country

Frank Lloyd Wright: 1940 version of his project

for Broadacre City, 1934-58
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New Towns,New Cities
Elizabeth Kassler

The American Tradition: Anticentricity tree." Since 1927 Fuller has aimed at mass produc
Americans have never had much confidence in city tion of light, environment-controlled structures de
pavements, city crowds, city ways, city slickers. Since signed for air-lift to any part of the globe, for in
industrial cities were necessary to the economy, we universal mobility he sees the key to human freedom,
built them, but with left hands and half a heart. Jef world shelter, and development of World Man,
ferson spoke for many of his compatriots when he brother to all and everywhere at home.
condemned great cities as "pestilential to the morals, Anti-city, inevitable, arrived with postwar pros
the health and liberties of men." perity. Middle-class Americans, graced with cars if
Thirty or forty years ago, just as we were becoming not with World Manhood or agrarian philosophy,
a nation more urban than rural, the means of escape deserted the old cities for random dream houses on
from cities became apparent. Electric power, tele the fringe. With them went a scattering of jobs and
phones, radios, trucks, and automobiles with their facilities, all loosely linked with each other and the
precious gift of private mobility— these were agents of old centers by a proliferation of highways and auto
dispersal far more effective than the old rail and mobiles. But those urban fringes recede rapidly, for
trolley lines. Decentralization became the word of the our population is doubling every fifty years and three
day, synonymous with progress, and the stage was set quarters of the expanding populace is expected to
for mass achievement— come the return of prosperity live in metropolitan areas by 1980, mostly outside the
—of the American dream of living in one's own house old centers. If the present insistence on large residen
proud and free on its own ground. No orderly retreat tial lots continues, the built-up area of the New York
was contemplated, for planning was considered a region, for one example, will double in a twenty-year
threat to free enterprise and the American way of life. off-Broadway "happening." Millions of origins, mil
There were few to quarrel with the future. Archi lions of destinations, millions of auto trips, while real
tects tended to concentrate on individual buildings, town, real country, real freedom of choice will all be
planners on traffic and population projections, con sacrificed. The New York Regional Plan Association
servationists on wilderness preserves ; the attention of warning applies to new urban growth all over the
behavioral scientists was elsewhere; and the two na nation: "By spreading and scattering rather than
tive geniuses of environmental design, Frank Lloyd concentrating jobs, goods, services and homes, we
Wright and Buckminster Fuller, were passionate fail to build communities, and we have poorer access
non-centrists. to and so less choice of jobs, friends, recreation,
Child of the prairies, Jeffersonian democrat and goods, services, types of housing and modes of travel."
amateur of swift motor cars, Wright was product and If some effort at reintegration is indicated, can we
prophet of the American scene. "To look at the cross- learn from European experience?
section of any plan of a big city," he wrote, "is to look
at something like the section of a fibrous tumor." The New Towns: Subcentricity
Equating urban life with "mobocracy," ownership Northern Europe has little good extra land, still
and cultivation of land with human individuality and relatively few cars, and a long tradition of city living
goodness, Wright believed that "spaciousness is the and public responsibility for city development.
great modern opportunity." Spacious was the project Rather than sit back to congestion and sprawl, a few
for Broadacre City that he presented in 1934 and countries have tried to do something about the uni
worked over lovingly until his death in 1958. Each versal postwar problem of aggravated urban growth.
house has at least an acre of ground. Scattered among "New Towns" are where the action has been.
these part-time and full-time farms, and isolated The father of New Town thinking is Ebenezer
in greenery and parking lots, are facilities so dis Howard. Against further overcrowding of Victorian
persed that local movement would necessarily be by England's grim black cities, he proposed in 1898 that
automobile with a special trip for each objective. the expanding urban population decentralize into
Physical focus and social community are deliberately new industrial Garden Cities that would offer "all the
avoided. advantages of the most active and energetic town life
Buckminster Fuller, technologist rather than archi with all the beauty and delight of the country." Each
tect, questions all permanent settlements. "Why speak community would be permanently limited in popula
of settlements?" he asks. "Man is not built like a tion (he suggested 30,000), and permanently limited

9
 in size by a broad farmbelt. There would be inner
parks, but the plan would be compact (his recommen
dation was 30 persons to the gross acre, 90 or 95 to
the residential acre) for easy walking to all parts of
i st<
'* „ ; 8 jL. » m town and to the rural periphery. Land would be muni
cipally owned for common benefit from increase in
e ' V' aL$fcaitf iej"
value, hut Howard's emphasis was always on free
choice, free enterprise, for in the Garden City, he
wrote, "it is not the area of rights which is contracted,
but the area of choice which is enlarged."
Each Garden City would provide full employment
and services, but with no attempt at parochial con
tainment. On the contrary, Howard wanted the towns
grouped in clusters, separated by their farmbelts and
interconnected by rapid transit to form a great city —
prototype of the multi-nuclear "regional city" unsuc
cessfully advocated here from the twenties by such
decentrist-planners as Lewis Mumford, Clarence
Stein and Henry Wright.
A country-club subdivision tied to a shopping cen
ter is not a New Town. What the term does mean is a
bringing together, in open country, of homes and a
wide choice of workplaces, with enough self-suffi
ciency to assure a varied local life and a lively focus
to a cross-section population of at least 15,000 people,
preferably more, but limited in ultimate size. Unnec
essary transportation is discouraged by compact, pe
destrian-oriented planning, but the right to mobility
—physical mobility, job mobility, social mobility— is
affirmed.
None illustrated here meets all the requirements.
Britain's official New Towns, result of the New Towns
Act of 1946, are theoretically the purest, but suffer
from insularity and from a present preponderance of
young factory workers and their children; Cumber
nauld, however, is so attractive that it will surely
draw a broad range of enterprise and residents.
Reston, Virginia, lacks a cross-section population
because it offers no low-rent housing; while Finland's
Taby is primarily a dormitory suburb and regional
shopping center. Tapiola, though housing many com
muters, has such diverse population and opportunities
Taby, regional center of suburban Stockholm , will serve that it is a convincing New Town; and even Howard
120,000 and house 18,000 in HSB-sponsored apartments
disposed in a 17-story semi-circular slab adjacent to would approve its conception as one of several inter
shopping arcades and civic center; two groups of 3-story connected, greenbeltrseparated towns and cities
buildings ; an oval group of 15-story towers; almost planned to absorb Helsinki's future growth.
1600 flats in two facing high-rise arcs separated by one
of two facing low-rise arcs (illustrated) . Paths and roads "Create environment, not housing," says Heikki
are completely separate. von Hertzen, Tapiola's philoprogenitor and planning
director. "Start from man. That's the only thing that's
important —the individuality of man and the nearness

10
of nature. . . Most of these town builders went out
of their way to find sites with character (a practice
encouraged by scarcity of good level farmland), to
accentuate that character through their building, and
to exploit it for multidevel traffic and building-access
as well as for views both in and out. Tapiola inten
tionally sacrifices urbanity to interwoven greenery;
Reston, so far with more spacious internal open
spaces and more tightly clustered buildings, may
achieve both urbanity and continuity of landscape.
Taby's rough terrain may finally dominate the huge,
curiously isolated apartment groups, but only the
shopping area will offer much sense of human scale
and community. Cumbernauld's hard compact urban
landscape, unified by its hill, is precisely and glori
ously town ; the moors that lap its base are real
country.

