Cities in Trouble—What Can Be Done

This story originally appeared in the June 20, 1960, issue of U.S.News & World Report.

Why the decline of the cities? And how can they be adapted to the age of the automobile?

Victor Gruen, an expert in city planning, proposes a solution in this exclusive interview.

At New York

Q  Mr. Gruen, can the downtown areas of big cities be restored and given vitality again?

A  The answer is "Yes." But the answer is a conditional one, and the condition is that we engage in forward-looking, creative, integrated planning. It will not happen by itself. It will take thorough planning and effective implementation of such planning. And it cannot be done by superficial measures. We will have to do something important and deep-going.

Q  What is the basic trouble with big cities?

A  At the root of the trouble is the fact that, in our urban areas, we have not caught up with the tremendous technological development which we have had over the last 50 years.

In these last 50 years, we have had new inventions all the way from the automobile to rockets to the moon. And yet our cities, in their patterns and organizations, have not changed at all. Our city cores, especially, have the same functional pattern they had in the 1900.

Q  Do you mean that automobiles are the main cause of the modern city's trouble?

A  They are. The automobile has come to be used as a means of mass transportation. Instead of people riding street cars, subway, buses or trains downtown, they now try to drive their own automobiles. And our cities are simply not built to handle the number of automobiles that it takes for everybody to go downtown in his own car.

It isn't the automobile per se which cause the trouble. It is the misapplied usage of it for mass transportation in heavily built-up areas. The automobile is also responsible for urban sprawl and suburban scatterization.

You may have heard the expression "megalopolis." This is a word that is used to describe a new phenomenon: the phenomenon of many city areas growing together into one tremendous, disorganized and amorphous "over-city," which has lost many of the characteristics which a true city should have.

Q  Aren't most cities now building big freeways to handle the growing auto traffic?

A  Yes. The construction of freeways, toll roads, parkways, new automobile bridges and automobile tunnels has been carried on with the investment of billions of dollars during the past 10 years.

I regard this as part of what might be called a murder plot against our urban areas. The murder method is that of slowly poisoning the city by the injection of foreign particles into the bloodstream in increasing doses. These particles, in the form of automobiles and trucks, cannot be absorbed by the urban body and therefore cause serious circulatory diseases.

The plotters are assisted by fifth columnists within the city who—by facilitating automobile traffic through widening of streets, one-way traffic, construction of gigantic garages—see to it that the poison is spread in the heart area of the city, until it attacks the tissues of the most important urban cells.

Q  Is it really as bad as that?

A  I certainly believe it is. The qualities that make a central city area truly urban are compactness and cohesiveness. If we level downtown buildings to make room for more and more cars, we destroy these qualities. Some of our cities, indeed, today resemble tremendous parking lots made inefficient by the islands of buildings which remain within them.

The result is that our downtown areas are becoming such a nerve-racking environment that people are not going downtown as they used to. They are avoiding the downtown area. In city after city you will find that, although more cars may be entering the downtown districts than ever before, there are actually fewer people getting downtown. And the downtown business districts are suffering.

Q  Then you don't regard freeways as the answer to a city's problem?

A  They never can present a complete solution. Private automobile transportation, even with the largest amount of freeway construction, cannot solve the transportation problem for any large city.

Q  What is the answer to the city's problem?

A  I believe in a new type of metropolitan organization which I call the "cellular form" of urban planning.

Q  Would you explain that?

A  This form goes back to the way nature builds all her own creations—by grouping atoms and molecules in cellular fashion.

Q  How would you apply this cellular system to a city?

A  By starting from the simplest and smallest module—the human being—building up from there to a family unit, then a group of family units, and then to a small community.

That might be the basic cellular form in the urban environment. A number of such cellular forms—or communities—may then form a bigger one, which may be a town. But each of these cellular forms, or communities, should remain as a definite unit, and should not flow into the others.

Q  How would you keep the communities apart?

A  I feel that in our cities of the future we should arrange green spaces and separations between each one of the cellular forms, and should not allow our cities to be converted into the endless, amorphous, suburban deserts which we see today crawling over the entire countryside.

Q  Then how are these communities linked to form a city?

A  Cells, clusters of cells, constellations of such clusters form a planetary system revolving, in their activities, around a powerful solar body in the form of the metropolitan core. In this core, the highest expressions of the economic, cultural, social and work life are represented.

