Men, Cars, Cities

December 7, 1959

In New York, already overcrowded, already jammed with traffic that crawls along fitfully or grinds to a halt, 20-, 30-, 40-, and 50-story apartment or office buildings continue to go up at record rates. One of them alone could house the population of an entire town. The problem of getting in and out of them, of moving from one to the other, by foot or car, threatens to become insoluble.

Even if we were to take drastic steps right now to solve the problem, we could not prevent it from growing. Suppose we immediately imposed a height limitation on all future buildings of twelve stories, or some equivalent limitation on cubic footage. The mere building of new structures up to that height or volume, on sites that now have less, could enormously increase crowding. Yet even this much restriction is nowhere seriously suggested. And if it were, it would probably meet the strongest opposition on the double ground (1) that it would be discriminatory against sites on which present buildings were lower, rather than already higher, than the new height limitation, and (2) that it is an abridgment of private property rights to prescribe any maximum building height or limitation whatever.

‘EKISTICS’

This column would be the last, as its readers know, to accept lightly any discriminatory treatment or infringement of property rights. But here is a clear case where each must accept some restraint for the good of all. It may hurt a specific property value in New York to impose a stricter building limitation on it; but it will soon hurt all property values in New York unless stricter building limitations are imposed.

No new principle is involved here. Everyone accepts the necessity of condemnation proceedings to put through a necessary street or road, or to widen an existing one. Everyone accepts sensible building laws against sanitary hazards or hazards of collapse or fire. Nearly all cities, including New York, have some limitations on height or building-area to insure a minimum of light and air and movement. The real question is whether present limitations are adequate or look forward far enough into the future. This problem faces every large city in the world.

In Greece, a month or two ago, I met an extraordinary man, Dr. Constantinos Doxiadis, and talked with him, in an office with a magnificent view of Athens and the Acropolis, in his new building and school. Doxiadis is an architect, engineer, city planner, and more. He is trying to found a new science—Ekistics, “the science of human settlements”—which would draw upon all these disciplines. He has been called in as consultant or planner by Washington and Philadelphia, by Pakistan and Iraq.

‘SECTORS’

Perhaps some of Doxiadis’s premises go too far in the direction of central planning. But he seems to have recognized, better than anyone else with whose work I am acquainted, the nature and dimensions, economic, technical, and esthetic, of the modern-city problem. These new dimensions have been brought about by the unprecedented increase in world population, the propensity of people to crowd into cities, and the multiplication of automobiles.

Where once our cities were inhabited by men, they are now inhabited by men and machines. Man, Doxiadis points out, has now been displaced as the dominant element by the motor car. Our city plans, once three-dimensional, must now take account of a fourth dimension—time. This is the time wasted or saved in commuting to work or getting from one part of town to another.

The basic element of the city of the future, according to Doxiadis, will be the community neighborhood or “sector.” The size of the sector will be determined by reasonable walking distances. Outside and around the sector cars will be able to move at high speeds. They may enter it at controlled speeds to come to parking lots, dead-end streets, or areas where children play, wives shop, and pedestrians can walk with pleasure and safety. Such sectors can be planned with a fair distribution among property owners of costs and advantages. Cities, after all, are made for man, not man for cities.