After New Towns: Indeterminism?

The European scene is changing. Mounting popula
Tapiola Garden City, 6 miles from Helsinki, Finland.
tion pressures demand bolder solutions than small,
Developed since 1953 by the Finnish Housing Associa
neatly finite subcenters. tion, a private non-profit group, the town will house
Consider Britain. When it became obvious that the 17,000 with a lively interweaving of income levels, family
sizes, and building types. The town center will serve over
fourteen New Towns started before 1951 would ab 100,000. Designed by Aarne Ervi and shown here, it is
sorb far too few people, their target populations were in the initial stages of construction.
raised (very un-Howard) from 45,000 to 80,000 and
more, and "prairie planning'" tightened into the low- Open space system
rise, high-density housing of Cumbernauld and the
new sections of Harlow. Now the Government pre Industrial
district
dicts an increase of 3,500,000 people in Southeast
England by 1981 and calls for more aggressive de
Environmental
centralization: no more easily-swallowed satellite pIP^ district
towns just beyond London's greenbelt, but major new
regional cities of a quarter- or half-million people,
located well outside the London orbit.
Under construction in central Scotland, Livingston
is the first New Town conceived in regional terms. Its Central facilities
own hundred thousand people will combine with
other growing areas to form a regional city of a quar Major road grid
for dispersion
ter million. Its second extraordinary feature is a of traffic
linear plan. The object of this banded plan is not end
less expansion, but flexibility for changing needs and
ideas during the fifteen or twenty years of the town's Regional motorway
growth from east to west.
The plausibility of linear development has been a
recurrent question ever since Arturo Soria y Mata
Livingston New Town, 15 miles from Edinburgh, 29 from
wrote in 1882 that the ideal city would be "a single Glasgow. Developed since 1962. An open-ended belt
street unit 500 meters broad, extending if necessary along the Almond River will contain all central functions.
from Cadiz to St. Petersburg, from Peking to Brus
sels." Soria's Ciudad Lineal never reached St. Peters-

11
 burg, but he built a pilot project along a trolley line in the stratified, over-generalized solutions of modern
on the outskirts of Madrid, and published an interna city planning. Members now include George Candilis
tionally influential magazine. and Shadrach Woods of France, Aldo van Eyck and
Why not urbanize in narrow continuous bands Jacob Bakema of Holland, and England's inventive
along major transport lines to favor mobility, prox Smithsons.
imity to honest country, and unhampered growth ? "The principal aid to social cohesion is looseness of
The usual answer has been that pure linear devel grouping and ease of communications," wrote Alison
opment, indefinitely extended, brings the country and Peter Smithson early in the fifties while criticiz
close only at a price. Recognizable centers would ing the rigidity of the New Towns. They went on to a
become remote, and linear dispersion would replace road mystique where few choose to follow, but flex
the present indiscriminate sprawl with small apparent ible planning and the organization of pedestrian
gain in sense of community. Why not instead, pro movement to encourage spontaneous cross-action have
pose the semi-linearists, limit the length of each become general concerns.
banded town? Or, since efficiency would anyway de Flexible and open-ended are the concepts of Can
mand the separation of local and through traffic, let dilis, Josic & Woods. In their city schemes the genera
centers sprout like leaves from the arterial stem ? And tor of habitat is a continuous Y-branching pedestrian
discussion continues, now emphasizing the advan way (called a "stem") with low buildings for all cen
tages of linearism for change during growth, and tral functions. Plugged into this stem as Y-shaped off
for relative validity at any stage of construction. shoots are tall apartment buildings. The vehicular
Cumbernauld has closed ends, hut its compact elon system again follows a roughly hexagonal pattern, but
gation serves as well as a true linear plan to bring offset from the pedestrian system and intersecting it
open country close to its center, the first multi-level at a lower level. Their alternative "web," in which
structure to house all the central functions of a town. stems are interconnected as a multi-level grid, is so
Homage to Le Corbusier and his visions of linear deliberately neutral that it might better achieve the
megastructures, and tribute of a kind to Chambless architects' afocal urban objective, which is "to bring
and his Roadtown, for the spinal highway of Cum together the sum of life to all parts."
bernauld is backbone of the mile-long center. Since On the basis of free movement and non-finite ur
the architect of the center describes it as "a fragment banization, Cedric Price designed his "Potteries
of an elevated city," he evidently sees it as prototype Thinkbelt : a plan for an advanced education industry
of a larger and purer linear scheme. in North Staffordshire." Classes, mostly technologi
Mobility, flexibility, expandability, expendibility, cal, would be held in rail-buses, on the move or at a
social interaction : these are the largely existentialist factory siding, while students and anyone else who
concerns of the liveliest European urbanist thinking needed a dwelling would live in random groups of
of the last ten or fifteen years —thinking now assum housing units, all movable, expendable, and unfo
ing three dimensions, or four when the time element cused on a civic or campus center. Price thinks "calcu
of movement, growth, change, is realized in the de lated suburban sprawl" sounds fine.
sign. As British New Towns lose their insularity, so So Europe arrives at a place we know well : the no
buildings lose their separate significance and give place of mobility and noncentricity, the no-place like
way to a concept of total environment as framework home. The full circle is accomplished, and the Old
for human interaction. No longer things in them World comes on strong with Wally Byam and his Air-
selves, buildings become generators and reflectors of stream Caravans.
activity, and possibly themselves mobile. There is
little talk of architecture, for in its new role it ap U.S. Now: Diversity?
proximates an attempt at environmental technology. If centricity comes into question in Europe, our
Mechanical order, centric certainties and geometric opposite tradition has dissenters too, increasingly nu
perfections become equally meaningless. merous though sharing little more than dissatisfac
Prominent in the dialogue are members of Team X, tion with the way things have been going. Impatience
a loose group (outgrowth of CI AM) formed in the with congested highways and with the devouring of
mid-fifties to explore elusive values of human associa land by roads and other auto-appurtenances, account
tions and aspirations that they felt were disregarded ing for more than half of California's urban land,

12
 %
wamm '
Cumbernauld New Town, 15 miles from Glasgow, Scot
land. Developed since 1955, it will house 50,000 on the
hill, all within a half-mile walk of the center, and an industry
other 30,000 or more in greenbelt-separated neighbor
hoods in the valley. L. Hugh IFilson, chief architect
and planning officer; Peter Youngman, landscape
consultant. town
centre

open
space

Cumbernauld' s town center, in construction, runs along

the ridge and encases the spinal highway. Geoffrey Cop-
cutt, architect in charge.