Q  Would we have to rebuild cities from scratch to develop this cellular system?

A  That is not necessary. We could convert the present pattern of our cities with comparatively little effort into the kind of pattern I am talking about. We could do it by using tools at our disposal which we are now misusing.

Q  Such as?

A  One of the best means for the purpose are the freeways, highways, parkways and so on that we are building today. The trouble is that now we are building them from a strictly engineering point of view—simply to connect two points of nonexistent interest in the shortest possible manner.

In building freeways today we are disrupting existing communities, often cutting them apart, cutting of homes from their schools or from their shopping centers.

Q  What should be done with these freeways?

A  We should use them to encircle the various cells of which I spoke—these clusters of human activities.

If this encircling is done in such a way as to provide green areas—as we do already in our parkways—then, while creating traffic ways, we are simultaneously creating the desirable buffers between units. And—what seems important to me—we are also forming urban units which, instead of flowing into each other, are clearly defined and separated.

Q  We've been hearing a lot lately about the "downtown mall." Is this a part of your cellular pattern?

A  Yes. It is definitely a part of it. I am frequently referred to in the press as the "father of the mall."

Though I do not want to shirk my paternal responsibilities, I must say that I am a little concerned about the kid. I believe that many mistakes are being made in its upbringing. The mall will be a success only when it grows up normally and organically.

Many mall experiments which are now going on—and I have heard about 50 such experimental malls—are like precocious children. Because it is dramatic to take all traffic out of Main Street and grow trees and bushes there, it has publicity value; it makes newspaper headlines and it therefore is use as a promotional device.

But a mall is only a part of the whole pattern. The question is: How essential a part is it, and when should it be brought into execution?

Q  What is wrong with the mall?

A  The mall will be effective only if other things have been done first. Obviously, if we close up one of our main downtown streets to create a mall, then the automobiles that formerly used that street will have to go somewhere else. That means we just add congestion on other streets. The trouble with our downtown areas is not merely that they don't have green spaces and trees and flowers beds. The main trouble, as I have pointed out, is that it is so hard to get to the downtown area, hard to park once you get there, and then so hard to move around after you park. So, just by creating a mall and planting grass in it, you haven't really solved an awful lot.

Q  What should a city do first?

A  Before you can afford to build a mall, you have to arrange for better accessibility to downtown areas by both private and public transportation.

You have to provide some kind of "retainer basin" for the traffic which flows in from all sides. I usually propose doing this by having "loop" roads encircling the core area and, immediately adjoining these loop roads, storage space for private automobiles and terminals for public transportation.

Also, before we can hope to make this downtown revitalization really effective, we must do something about the slums which have grown, like choking collars, around our downtown areas.

Once we have taken these steps, then the closing of the downtown core to auto traffic and its opening up as landscaped malls and courts and plazas becomes a possible and valuable step.

Q  Who is going to pay for all this? Isn't it true that the people with higher incomes are moving out of cities, into the suburbs?

A  That is not entirely true. In fact, we can observe today the beginning of a return to the city of such people.

I have recently heard some interesting figures that indicate a comeback for city apartments. This may be partly explained by the fact that commuting has become so much of a nuisance. Land has grown more expensive. It is hard to find help to tend suburban lawns and gardens. Provision of public services such as sewage, roads, power, water, schools, is becoming more costly as the spreading continues. The detached house is growing out of the reach of more and more people.

So I would predict that we will see a reversal of the flow, and that the refugees who have left in the last 20 years will come flooding back toward the center of the cities.

HELP FOR REBUILDING CITIES

Q  Isn't it going to cost a lot of money to reshape a city?

A  To correct the mistakes of the past 50 years will, of course, take money. Yet, this is a worthwhile investment.

Q  Are public funds available?

A  We have a number of very practical tools for reshaping our cities and one of the most important is the federal redevelopment and renewal program. In the beginning, this was merely a slum-clearance program and was concerned only with residences. Even with that limitation, it helps downtown areas considerably, because it converts the slums which surround our city centers into middle-income housing.

Lately, through some changes and modifications in the law, it has become possible to apply urban renewal to commercial areas in the downtown sections.

Now it is possible for a community to receive funds from the Government to draw up a plan. The bulldozer approach is not necessarily to correct one.

