the condition of man is strictly dependent on environment because man is
eminently an environmental animal. Man is also eminently a social animal
and one sees that environment comes close to being preponderantly. The
city. The city is the true concern of architecture, so speaks Pollo salary.
He sees man a living organism evolving into urban man, part of a new
organism society. He believes that neither free enterprise nor
practicality, what he calls the savage intercourse of forces that
presently build and rebuild our cities is going to give man the urban
environments he really needs. So, Larry proposes guidelines for the new
environments. Those guidelines are great compactness, great logistical
flaw, the military of the participant of the citizen. To be able to make
use of the city. The city is an institution for the citizens and this
demands physically a great compactness and a reduction of of the area that
the city's occupies
and mailing through this compression of things much greater liveliness,
which somehow indicates for instance, in the ghetto is more life than
suburbia.
He proposes archaeology architecture plus ecology. Archaeology seeks order
and harmony with nature rather than the haphazard and wasteful growth.
That has been our style salary cities would be tall, dense, multi layered
paolo Soleri discusses the ramifications of archaeology with a variety of
men from different fields. How do we begin to alter the present situation
as I see it. Major systems in the society are out of control. We're
experiencing a fantastic break in history where we're moving with extreme
rapidity from a an industrial society into something totally new a super
industrial society or call it what you will, but radically different from
the past. The major institutions of society are trying to grow up with
this and they can't so that there are breakdowns of health services,
transportation services, sanitation services, education services and so on.
Not just breakdowns in government, but in private industry and in
international relations and so forth. Given this situation, where does one
begin to apply what leverage is possible in a democratic way? Well, I
think we have to be more radical in the sense that we had to stop one
instance, look back and see what our roots are and then possibly make a
decision for for an alternate route. And this is this is might be almost
impossible, but it might be very necessary.
And of course of your work, you mentioned the key to a lovely city is a
lovely person and a lovely person is not an accident. Do you think that
would be the way in which people might organize themselves to live within
our ecologies?
Um, well, this is very much to do with the fact that we are defined by the
environment in a very high degree. We are defined by by a genetic code,
but then we are defined by the environment, which becomes for us a
cultural environment. And I think that if you can expose a child not to a
dirty street, a chaotic and squalid environment, but if you can expose a
child to wholesome and really inspiring situation for incident, being able
to open a window and, and and see a landscape which is not cluttered or
devastated, but it's beautiful. I think this is going to almost
genetically work into into this charming. It's going to be a, an element
is going to be positive for him for for good. One of the important initial
objections that some people have had to Scolari's plans is that somehow
these extremely complex structures will limit personal freedom. Well,
personal freedom is makes sense when it becomes the freedom of the society
that the person is part of because if the site is not free in itself, the
individual is not going to be free. So we are free only as individuals and
as a collectivity. So when personal freedom becomes a personal license, it
negates the premises so that there's no freedom in license. There's only
freedom in inability to be part of a larger system which are the social,
political, environmental ecological system. Mhm. Crowding may seem to be
one of the plagues of modern cities, but environmentalists recognize
different kinds of crowding. And so Larry believes crowding can be a force
for good. We're always reminded of the enormous densities in a city like
Hong kong for instance, where where, where they're building new towns
densities that are very great indeed, without seemingly any detrimental
effects.
Well, I had in density in itself doesn't have to be negative. I think
crowding is a very positive thing, but naturally has to be a crowding
based on the fact that this, this crowding is producing a certain sap and
which is what I would call the cultural sap. And if this is absent then
crowding becomes a cluttering and becomes a negative thing. But crowding
in a way is is that that kind of condition when man becomes more intensely
involved in things and it becomes really more more of a manner. I feel. So
there's a negative crowding and positive crowding salaries idea of three
dimensionality means that a great deal of what we now have at ground level
markets, churches, parks, schools would be integrated into his huge
structures
by introducing the third dimension in a very substantial way. You would
define for instance, especially you would define all new kinds of spaces.
So the visual experiences would be enriched in a very, very large degree.