- , i ' '

Cumbernauld housing is low and close, its open spaces

stone-paved, useful, various, architecturally confined.

13
 complements new appreciation of the advantages of
concentration for complex interaction, economic and
cultural, while an enthusiastic market for row houses
turned "town houses" and for apartments with pri
vate outdoor rooms is encouraging higher residential
densities. Even Los Angeles, prototype of Anti-city, is
acquiring groups of high-rise multi-purpose buildings
and talking of rapid transit, though what centers exist
to be connected is unclear even to Angelenos; and a
spontaneous centralizing tendency is also at work in
the sub-regional shopping centers that are attracting
theaters, offices, hotels, hospitals.
Inner-city characteristics of diversity, liveliness,
immediacy, suddenly seem more desirable, and mass
travel promotes this change of heart, for anyone who
visits the old European centers knows that great
things happen when city builders are also city lovers.
The isolated building loses meaning. What matters
more are interactions of people, buildings, and na
ture. Reality may lie less in the individual person,
artifact, or natural fact, than in their reciprocal rela
tionships. Martin Buber, with his interdependent
I and Thou, felt his way into this; the Chinese too,
long ago; and Aldo van Eyck is not unique among
architects in his attempts at dimensional realization of
the inbetween, the place of interchange— Buber's " das
Gestalt gewordene Zwischen ." Phrased in non-city
terms, wasn't this Wright's great affirmation?
Part of the search for relatedness is a quickened
interest in ecological thinking. It was the Bomb that
woke us to the consequences of human arrogance, but
now we find the air poisoned less by fallout than by
fumes from automobiles working double time to
transport us between far-flung daily objectives; and
we find that our loose, indiscriminate urbanization
pollutes streams, threatens wildlife, ruins great natu
ral landscapes, and eats up prime farmland— 150,000
acres each year in California alone. Not content to
cry havoc and return to their bird-feeders, conserva
tionists are mounting the barricades against further
invasion by Anti-city, which they properly equate
with Anti-country, and working for higher densities
Reston, Virginia, 18 miles from Washington, D.C. An
American-model New Town developed since 1963 by and less interference with natural cycles.
Robert E. Simon, private builder. Illustrated is the inter The one certainty is that further development must
mixture of town houses, apartments, offices, shops (with
flats above) and recreation facilities at the pedestrian- be based on the findings of an ecological survey na
oriented center of the first of seven " villages" that will tional in scope, minute in detail. Goals beyond this
have a combined population of 80,000. Whittlesey &
Conklin, architects.
are unclear, which may account for the deplorable
lack of long-range ideals in the endless discussions of
our grievous urban problems.
The answers to uncalculated sprawl are probably

14
 less clear to the planning profession now than a de
cade back, for up and down the line, here as in
Europe, grows an awareness that physical order valid
to our day must be derived from the continuity and
multiplicity of life itself. When a scientist such as
Rene Dubos tells a mixed group of environmental 4. 5
planners that diversity in the environment is geneti
cally so important that it must be achieved even at the
sacrifice of efficiency, he begins to be heard, for even
planners are becoming suspicious of hard-and-fast
categories, homogeneous zoning, and generalized so
lutions. Will computers, the shiny new tools of urban
planning, encourage rigidity or flexibility, death or
life?
The scant discussion of, agreement on, or control
over our long-range urban future has the great advan
tage of leaving the field wide open, but this passivity
j£r% before fate does seem un-American. t
r
Obviously we need a clearer image of the real al
ternatives for metropolitan life. Since alternatives are
real only in the full scale of actuality, Federal assist
ance is needed to assemble land for a multitude of
pioneer ventures in urbanism, whether by private
builders, Big Business, or a Comsat-like mixture of
public and private enterprise that can develop an ur
banization technology comparable to space technol
ogy. Money no longer needed for moon travel would
1 be handy. "Demonstration Cities' needn't be con
fined to the ghettos. Why not offer ghetto dwellers,
inner-city or middle-class suburban, some real choice ?
It's a big country, still with room for a few more
subdivisions, but let us explore some of the splendid Le Mirail, town of 100,000 five miles from Toulouse,
France. Competition-winning site plan of 1961 by
alternatives: not only revitalized centers, but New
Candilis, Josic & Woods shoivs apartment buildings
Towns in town, New Towns out of town, and New branching off continuous pedestrian "stem" of communal
Cities developed in regions far removed from existing activity. Separate road system.
megalopoli— regions where ecology is favorable, land
scape beautiful, vested interests few, prospects bright.
John Galbraith says "there is no reason to believe
that an unplanned metropolis will have any better
chance of beauty than an unmade bed" ; but plans
come good and bad. Some, handsome enough, are as
hostile to human habitancy as the neat and deceptive
pie-beds of one's childhood. Others, recognizing the
interdependence of life and its physical environment,
would be a joy to slip into.

15
 Voisin Plan for rebuilding Paris, 1925.
Le Corbusier, architect.
Perhaps the clearest and most compelling visualization of the
city as isolated buildings in a park is that developed in the
twenties and thirties by Le Corbusier. The Plan Voisin places
60-story glass-ivalled cruciform office towers at vast distances
from each other in a park that would have cleared out a sub
stantial section of Paris. Each tower marks another subway
station; an elevated highway sweeps through above the tree-
\*2>m '~:< • • r-.--~-•* tops, and there would be numerous long, low terraced struc
*<W!U
tures connecting the towers and accommodating restaurants
K and shops. Housing and industry are in separate zones.
The abstract inflexibility of this plan does not correspond
very well to the way people live, but the image of giant towers
standing as free sculptural objects in a park is so memorable
that it has dominated, and distorted, ideas about urban plan
ning ever since. Housing projects in the United States spon
sored by both the Federal government and private investors,
in which drab, small-windowed, brick slab or cruciform "tow-
are placed in unintelligible relation to each other, in
what is supposed to be a "park, are the feeble echoes of
Le Corbusier s grandiose concept.