It may be that renewal, rather than redevelopment, is the answer. Buildings that are beyond redemption may be condemned while those that are still in good condition may be left standing. With the federal and State government putting up three quarters of the money, the city can demolish the old buildings, put in new sewers and new utilities, then turn the area over to private developer for renewal.

Q  Is the rebuilding of downtown areas actually being done in some cities?

A  We are working now on a number of such projects in downtown centers. We are doing one of Stamford, Conn., and another in Paterson, N.J.

One project that is unusual and probably the farthest advanced is that which is taking place in Rochester, N.Y. There the redevelopment is being done by private enterprise.

WHEN BUSINESSMEN ACT

Q  How did this come about in Rochester?

A  Here we had a case of two downtown department stores that came to us, I believe, three years ago and said: "We're finding ourselves in quite a quandary. Business downtown is retrogressive. We have considered opening branch stores, as some of our competitors are doing. In fact, we each have one branch store. But we are not very happy with them. We believe Rochester is not a big-enough city for regional shopping centers with department-store branches. What do you think?"

I replied" "Gentlemen, you're absolutely right."

They said: "Do you believe there is a chance to do something about the downtown area? We love our town and would rather spend our money to give it new life than drain the money off into the suburbs."

I told them: "I think there is something you can do, especially since your city has already taken a number of steps in the right direction."

Q  What has the city of Rochester done?

A  Rochester is building a loop road, which I have mentioned, as one of the important ingredients in city replanning. It is about half completed and the other half should be completed in two or three years.

The city is also building a new civic center, which is important because it creates greater civic pride and interest.

Rochester has a very progressive administration which is giving thought to changes in the whole traffic pattern and has built a number of city-owned parking garages along the edge of the downtown area.

Q  What are the merchants doing, through private enterprise?

A  I told the merchants: "If we can persuade the city to co-operate by closing the street between your two stores and allowing it to be converted into a covered shopping arcade, by diverting some traffic to a new street that has been projected for a long time, and by building parking garages underground instead of an the surface, I believe we can do something very interesting that would convert the very heart of Rochester into a downtown regional shopping center." The result is "Midtown Plaza," which is now under construction.

Q  How big is this Midtown Plaza?

A  There are about eight or nine acres of land involved. The Midtown Plaza is a fusion of existing structures and new ones. The existing ones are the two department stores and a hotel. The new ones are stores, auditoriums, coffee shops, restaurants and so on, and an 18-story office building of which the top four floors are occupied by a new hotel.

Underneath this complex is arranged a 2,000-car garage on three levels. All the stores, the hotel and the office building can be reached on two merchandising levels from an air-conditioned, landscaped pedestrian mall two stories high. People can reach the mall by escalator from garages.

Q  What does the city of Rochester contribute to this?

A  The city pays for the parking garage. But the city had already promised to build a garage anyway, and by getting the underground rights from the owners of the property has saved itself immense costs. This project shows what can be done by private investment with the co-operation of the city.

Q  How do loop or belt highways fit into this picture? How should a city lay out its traffic system?

A  Let's for a moment use an analogy. Let's compare a traffic system with a river system. A river starts with little springs that flow into brooklets; the brooklets flow into creeks, and the creeks into rivers which empty into the ocean.

The traffic river is similar. Small roads combine into big roads that merge into highways that lead into freeways. The trouble is, there's no ocean for the traffic to pour into. When it finally arrives in the city it finds itself jammed into narrow streets. The result is a flood, just as if you dammed a river.

Q  How can you handle this traffic flood?

A  If you want to avoid a traffic flood, you have to provide an ocean, or a retention basin. That ocean can take the form of broad belt highways which distribute the traffic around the most congested areas. Multiple-deck parking garages, accessible directly from the belt highway, are an integral part of this retention basin.

Q  Where does rapid transit come in?

A  There must still be public transportation, semipublic transportation and rapid transit. This includes buses, subways, taxis and so on.

Q  What kind of rapid transit should a city have?

A  The ideal form is the one that will carry us most swiftly to our destination without, at the same time, causing any damage to the environmental qualities of the areas to be traversed. It would be wrong to look at rapid transit only from the engineering point of view. Because then our new public transportation lines might cause exactly the same kind of trouble and damage that our freeways cause today.

Q  Can rapid-transit systems create slums?

A  They can create slums, as we know from our experience with the old Third Avenue elevated line in New York City.

Q  What about the monorail which has been talked about a lot in the last few years?