Think for instance, and what the views would be from many of the points
within the city itself, into the cityscape and also from the cityscape out
into the environment, into the natural environment. Getting from here to
there in an archaeology does not involve going back to ground level. Our
present cities are dominated by automobiles, which salary sees as a
terrible waste. We try to to fight the battle of time by, by speed in the
cities. You know, we try to conquer space to speed. I think that's a
mistake and we will never do that because diasporas cannot be Mhm served
by speed. So we have to shrink distances by the shrinking of distances. We
we conquered the problem of time and it becomes also a very human kind of
contest because we started walking again. We reintroduce our biological
means of moving around. And so many things become much simpler. You know,
you can reach anywhere within the city by walking by elevator by escalator
and you can reach outside of the city. Yes, I'm all in favor of walking
and bicycles. I have only have only used for two means of transportation.
A bicycle on the rocket. I'm not interested in anything in between. I
wouldn't agree the bicycle is a very good bio technique.
There is I think here a reliance on a centralized technology,
the form of technology that allows us transportation now is is a very
multiple forms which consists of units that consisted in many units.
So it has many disadvantages. It has perhaps one advantage and that is
that since their autonomous, their breakdowns are scattered and are not
necessarily of disastrous consequences. We are are we building in into a
city of this nature a liability for for 22 failures that are that are more
serious than they are in general and present now. Well, you have to build
in some red redundant and some auxiliary systems. It's quite evident, but
I would question this, you know, this disability of this autonomy because
well suppose that the gasoline for some reason doesn't come into an area.
Well not only the city but the life is killed. I mean in in one week
people are going to start dying of starvation or there's another form of
attendance and not only that but the daily the pay that we I mean the the
price tag for this kind of autonomy is so fantastic that really to be To
be realistic, I think it would require require a reshuffling of our
pattern on a continental basis. And this is not feasible in one day or one
year or 10 years. But we should try some somehow soon to try better
parents where the car becomes a nonsense within a maybe a very small area
and then slowly pushed the car into the into being an instrument for
leisure instead of being an instrument for work. The designing of whole
organic systems has never been as critical as it is now. Yet. The history
of architecture turns up some surprisingly ancient examples of visionary
planning in the first century, the roman architect Vitruvian as proposed
Mount Athos as a city literally in the image of man, one hand cradles The
houses, the other, the city's reservoir men of genius have long indulged
their dreams for a perfect and complete community Pieter bruegel painted
the city of Babel A Mega structure that seems to integrate the facets of
16th century agricultural life all the way to the top. Even far up the
ramp, the floor is solid earth, a multilevel town by Leonardo da Vinci,
sidewalks, roads and canals on different strata. A systems approach in the
quest for greater human efficiency imagined in an age when the pace of the
city was slow where the explosion of urban centers in the industrial age,
such dreams became necessities. Grand central terminal new york city is
depicted in a cutaway view, published by the first serious english
language town planning journal in Grand Central as in any mega structure.
The individual loses perspective of where he is in the whole environment.
Indeed, except from a great distance, the hole is so big it is invisible.
The self generating city. Edgar shambles designed for road town a
continuous amalgam of homes and workshops that was to be built between
Baltimore and Washington transportation is underground promenades on the
roof and every so often the corridor is interrupted by a civic and
shopping center, farms would surround the road town and everyone would be
close to the land. It was to extend itself through the countryside
indefinitely.
Visionary architects have often thought in terms of frames to hold easily
renewable units. As in like Corbusier's plan for the waterfront of Algiers
, a continuous layer of shelves. People would rent space and build as they
like appointment. Corbusier emphasized by the insertion of a Moorish
doorway in his design
after the Second World War, he actually did get a chance to build one of
his support structure ideas. An apartment house with self contained
shopping mall and a playground on top, imagine as a frame into which
dwellings would slip as he said, like champagne bottles into Iraq. It was
in fact constructed in the ordinary way of poured concrete.
Other modern architectural schools have been fascinated by the idea of
interchangeable parts for a city. This design is the work of a group of
japanese architects. It consists of large service towers around which are
clustered small units on cantilevered arms. The arms can be moved about
and the units plugged and unplugged to form new configurations.