Project for La Ville Radieuse, 1929-35.

Le Corbusier, architect.
Even in his earliest urban projects Le Corbusier made use of
very long, relatively low buildings as apartment house ele
ments, in contrast to vertical office towers. He thought of the
linear apartment house as a continuous structure that would
make right-angled turns in order to define and partially en
close park-like public areas, which thereby become vast out
door rooms. The model shows such a linear element at the
left ; at the right a similar section has been removed, showing
that circulation continues under the building from one park
area to the next.

16
Project for a Community of 150,000, 1966.
Philip Johnson, architect.
Exponents of linear planning usually claim as its chief advan
tage the fact that the linear city could be open-ended, and
therefore capable of indefinite growth. This project begins
with a different assumption: it is desirable to build communi
ties that have set limits.
A mile square area is enclosed by a twenty-story apartment
structure that serves as a boundary. Apartments in this build
ing look out at the old city (or countryside, or suburbs, or
renewed city) or in to a completely planned community. The
intersection of north-south and east-west axes is marked by a
150-story office skyscraper. At its base are community facil
ities bordering a park. All other housing in the area is seven-
stories high. Heavy traffic passes underneath the entire "city"
on its oivn street grid system ; minor vehicular traffic is lim
ited to certain streets on the main level above.

The Lower Manhattan Plan, prepared for the New York City
Planning Commission, 1966.
Wallace, McHarg, Roberts and Todd; Whittlesey, Conklin &
Rossant, architects and planners.
The architects' primary effort, apart from revisions to the ve
hicular and pedestrian circulation systems, is to introduce
waterfront areas and buildings of "humane" scale. This is
achieved by the kind of picturesque composition successfully
used at Reston, in the countryside ; its use at the foot of New
York's most oppressive skyscrapers might perhaps be less
convincing, but the increased accessibility of the waterfront
would of course be an enormous advantage and the compli
cated groupings do indeed suggest a lively and interesting
environment.
 Project for Roadtown, 1910.
Edgar Chambless, designer.
Chambless assumed that buildings grouped along a route of
travel ought logically to incorporate the means of transporta
tion itself, and so he planned a continuous concrete house of
indefinite length, with trains in the basement and a pedestrian
street on the roof. The designer observed that commuting time
to and from a major city would be reduced; there would be
great economies in the construction of utility systems; and
such a compact linear city would protect cultivated land from
the blight of suburban sprawl.

Projects for Road-Buildings: Rio de Janeiro, 1929; Algiers,

1930-34. Le Corbusier, architect.
When first published in the thirties these projects seemed
curiously visionary ; but today the ideas they involve are more
pertinent and practical than ever before. Le Corbusier ob
served that national investments in automobile highways
would rival and even surpass investments in buildings. He
also saw that while governments were able to overcome all
obstacles affecting super-highways, they seemed to falter
when faced with problems of urban renewal. His solution
was to combine roads and buildings, producing a variation
on the linear city that is only now beginning to be realized.
(A three-mile sample has been built in Tokyo.)
The first sketches propose a 14-mile long, 14-story high con
tinuous serpentine building for Rio de Janeiro. A highway is
on the roof; the building leaps across rivers and burrows
through mountains. Similar studies were made for Algiers;
here Le Corbusier proposed that double-height floors would
be built and owned by the state as "terrains artificiels." Pri
vate individuals would obtain long-term leases and then build
within the structure whatever they wanted. The road-building
is thus conceived as a kind of man-made land belonging to \y
the community. New York's Triborough Bridge viaduct, cross-
ing Randall's and Ward's Islands, could be a first stage of Le
Corbusier' s project: it is a road publicly owned (together
with the land it crosses) which now lacks only the intermedi
ate levels to accommodate housing and shops. /
Pedregulho Apartment Housing, Rio de Janeiro, 1950.
Affonso Eduardo Reidy, architect.
Probably the closest approximation to Le Corbusied s propos
als for linear, serpentine buildings following the contours of
the land is Affonso Reidy's housing project at Pedregulho in
Rio de Janeiro, although it is too small to boast an automobile
highway. Even in miniature, however, it suggests the effect
such buildings would have in the landscape.

Scarborough College, University of Toronto,

Ontario, Canada, 1966.
John Andrews, coordinating architect; Page & Steel, asso
ciated architects.
Since the end of World War II, universities have commis
sioned numerous important buildings, and a few university
efforts provide small-scale demonstrations of what coordi
nated planning in cities might accomplish.
On this continent, perhaps the most interesting single
achievement is Scarborough College in Toronto. Its architect
avoided the unnecessary complication of many separate build
ings, no one of them big enough to have much meaning or
presence, and instead grouped all facilities into one continu
ous structure capable of being extended both at its ends or at
a point near the center, where he has located a huge room that
serves as indoor campus. By twisting the buildings axis at
intervals, Andrews avoids the monotony of excessive length
and also skillfully relates the structure to the site.
 Mm

!|ij"' f
A. E r,:'i K J N I YE R 5 | T t
P 'L A B A G H DAD
DE DIC

P R. A N R-C H ITECT'

Plan for Greater Baghdad, Iraq, 1957.

Frank Lloyd Wright, architect.
Another of Wright's essays on the architectural uses of the
road is his project for Baghdad. An opera house and a univer
sity are each set within large areas ringed by three-tiered
highways. In the university complex, individual buildings
would be hooked onto the inner side of the road and would
extend into the park. The road not only combines access and
parking facilities, but is also an architectural element con
trolling the placement of buildings. Wright also proposed
modifications to the shape of the island, relating it to the
pattern of roads.

Project for a Civic Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1947.

Frank Lloyd Wright, architect.
Wright's most ambitious and perhaps far-sighted interpreta
tion of the architectural possibilities of the road was his proj
ect for a cultural center to be built in Pittsburgh. The building
is formed by taking a highway and coiling it into a truncated
cone. Smaller ramps at intervals would provide quick access
for those unwilling to take the leisurely drive to the roof
garden. Theaters and recreational facilities are suspended like
lanterns inside the vast space thus enclosed.
The project suggests that the elevated road makes available
a new kind of architectural monumentality. It also suggests a
way of creating recognizable entities, as an alternate to the
extended linear concepts most theorists have preferred.

. 1 ,, 1 *$i r
sf • Hi' 1 I
-> ,7'T*t
''-*C
J'iUM i

*,r.

