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And what is—and isn't—progress? Every force, it seems, save pride, encourages shoddy, unimaginative construction. Zoning laws set minimum standards that speculative builders take as maximum. Antiquated codes bar technological breakthroughs. New York, for instance, only two months ago finally got around to revising its 30-year-old code. An office building can be written off for tax purposes in 45 years —so why build it to last any longer? Admits one construction-company official: "There's no such thing as a luxury rental building—only middle-income buildings at luxury prices." Most low-rent housing developments, says Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League, rapidly turn into "vertical slums." As for planning, while many cities like Philadelphia and Boston have become showplaces, most of them cling to the old pattern of dull city blocks, where even the prestige corporate structures determinedly ignore their neighbors.
More Urgent than the Bomb. Complaints notwithstanding, high-density living is likely to be the style of the future. "All the major cities are as alive and as likely to keep growing as a tropical rain forest," declares Nat Owings. "There is no possibility of their dying. They are viable, they are vibrant and their growth is rank." By the year 2000, some 400 million Americans will be living in roughly the same areas as today. The question is: Can they do so and remain more or less human? "The answer," says Owings, "has to be yes, and the strategy of accomplishment must come in the next 15 years. The urgency is greater than that of developing the atomic bomb in the 1940s or reaching the moon in the 1970s."
In developing a "strategy of accomplishment," U.S. architects can draw on a whole arsenal of technology: precast concrete beams that span 100 ft.; cable-hung roofs that carry across distances of 420 ft.; mass-production assembling techniques; and a rapidly expanding range of building materials, from glare-reducing glass and spun plastic to rust-sealing steel. Concrete used as a finished material is already giving visual variety to the city. "It is the most important change in the art of building since World War II," says Architect Marcel Breuer. "You can sculpt concrete, you can mold it, chisel it, increase the vocabulary of architectural expression."