Unrealistic solutions which nevertheless point out the nature of urban
centers and the options open to future planning includes such designs as
hands, whole lines, aircraft carrier, a big ship has everything a town
needs plus an airfield, so why not just dig one into the landscape. Cities
with critical population and financial problems are under constant
pressure to sacrifice open land to buildings. Modern technology sometimes
makes possible other solutions like the plan to construct over the water
of new york's Hudson river near the World Trade Center. In this case, the
new buildings would not displace established residents coming to grips
with the fact that concentrated populations must continue to maintain
their environments even while new environments are built, Yona Friedman
proposes a huge framework for the city of tunis. While roads, dwellings
and shops are built in this framework, life goes on below gradually people
move up into the new city, Friedman has a similar plan for paris. The
desire to maintain the old city while the new one is built characterizes a
good deal of the large scale planning proposed today stratus system. The
theoretical proposition for renewing any large metropolis was worked out
by a fairly conservative architectural firm. Step by step, city, life is
moved up above ground level. The new structures are supported on a
framework of girders neighborhoods, families and clans are kept as intact
as possible Below them. There old 10ements are cleaned out.
This procedure is followed in one area after another. Large buildings
sloped to meet the sun are joined by elevated walks and streets.
In the final result, transportation is at ground level service levels
above that, shops in areas with only marginal light and dwellings on the
top.
This scheme is said to be possible with the technology now at hand in
these plans, the uncompromising vision of a perfect city has given way to
practical considerations. Yet these architects share a tradition in
designing for millions of people, they forced themselves beyond the
building of better buildings, they become concerned with whole
environments by training, I am an environmentalist,
so called architect and I feel strongly that unless we are able to do to
define a better physical environment, we are going to defeat our efforts
into finding a better social environment because it seems that there is
always some kind of a precedence
of the instrument that is going to serve a certain function and in a way,
not vice versa. So my concern is very much of how we can improve the
environment so that the performance of the town might become better, which
means the performance of the people for themselves and for the social
system. Right now. I think that you're right, but I think it's a question
of which comes first. I've read of course about some of your work. The
real question is not so much the, the pros and cons of the visionary work
that you've done. The real question is whether or not we can put it into
practice and the people that make the decisions are not us, engineers and
architects really, we could come up with the best system available for,
for the quality of life and how people live unless we can get those people
who make the decisions to adopt the ideas that we have, then we end up
with just a plan. Well, it seems to me that in general we don't, we don't
have an idea of what we want, which I found very stifling because if we
don't know where we're going, we are not going anywhere. So it seems to be
very important that we are able to define a goal to begin with. An idea,
not a mortgage is hilarious dream. We need a plan that considers the
ultimate goal. We need a flexible plan which we will test fully aware of
the tests often fail. The logistics of our cities don't work yet. We tax
them harder and harder, improve them piecemeal and pay for them dearly.
Every hour of every day. A prototype archaeology would be expensive to be
sure. But can we afford not to build one? We also have to consider costs
and these kinds of projections and being mayor of a city where we have
very serious financial problems. We have all we can do just to hang on
where we are. You see, mm hmm, how do we deal with the, the physical
change necessary on a financial basis? Well, it's a it's a vicious cycle
circle. And the answer I think would be only in an emergency, some kind of
of a national emergency that we would accept as we accept the emergency of
war or something like that. And then we could start really to not to patch
and survive but develop, evolve and create. And somehow we are paying now
the for what our fathers and the fathers, our fathers did. And unless we
are trying to go just beyond somehow, the critical phase we're in, we are
doing the same thing for our Children, our grandchildren and they to to
ignore As systematically the fact that there is a future that is not just
going to be the future of tomorrow. The future of 2030, 50 years from now
is to keep somehow a status quo, which is disastrous. So we have to manage
two things. One is to survive. As you said, the best we can and the other
one is to be able to look a little further and tie our best two define a
future right now that it might be more, might be more awful because keep
things going is not sufficient. We are not just that kind of creatures
unless there is more hope than that. We become cynical and we are, we
become suicidal and so on. And this is great danger that we are in Now. We
made very much get what we asked for and the fact that we are not able to
see the emergency speaks very poorly of what we are and what we asked for.
So I really think that it's it's an ethical problem that we are faced
with. We don't want to understand where the real humaneness of mankind is.
And by doing this, we are sitting on a dynamite box.
The future of urban man is of course much discussed in our time. Celery
has no corner on solutions yet. His vision utterly denies the assumptions
on which so much of the most respectable current thinking is based Here
are two examples. First from Science magazine, a forum published by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. An editorial state
quote, the disease is simply too many people in areas that are too small.
Why cannot people live wherever they wish and congregate electronically
sight. Sound. The sense of touch and in the near future, even the sense of
smell can be transmitted anywhere in the world. Unquote, how different is
Scolari's view? I think people have have different views as to what the
city should be, what what it should provide or whether something should be
provided to it.
