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All this, thinks Herrey, would involve no volcanic disruption of city life. He estimates that his belt highway would cost some $250,000,000 (including land condemnation), a bare third of what the city talks of spending for postwar improvements. Observing that 80% of Manhattan's buildings are overage and will have to be replaced before long, Herrey believes that the city is ripe for planned rebuilding. To start off his "circumferential traffic" system, he proposes that the city first institute one-way traffic on all streets and avenues, then proceed with construction of the belt highway and organization of property owners for rebuilding Manhattan in block units.
Hopeful city planners believe that New York City, like London and Berlin, must be largely rebuilt after the war. Manhattan, in the throes of slow strangulation by traffic, is steadily losing population and industries. Worried Mayor LaGuardia has already appointed a committee to replan the city. Herrey's plan has the enthusiastic approval of many members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which recently staged an exhibition of his blueprints in Boston.
The chief opponent encountered by sweeping New York City planners is the city's Park Commissioner, Robert Moses. But the consensus of modern planning experts, as reported in the January FORTUNE, is that "the piecemeal remedies applied from time to time in accordance with Mr. Moses' theories" have failed to solve the city's difficulties.
*An official New York City committee recently produced blueprints for a sumptuous new fasion center, with lavish showrooms, a convention auditorium, a new opera house.