W->
J-

'a.il "}
— -.as- V; : CI..V

fi

20
Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya, Caracas , Venezuela, 1956.
Jorge Romero Gutierrez, Pedro Neuberger, Dirk Bornhorst,
architects.
Caracas is divided by a mountain considered useless for build
ing until the architect-entrepreneur, Jorge Romero Gutierrez,
conceived of a shopping center as an extension of the super
highway that connects both halves of the city. The mountain
has been terraced to make a cantilevered double spiral ramp
accommodating stores and automobile traffic. Unlike Wright's
Pittsburgh triangle project, the Helicoide does not enclose a
single vast space. It is a way of terracing a mountain in order
to make it both habitable and accessible. The cantilevered
roads were meant to carry landscaping, but the project has
unfortunately never been completed.

21
 Architectureand Urban Renewal
Almost every large city in the United States is plan 1) How can we modify the existing grid plan to
ning or executing ambitious programs of urban re improve circulation, encourage the development of
newal. Decisions which will affect city life for decades parks and new neighborhoods, and clarify the order
to come must be made, and are being made, now. But implied by the terrain itself?
we have at best a confused notion of what architecture 2) How can we provide housing and other kinds
and urban planning can be expected to achieve. of renewal without relocating the people for whom
It would be presumptuous to suppose that problems such improvements are intended, and at the same time
of poverty and prejudice, and the hundred other evils convert neighborhood blights into acceptable com
that beset us, can be solved by architecture alone. ponents of the visual scene?
Works of art are not a substitute for human decency. 3) How can we make the waterfront both visible
The arts of architecture and urban design are tools at and useful, giving it an architectural weight that
our disposal: how we use them depends on what we would relate it to major cross-town streets and lead
want. to the development of new kinds of neighborhood and
We want to solve the pressing social problems of institutional centers?
the day so that everyone will have the means and the 4) How can we develop large segments of new
right to live in cities as comfortable and beautiful as land out of relatively underused, or mis-used, pe
the fantastic resources of technology can make them. ripheral areas, so that they alter the character of
We want planning more generous in its view of life existing neighborhoods by providing important new
than we have so far had. amenities?
We should want to know first of all what architects One area in New York City offers an ample held in
and planners think can be done now, and we should which to study these and many other problems: the
evaluate their ideas in terms of what we want cities blocks between 96th Street at the south to 155th Street
ultimately to become. If, for example, we think that at the north, but excluding Central Park; and from
in the ideal city everyone must get about by private the Hudson River at the west to the East River, Ran
automobile, we will want still more expressways and dalls and Wards Islands, and the southern tip of the
parking facilities. But if we conclude that the ideal Bronx at the east.
city should not be built primarily to accommodate Each team concentrated on a different problem.
automobiles, we will want to know more about sys Taken together, their solutions suggest broad patterns
tems of public transportation and their effects on of development rather than a "master plan." Within
employment, housing and recreation. We might also this frame of reference other interpretations and de
change our ideas about what constitutes the right size tails are certainly possible: that is the significant
for a building. Is it possible that our buildings, far advantage of a procedure which seeks to elicit urban
from being too big, are really not big enough? How form from the character of the place, the time, the
big would they have to be to include their own trans institutions and the people.
portation systems? How should we accommodate in Are the varied proposals made in this exhibition
dustrial facilities close to those areas where job oppor feasible? Technically and economically, yes: their
tunities are most needed? What kinds of parks would cost compares favorably with a few months of modern
be most useful? Can a street be a kind of a park? warfare. Would they yield an urban scene healthier
These questions are of course commonplace to and more beautiful than what we have had? The
professional architects and planners: it is the purpose four teams of architects and the Museum think they
of the exhibition to make the ideas such questions would. But do they represent changes we really want?
involve more accessible to the public. Only the public— which includes officials both elected
To do this the Museum commissioned four teams and appointed— can decide. The exhibition is meant
of architects and planners associated with the facul to help the process along.
ties of four universities: Cornell, Columbia, Prince
ton, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their
assignment was to demonstrate how certain planning
problems might be solved in New York. The problems Arthur Drexler
were selected by the Museum and the four teams, and Director
were defined to include specific social as well as aes Department of Architecture and Design
thetic goals: The Museum of Modern Art

22
Modification of existing grid plan
Housing without relocation
Waterfront renewal
New land
Cornell University

Colin Rowe and Thomas Schumacher; Jerry A. Wells and Alfred H. Koetter.
Assistants: Steven Potters, Michael Schwarting, Carl Stearns
Acknowledgments are also due to Franz G. Oswald

PROBLEM : In the east and west zones space would be opened

How can we modify the existing grid plan to improve up as much as possible. New and existing buildings
circulation , encourage the development of parks and would then stand as independent objects in parks
new neighborhoods, and clarify the order implied by three or more blocks wide and forty to fifty blocks
the terrain itself? long. Central Park would thus be extended north to
the Harlem River in two green corridors. The east
There are at present two major urbanistic concep corridor is bounded by Lenox and Madison Avenues;
tions: the traditional city—a solid mass of building the west corridor extends from Eighth Avenue to a
with spaces carved out of it; and the city in a park boundary made irregular by Morningside Park, St.
—an open meadow within which isolated buildings Nicholas Park, and Colonial Park.
are placed. The traditional city fails to meet our Within each of these zones a total of ten new 60-
needs for open space. The city in the park, an early story apartment towers would rise out of park land ;
twentieth century invention, lacks the density and there would also be long, low units of terrace hous
vitality we associate with the urban experience. Both ing. The eastern zone incorporates Mt. Morris Park
of these alternative and contrary concepts are already and adds to it a new formal lake. North of this, and
present within the area north of Central Park, and placed so as to reinforce the corridor-park concept,
this project is designed to mediate between them. is a building complex ten blocks long for commercial
The existing structure of streets and blocks exhib and, perhaps, light-industry facilities. Wherever the
its a nineteenth century version of the traditional pattern of existing project housing requires rein
form, but the recently constructed areas of project forcement, additional units have been added in the
housing intrude a haphazard version of the city as original style. At other places new housing is used
isolated buildings; "renewal" has so far resulted in to provide an architectural setting for these earlier
increasing rivalry between these two conditions. projects.
Neither one of them functions successfully. Both the central and west zones terminate in a new
There are also specific problems of the terrain, stadium at the north; at the south, flanking Central
some of which are produced by its boundaries. On Park, the plan distinguishes an enclave that incor
the west side, an escarpment; on the east, the tracks porates Park West Village and other housing. Within
of the New York Central; to the south, the extended this enclave the architects' method of procedure can
rectangle of Central Park: all suggest a pronounced be studied in detail. Existing blocks of traditional
linear movement which is qualified and distorted by housing are opened up by the removal of those units
the diagonal of the Harlem River. Also to be accom no longer worth rehabilitating. Interior yards are
modated are two interruptions within the otherwise thus converted into quiet alcoves opening off the
graph-paper grid: Mt. Morris Park and the diagonal street. The major achievement of this plan, and its
of St. Nicholas Avenue. chief purpose, is its revelation of an order waiting to
These considerations derive from the nature of the be extracted from the city's chaos. But it is an order
site. Other considerations obviously derive from the produced by encouraging variety rather than sup
ways the site will be used. By the introduction of com pressing it.
mercial establishments, academic institions and rec
reational facilities, as well as new housing, the site
could become an uptown magnet displaying urban
qualities scarcely attainable in midtown. Its develop
ment must therefore be related to the entire metro
politan area as well as to the locality.
PROPOSAL :
Implicit in the site is a division into three zones. Site plan
Two of them should be developed as "the city in a New buildings
Parks
park"; the third zone has been least interrupted by
* Water, Mt. Morris Park
new housing and still retains the grid plan of the
traditional city; its character should be preserved Plan preserves central spine of existing grid-plan build
ings, while flanking this with " corridor " extensions of
and improved. park system.

