Dublin Core
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
A
TRAL Tr
wsletter
LANTA
Proaress, |Nc.
_C Address is: Suite 1211, 615 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, 30308, Tel. 873-6983
SUITE 2740 © 2 PEACHTREE STREET m ATLANTA, GA. 30303
NUMBER 3
What It Takes
to Make Great Cities
An attack on slums isn't enough.
FELEPHONE 877+ 39 76
JANUARY 19, 1967
to
er )9¢
RA \ar'
Cities need middle-class residents —and downtowns that are “cathedrals.”
FORTUNE January 1967
by Edmund K. Faltermayer
Two characteristics, however, are common reat
sities. They all have an exciting downtowy filled with a
great variety of shops, theatres, museums, and other at-
tractions, and laid out as a place of great beauty—de-
signed, in the words of architect Louis Kahn, to be “the
cathedral of the city.’’ Equally important, they have a
large middle-class population residing near _downtown
possessing the purchasing power and the tastes to help
sustain its activities,
The anti-city bias shows in the limited aspirations
of most recent city building. Urban-renewal funds avail-
able each year have been only a fraction of what the coun-
try spends on farm subsidies or space exploration. And
they have been employed mainly for only two purposes,
to revitalize central] business districts—mostly through
face-lifting rather than true “cathedral” designing—and
to eradicate the worst slums. It takes more than that to
achieve greatness. aanniaiannania
Despite the high-sounding rhetoric used to promote it,
the demonstration-cities program passed last year by Con-
fress is not going to create great cities, either, It promises
a stepped-up attack on the slums, with physical recon-
struction and social services closely coordinated. While
this kind of effort is commendable and long overdue,
the program will do nothing directly toward rebuilding
downtowns or making cities attractive places for middle-
class citizens to live.
Robert C. Weaver, Secretary of Housing and Urban De-
velopment, argues that the new legislation will help mid-
dle-class neighborhoods by removing’ the blighting effects
of slums that adjoin them. “There is nothing inconsistent
in working on the cancerous part and improving the whole
city,” he says.“But many authorities on urban affairs are
sharply critical of th -sided emphasis on the slums.
“For political reasons,” as one of them puts it, “we have
decided to throw most of our resources into the deficient
areas of the cities, and let the others fend for themselves.”
The middle-class citizen who prefers the city’s side-
walks to suburbia’s lawns is the forgotten man_in today’s
city-building efforts. Cities have devoted only the scantiest
of resources to making urban living appealing to him, and
federal housing programs are tailored qwainly to the gub-
UL urbanite and | the slum dweller.
City planners, surprisingly, are not clear on what causes a
ighborhood to start renewing itself, or how the process can
be encouraged. Research is needed here. A selective form of
urban renewal, in which only the worst eyesores and hope-
lessly run-down buildings are demolished, unquestionably
has helped encourage the middle-class people who are re-
furbishing houses on Philadelphia's Society Hill and on
Baltimore’s Bolton Hill.
fread Ke e mnie arVe/e
wr ser 4Aave Ame, AWE
6 THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, Thursday, Jan. 12, set,
*
It’s Just Carl
And Betty Again
By ACHSAH NESMITH
The guard had peace quickly early Tuesday night and
s were free to go home to their
new town house in Ansley Park before the final official duties
y:
“] got up about 7 after sleep- [ist the world go b-~
ing in my new bed in my new clared.
oy drank some orange juice | > ¢ Yo SE = Jr
CONV Cas‘ ene Aik,
and looked out the window -
saw television ca~
no OS ene of AA) antes
Jno st exerting Srends.
The difference between a living city and
an urban cadaver is its heart.
Bob Bivens