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Another approach is the British "grid," calling for the creation of several self-contained neighborhoods—complete with schools, theaters, shopping centers and parks. Along these lines, Mayor John Lindsay's task force on urban design suggests that New York City, rather than pack even more skyscrapers into midtown Manhattan and Wall Street, should create a major business district along Harlem's 125th Street. Governor Nelson Rockefeller, in fact, has encouraged the move by ordering the construction of a 23-story state office building for Harlem. But New York, typically at odds with itself, is also building two 110-story skyscrapers for the World Trade Center in the Wall Street area. That is the kind of act, says Urban Critic Wolf von Eckardt, that is tantamount to "ur-bicide"—city killing.
Don't Walk. For the past three years, the Maryland-National Capital Park Planning Commission has guided development around Washington along six "corridors" radiating 40 to 50 miles out from the capital. Each corridor contains about five cities, some old, some new. Parkways and strips of greenery will keep the cities from blending into each other, thus preserving each city's pride and identity. The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission is doing the same in the seven-county region that includes Milwaukee and Racine.
One of the fondest dreams of the urbanologists is a return to coherent neighborhoods. Doxiadis, who spends much of his time in America, preaches that "we must re-establish the human scale by making man feel part of his environment, not overpowered by it." His goal: communities of 30,000 to 50,000 people, measuring no more than 2,000 by 2,000 yds.
For him, as for many other planners, the car must be curbed if cities are to be made human again. "For the first time in history—since he came down from the trees," laments Doxiadis, "man is losing the right to walk inside his cities." Several cities—among them Philadelphia, Washington, Houston and Minneapolis—either have or are planning pedestrian malls.
Crabgrass Curtain. Los Angeles is usually cited as the chief victim of the automobile—with 55% of its core area given over to freeways, garages and parking lots—but Atlanta is in nearly as clogged a condition (50% of downtown), while Boston (40%) and Denver (30%) are not too far behind. According to one estimate, if New York were to double the capacity of every bridge, tunnel and expressway leading to the city, only 22% of all commuters could drive to work. For those who live within the city, driving is generally out of the question. They take a taxi if they can afford and find one (increasingly difficult), or the subway—which, according to the city's design task force, is "probably the most squalid environment of the U.S., dank, dingily lit, fetid, raucous with screeching clatter." And savagely crowded at rush hour.