24
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Model. Central Park in foreground.

Left: Plan shows sixteen typical blocks lying between

Lenox and Eighth Avenues in the area that the general
scheme proposes to preserve and improve without de
stroying the clarity of the street grid. Possible strategy
for local development converts backyards into play
grounds ; potentially adequate existing housing is re
habilitated; public buildings acquire the appropriate
settings that their social importance might suggest.

Facing page: Perspective shows four such block renova

tions in the context of the existing city.

Pedestrian circulation
Roads

26
 Facing page: View of Manhattan looking south.
Existing park system
New parks

Isometric view showing new construction in "corridor"

park zone incorporating Mt. Morris Park. Long building
complex combines residential, commercial, and possible
light-industry facilities serving this and adjacent areas.

28
 Columbia University
Jaquelin T. Robertson, Richard Weinstein, Giovanni Pasanella, AIA; Jonathan Barnett, Myles Weintraub
Assistants: Benjamin Mendelsund, George Terrien, Paul Wang; Structural consultant: David Geiger
Mechanical and electrical systems consultant: Michael Kodaras; Construction consultant: Edward Friedman

PROBLEM: accessible from the streets below and the pedestrian

How can we provide housing and other kinds of re boulevard above, providing fast and pleasant local
newal without relocating the people for whom such transportation.
improvements are intended , and at the same time At important intersections along Park Avenue,
convert neighborhood blights into acceptable com such as 110th, 116th, and 125th Streets, there would
ponents of the visual scene? be major community facilities: a wholesale food mar
ket, a large office building, theaters, and a new rail
Harlem cannot be rebuilt without providing new road station and bus terminal. Each of these facilities
homes for those displaced by the renewal process. could become a core for the long-suggested develop
Piecemeal solutions have proved ineffective, but a ment of new commercial centers in Harlem.
large-scale relocation program is both inhumane and Although the vault itself would be a continuous
infeasible. The railroad tracks that emerge from un structure (penetrated by crosstown streets) the build
der Park Avenue at 97th Street, and then run along ings rising above it would he both separate and
an elevated structure to 134th Street and the Harlem varied in character and height. Construction sites
River, are probably the area's greatest single source along the vault would be open to private developers
of blight. For all practical purposes the tracks are as well as public building authorities. As the old
permanent and immovable; a new train-tunnel sys buildings on either side are removed, construction
tem would involve an extreme dislocation of the would extend into those vacated areas to relate the
present transportation net, as well as astronomical new Park Avenue building to existing housing proj
construction costs. And yet the railroad viaduct, be ects, as well as to old buildings worth renovating.
cause of its length, its strategic location, and the fact Because the project is linear it can be built in
that it belongs to a single owner, is the key to the stages that permit people living in the path of con
problem of relocation. struction to be re-housed in completed portions as the
proposal: vault advances. The vault would also serve as a con
By building over the railroad tracks new housing struction platform so that train service and traffic
could accommodate nearby families before the areas need not be interrupted. The entire vault and a sub
they vacate are cleared for redevelopment. Use of air stantial part of the housing could be put in place in
rights over the tracks would convert this major source less than two years.
of blight into a new building stretching from 97th The cost of acquiring the air rights and adjacent
Street to 134th Street. property, plus the cost of constructing the vault, is
The tracks would first be covered by a concrete competitive with the total sum that would have to be
vault, and on top of this would be built new housing, expended to condemn and clear a comparable land
shops and community facilities. The concrete vault area elsewhere in Harlem. In addition to its other
would be no wider than the existing street. advantages, the vault system provides the possibility
The present level of Park Avenue at 97th Street for a considerable increase in population density
would then extend along the top of the vault as a while still creating a substantial amount of new open
traffic-free pedestrian boulevard, supporting shops, land.
restaurants, theaters, and schools, with mixed-income Building over the railroad tracks would not only
housing rising on either side. Along the sloping sides turn a serious liability into a major asset, it would
of the vault would be town houses and apartments, also contribute to the renewal of Harlem by opening
related to the scale of surrounding developments. it to one of New York's most famous streets. This
Ample parking facilities would be provided below radically new Park Avenue would become the symbol
grade. Trains and traffic running inside the vault of a new mode of life, as well as a concentrated and
would continue as they do now, except for the elimi self-sustaining nucleus for the renewal of the en
nation of some of the less important crosstown streets. tire area.
Well-ventilated and brightly lighted, the vault would
be as long as many existing tunnels in daily use.
A clean and quiet electric bus would run along
both outer sides of the vault at an intermediate level,

30
Existing buildings
Neiv buildings
New buildings, pedestrians only
Circulation diagram
Electric bus
Parking
Automobiles
Railroad

truss may be removed and replaced by

slab to be poured
a larger one as required at 125th st.

dowels slots for dowels

forms for ribs — fixed forward face,

removable steel forms removable rear face

concrete vault in place existing railroad structure

forms for ribs —

removable both faces
dowels

shoring between ribs lower structure to

constant elevation

Pouring of slabs and longitudinal ribs j Elevation of sliding formwork and

pouring of vault and transverse ribs

Typical section through building complex. Three-story

town houses flank vault at ground level ; apartment
blocks rise above them and flank pedestrian boulevard
on top of vault.