Well, if the city was only a tool for for affluence, I would say that it's
very unimportant we might get away from it. But if the city is that
specific place, that cityscape, that man made landscape, well, the
institutions that makes civilization can survive and develop, then the
city becomes the most important instrument that we have to to really
produce a better life for mankind. And apparently, if you take away from
history, the history of the cities and the towns and the villages, you're
somehow cancel civilization itself. So the concept of the city is
absolutely fundamental and central to the development of civilization, of
culture, of men as a person in men as a group. I'm I'm sure that the model
of the future is going to be don't communicate, communicate. And this idea
is now getting around very widely. I've seen Dr. Peter Goldmark has just
given us a beach on this saying that 90% of the things you need to can be
obtained through communications consoles in in the in your home. And I'm
sure this is the pattern of the future that we work through these consoles
and very much little traveling for business, although we still travel
across as much as you want for pleasure. What about learning though? Can
you can you learn only by sitting in front of a concept? No, you must
interact with people. But I think suspect that pretty well all the
learning such as it is, it's done in schools today. It could be obtained
through a concert with interaction. Well yeah, but it is in school somehow
at a very raw kind of remote information. You know what shouldn't the
school be environmental so that the child is in the environment and learn
through the environment through his own senses and so on. Our schools. Our
educational systems are obviously appallingly inefficient
because I I really see that the the city, the structure of the city as the
main learning device not just for Children but for adults and everybody.
And my fear is that if we if we go too far in in teaching our ourselves to
remote kind of information but just by feeling directly into the brain, we
might come up with a savage mind which is a very well informed mind but
totally abstract because it has not was never able to connect the the
intellectual aspect of things with the with the actual performance of
things so that we might end up by having some kind of a roboticist
intelligence very sharp, very powerful but extremely dangerous in a way,
savage complexity and miniaturization lie at the heart of salaries vision.
Yet the establishment experts always favor decentralization example
number two, writing a lead article in a highly esteemed magazine
Scientific american. In an issue given over entirely to the best thinking
on cities. An internationally famous urban planner concludes that quote,
the most realistic of the many proposals is the finger metropolis, a
nucleus city with long strings of towns radiating from it. The author then
goes on to consider the necessary political changes in tax ramifications
and a national housing policy to eliminate segregation. Now, of course
salaries ideas are squarely against this supposedly realistic continuation
of urban sprawl, but even more than that, his ideas abruptly radicalized
all the argumentation about tax and real estate problems. He is looking
further ahead. Does he assume too much
in your, in your book? You quote, you say if there is no mention of
segregated minorities of slum clearance of exploiter and exploited of tax
unfairness of bosses, um, is because one assumes that in time the skill of
man will take care of them all, the foundation of equity is thus granted.
And this is what I was getting at, is assumed an awful lot. Well, the
point I was making there is that we seem to be saying now that once we
have reached this plateau of equity, we are going to be happy forever
after. And my point is, yes, we are saying that it seems to me and I think
that's a fallacy. It's it's an incredible fallacy because we are not going
to be anything but happy animals, if this is, if this is really the
plateau really want to reach. So I think it's very dangerous to work very
hard for something that it's only a maintenance kind of problem at the, at
the end. Yeah, if we have anything above an immorality, we have to reach
this Plateau of Equity. I mean, we have to be able to to behave as
brothers and so on and on. But if this is this is the goal, well, I'm
afraid we're not going to go very far, the goal is really to become this
kind of society that we can really create a new universe. Wouldn't you say
though? Another goal was to try and give each man and as much freedom
within within a society? Yes, I think that's a reasonable goal to work for.
Yes. So that this man can really, in a way explode into a new universe
mentally and with its own passions and so on, but to become just quiet,
healthy and well behaved and well fed creatures, this is not really a
great, it's great now at this point because there is so much inequity, but
ultimately it's not the goal
as for the cities we have right salary, we will live with them. We cannot
live for them thus, while effort will go into improving what we have,
great and persistent effort must go into the development parallel to the
condemned patterns of new systems, coherent with man's needs. Some of the
many very practical problems in attempting to achieve new cities are the
focus of the fourth and last program. In this series next week on that
program, Palace Hilary talks with an old friend, paul Ylva, soccer
professor of public affairs and urban planning at Princeton University.