A  I am very much worried about the tremendous attraction that names such as monorail hold for so many people. Everybody talks about the monorail. It sounds so modern. Yet, actually, what is a monorail? It's just a Third Avenue "El" on one rail. It's just as disturbing to the neighborhoods through which it passes.

That doesn't mean that the monorail doesn't have its place. But I don't think its place is within a highly developed urban area. It might be placed above river beds, or between the banks of freeways—but not inside our city pattern.

Q  Then what is the answer in rapid transit?

A  It's absolutely unbelievable that, in an age in which we have invented jet planes and rockets, we should not have one new ideal about rapid transportation. There is no doubt that we can build a rapid-transit system that is faster, more convenient, and quieter—one that would persuade even the most enthusiastic auto driver to prefer rapid transportation.

Q  Is it true that in cities that have pretty good rapid transit it is not being patronized—that people are still staying with their automobiles?

A  No, it is not. There has been very little done to improve rapid transportation, but where it has been done, it has had immediate effect.

Q  Where has this been done?

A  In Philadelphia, they have done something very simple. The city has guaranteed to the commuter railroads a certain minimum income on condition that the fare be reduced and the services improved. The effect has been that the railroads' commuter traffic has increased to a high degree.

Q  What other cities have done anything about rapid transit?

A  Chicago has built new rapid-transit lines between the lanes of their new freeways and these new lines enjoy good patronage. Chicago has made it a condition that no freeway can be built within the city limits which does not give the city free right of way between the lanes for rapid transit. And a wise measure this is, because it means that with every mile of freeway they also get a mile of rapid transit.

Q  Isn't Los Angeles doing something, too?

A  The most interesting case, I believe, is Los Angeles. My firm is now working as consultants for the city of Los Angeles on its plan for a new rapid-transit system. The fact that Los Angeles is seriously planning a rapid-transit system is highly significant, because the city, for the last 20 years, has given itself—body and soul—to the automobile. When I arrived in Los Angeles 20 years ago there were quite a number of electric rapid-transit lines—to Long Beach, Pasadena, and Beverly Hills. All of them have disappeared. Today, the city of Los Angeles has only a bus system and not a very efficient one.

To replace rapid-transit, the city engaged in the most remarkable freeway-building program in the United States. Hundreds of miles of freeway have been built within the city, and more are scheduled.

Q  Do the Los Angeles freeways have any provision for rapid transit?

A  They do not. They're just automobile channels. But now the city planners are asking: "What have we achieved? As soon as we build these freeways they get congested. The city keeps spreading and we can't seem to catch up. The only thing we seem to have accomplished is to damage the downtown area and some other centers." So now they are trying to reverse their course and turn back toward public transportation.

Q  Mr. Gruen, do you think it is worth the effort to try to save the city as we have always known it? Would it perhaps be better just to let it become decentralized into suburban communities?

A  In my opinion, cities are extremely important. Cities have been, since the beginning of historic time, the cradles of human thought and progress. They have been so because they are the places where communication between human beings is quickest and best established.

Now, there are people who feel that today, with such means of communication as television, telephone and radio—probably soon a television-telephone—the city has lost its importance as far as human communications are concerned. But I don't believe that all these artificial means can fully take the place of direct personal contact.

Therefore, I believe that the city has importance and that we should not lose the city.

Q  Are you optimistic that the problem will be solved and that the big city will be saved?

A  I believe that it must be, and therefore that it will be. I am optimistic because of the change in thinking, the growth of interest in the problem that has occurred in the last five years. There are so many forces moving now that I have no doubt that we will see action.

I also believe that, once the first breakthrough is made in any of the approximately 100 cities that are seriously planning redevelopment of their downtown areas—as soon as one of them succeeds—the idea will spread.

Q  Is there any limit to the size of a city that can be rebuilt? How about New York, for example?

A  The basic approach is the same. The difference is that the very big city center will consist of more cells than a small one.

Q  Do you visualize the reshaping of cities as being cone by private capital or out of tax revenue?

A  There will be a mixture of those two things. Only where the combination of private and public action is fully effective will we be successful.

Q  How about rapid-transit systems? Will they be operated by private enterprise, or by the city government?

A  I believe that public transportation is just as much as public service as the police department, the sewage system, the schools or the roads. It is in the nature of public services that they cannot be successfully operated in the framework of the profit motive.