32
 Typical section through building complex showing
housing construction under the vault and development
of blocks on both sides.

i.:i oil n r i i 'i J

Section showing electric bus stop and pedestrian

circulation at intersection with crosstown streets.

Section showing new housing in relation to existing

housing projects.

Section through transportation terminal complex at

125th Street showing main concourse of railway station
Public facilities of hotel are at left ; parking and
bus terminal at right.

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 This aerial view shows several stages of construction
being carried forward simultaneously. In the lower
right foreground the vault is being poured ; further back
construction is beginning on the apartment blocks
which rise above it; the completed apartments , as well
as high-rise towers and rebuilt blocks flanking the
vault, are visible in the background.

Axonometric view looking west

1 Professional office building
2 Television tower, restaurant above
3 School
4 Town houses
5 Housing
6 Cinema, studios, professional housing
7 Theater, outdoor theater on roof
8 High-rise housing
9 Central market, parking
10 Office and hotel towers, railroad station, bus station.
shopping center, parking below
11 Administrative building
Model shows integration of new structure with existing
streets and housing projects. Television tower and
observation restaurant in foreground ; in background,
office towers straddle vault at 125th Street.

Town-house units flank vault at left, and are continued

around newly created city block to enclose pedestrian
park and playground.

raw

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 Princeton University
Peter D. Eisenman, Michael Graves;
Assistants: G. Daniel Perry, Stephen Levine, Jay Turnbull,
Thomas C. Pritchard, Russell Swanson

PROBLEM: along Broadway runs parallel to it and encloses a

How can we make the waterfront both visible and sixteen-block length of waterfront land developed as
useful, giving it an architectural weight that would a new park. The waterfront itself is new: the railroad
relate it to major crosstown streets and lead to the tracks are re-routed under the buildings, the land
development of new kinds of neighborhood and in they now occupy is excavated up to the existing
stitutional centers? embankment, and the Hudson River is thus brought
into the park.
Manhattan's extensive waterfront, though occupied The plaza, which opens onto the river, would ac
by parks as well as piers and highways, has seldom commodate a 15,000-seat outdoor concert theater to
been regarded as a major amenity to be developed replace Lewisohn Stadium (destined to be demol
for the benefit of the whole city. To do this the ished) as well as outdoor art galleries, a museum, and
waterfront must first be made accessible, and this a library. Cafes and restaurants would be sheltered
problem is related to the inadequacy of Manhattan's under the existing Riverside Drive viaduct, which
crosstown transportation facilities. The architects crosses the plaza and divides it into outdoor "rooms"
therefore began with the following assumptions: of different sizes and shapes.
1. 125th Street is potentially a major crosstown The southernmost of the two river buildings would
axis. With new mass transit facilities interconnecting accommodate hotels, convention halls, and offices;
with the north-south subway lines, it could serve the northern building would house research and lab
commuters from New Jersey, Westchester, and the oratory facilities and large spaces devoted to institu
Long Island airports. Increased and diversified use tional or academic uses. It also incorporates and
of 125th Street would help to overcome the physical conceals a sewage disposal plant now contemplated
and psychological isolation of Harlem. by the city, the roof in this case being designed as a
2. The western end of the 125th Street axis pro public arena for minor sports events. At 115th Street
vides a point, or node, from which waterfront devel a terminal node (corresponding to the plaza) is pro
opment on the Hudson River could extend north to vided by a large aquarium.
155th Street and beyond. The new building along Broadway would be de
3. The waterfront and the crosstown axis should voted primarily to housing but would also accommo
amplify the existing park system, by connecting with date shops and offices. This structure is so placed as
it and introducing additional parks. to provide a view from Broadway over the new park
4. New centers of building should relate to such to the water, and the river buildings are elevated so
existing institutions as Columbia University and The that one can see under them to the Jersey shore.
City College of New York. Research laboratories, for The new park and its accompanying waterfront
example, would be able to draw on the faculties of would be enclosed by a coherent architectural frame.
nearby universities as they do in Cambridge, Mass Sheltered by the river buildings, the water could be
achusetts, and would provide employment for many used for boating. The recreational advantages of this
other people as well. park are echoed in another feature of the plan: a
5. Finally, the architects assumed the new areas thirty-foot-wide quay extending from the south end
should make use of viable aspects of the existing grid of the plaza all the way down to 110th Street. This
plan. At the same time the grid street system should promenade over the water would be another kind
be modified to yield a more varied urban scale. of park.
PROPOSAL: An important achievement of this plan is its delin
The project calls for the termination of the 125th eation of different kinds of urban space. By allocating
Street axis by a public plaza opening onto the Hud different functions to different levels, continuity of
son River. The plaza provides the connecting link use is maintained. Individual details of the buildings,
between adjacent neighborhoods and the other ele more developed in this project than in the others, sug
ments of the new project. Largest of these is a two- gest an exhilarating urban architecture.
building structure built over the river and extending
thirty blocks north in a straight line. For almost
two-thirds of this length the structure stands in the
river well away from the shoreline; a third building

36
 Site Plan

New buildings
Paved pedestrian areas
Parks
Water
1 Aquarium
2 Stadium (above sewage disposal plant)
3 Lagoon
4 Park
5 Housing, offices, shopping
6 Research offices
7 Conference and convention center
8 Hotel
9 Public plaza with outdoor stadium, museum, cafes
10 Pedestrian quay
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H Facing page: Plan shows initial phase in development
of waterfront at 125th and 155th Streets. Plaza at
125th Street is turned to align with diagonal grid that
would eventually connect to the Harlem River at the
northeast and Central Park at the south. Adjustment
of West Side Highway and railroad tracks provides
space for river inlet.
Second phase shows additional buildings and opening
up of diagonal axes.
Left: Model shows completed plan with new park
fronting on lagoon. Buildings in river are linked to grid
pattern with a continuous building on the west side
of Broadway. New vehicular and pedestrian connections
4IU link existing and proposed facilities.

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Axonometric view looking east.

1 I
Perspective looking from Broadway through new
shopping arcade, with housing above, to the park,
lagoon, and river building beyond.

Model shows hotel and convention facilities in

foreground, research laboratories and aquarium in
left background.

40
Perspective looking north in the public plaza at
125th Street. Existing Riverside Drive viaduct is on
the left , and new outdoor stadium in the right
foreground. Shops and cafes are in commercial office
building at the right; university offices and theater
in the rear. Viaduct could be glass-enclosed to
accommodate promenade cafes.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology i
Stanford Anderson, Robert Goodman, Henry A. Millon

PROBLEM : them about 80 acres in extent.

How can we develop large segments of new land out Both bodies of water can easily be purified for
of relatively under-used, or mis-used, peripheral areas, boating and swimming; the surrounding shoreline,
so that they alter the character of existing neighbor landscaped and equipped with marinas and water
hoods by providing important new amenities? front restaurants, could become one of the city's
major recreation areas. Earth required for the dams
Harlem residents need more opportunities ; they need can be excavated from the present railroad yard site
a wider range of choice in employment, in housing, in the Bronx, thereby creating a third new lake in
in education, in recreation. The demolition of great that section and a comparable series of developments.
parts of the existing city for public housing— what Reshaping of the land would begin with the cut
ever its immediate advantages may be—usually forces ting of the North Channel. At the same time construc
out of the area just those people who are least able to tion would begin on new subways and the relocation
create their own new opportunities. of certain parts of the East River Drive and the
Choices must be provided without displacing the Major Deegan Expressway. When the channel has
population. The existing community must be reha been completed the earth dams can be put in place.
bilitated and its good features preserved. If the exist Construction of new buildings would begin in the
ing community is made viable, and new opportunities areas closest to these connections with Manhattan.
are created in relation to it, both new and old can During the same interval, the edge of the Manhat
then continue to change and develop in a normal tan grid as it approaches the East River would gradu
piecemeal fashion. ally be transformed by new areas of multiple-use
Fortunately, this aim of providing new choices buildings, parks, and recreational facilities.
without disrupting the existing community is facili When completed the whole project would have
tated by a major resource of the East Harlem-South made accessible for development some 510 acres, of
Bronx area: under-used or mis-used land, especially which 270 acres would be new land accommodating
Randall's Island, Ward's Island, and the railroad 14,000 housing units. It would also yield about 187
yards of the South Bronx. In these areas new living acres of purified water in its three lakes. The total
patterns can be encouraged, while in the adjacent cost for earth moving, changing roads, and water
parts of the city the emphasis can be on rehabilitation purification would be approximately $150,000,000
of old buildings as well as remedial action for large —or six days of United States expenditure in Viet
units of unsatisfactory public housing. nam during 1966.
The physical rejuvenation of the city should be This proposal necessarily deals with broadly de
regarded as part of the larger process of positive fined goals rather than specific detail. It considers
social change. For example, the development of new familiar problems in a new light, because it intro
building elements and construction technique envi duces a new factor: the manipulation of the city's
sioned in this project could support local research geographical configuration as part of the renewal
activities, job training, and new local industry. process.
proposal:
Randall's and Ward's Islands and the southern tip
of the Bronx should be developed. Land fill opera
tions already undertaken by the Triborough Bridge
Authority should be part of a consistent plan: the
two islands should be connected to each other and to
Manhattan.
The old North Channel (Bronx Kill) , now unused
and almost filled in, should be straightened out and
widened to connect the Harlem River to the East Site plan
River.
East River; North Channel; Harlem River
Earth dams several blocks wide at 116th Street,
Lakes for boating and swimming
101st Street, and 90th Street would allow easy access • Parks
to new neighborhoods around two new lakes, one of Paved areas

42
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Stage 1 Stage 2

These three diagrams illustrate successive stages in the

linking of Randall's and Ward's Islands to Manhattan.

Stage 1: Channel is cut between Bronx and Randall's

Island; construction begins on new subways and
the depressing of parts of the East Side Drive and Major
Deegan Expressway. Earth fill begins in dotted areas.
Black rectangles indicate blocks scheduled for
rehabilitation. Irregular shapes among these blocks are
new residential , commercial, and institutional facilities
at ground level in existing public housing developments.

Stage 2: Construction of earth dams from Manhattan

to the Islands with fill provided by excavation of a lake
in the South Bronx. Work continues on subways,
rehabilitation, and neiv construction in Harlem and the
South Bronx. Construction of first buildings begins
on man-made land near bridges.

Stage 3: All earth work and major public investment

completed. Gradual extension of new built-up areas.
Piecemeal intensification of commercial and institutional
activities along 125th Street and in the Harlem
Stage 3 Triangle is a continuing aspect of the proposal.

44
 Model of view to the northwest shows development of
housing and other facilities around new lakes in
Manhattan and the South Bronx.

45
Proposed new housing developments would relate
closely to waterfront areas and would preserve open
space within the massing of the buildings themselves.
In drawing below, building units bridge a street.

Land fill operations could be carried out at many sites

around New York City to reclaim areas presently
under-used or mis-used. On this map Westchester Creek
is shown converted into a lake by a single land fill
operation. Riker's Island is connected to Queens by two
land masses, to produce a lake somewhat larger than
that yielded by the Ward's and RandalFs Island plan.
Welfare Island is connected to Queens by three
land masses plus additional contouring to produce two
lakes, and a single land mass produces another lake by
sealing off the Brooklyn Navy Yard from the East River.
Filled land
Neiv lakes with purified water
Rivers
 Sources of Illustrations
Page 8
Top: From Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, 1898.
Bottom: From "The New Frontier, Broadacre City", Taliesin, October 1940.
Page 10
Top: HSB:s Riksforbund, Stockholm.
Bottom: © Atelier Sundahl, photograph: Sune Sundahl.
Page 11
Top: © Lehtikuva oy, Helsinki.
Bottom: From Livingston Development Corporation, The Livingston Plan, Edinburgh.
Page 13
Top: Geoffrey Copcutt.
Center left, right: © Cumbernauld Development Corporation.
Bottom: © Cumbernauld Development Corporation, photograph: Douglas Scott.
Page 14
Bill Maris, New York.
Page 15
Courtesy Candilis, Josic, Woods.
Page 16
Museum of Modern Art.
Page 17
Top: Museum of Modern Art.
Bottom: Courtesy Whittlesey, Conklin & Rossant.
Page 18
Top: From Sunset, The Pacific Monthly, January 1914.
Center, bottom : Museum of Modern Art.
Page 19
Top: Carlos Botelho, Rio de Janeiro.
Bottom: John Reeves, Toronto.
Page 20
Museum of Modern Art.
Page 21
Studios Jacky, Caracas.
Pages 25-47
All drawings, Museum of Modern Art; model photographs, Jerry Spearman:
aerial survey photographs used in site plans, Aero Service, Philadelphia, Pa."
Page 37
Aerial photograph: Port of New York Authority.

Design: Harper and George Inc.