WEBVTT 00:00:28.219 --> 00:00:30.219 the condition of man is strictly dependent on environment because man is 00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:37.446 eminently an environmental animal. Man is also eminently a social animal 00:00:37.479 --> 00:00:40.927 and one sees that environment comes close to being preponderantly. The 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:47.307 city. The city is the true concern of architecture, so speaks Pollo salary. 00:00:47.340 --> 00:00:52.307 He sees man a living organism evolving into urban man, part of a new 00:00:52.340 --> 00:00:56.677 organism society. He believes that neither free enterprise nor 00:00:56.710 --> 00:01:00.847 practicality, what he calls the savage intercourse of forces that 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:04.436 presently build and rebuild our cities is going to give man the urban 00:01:04.469 --> 00:01:08.986 environments he really needs. So, Larry proposes guidelines for the new 00:01:09.019 --> 00:01:15.227 environments. Those guidelines are great compactness, great logistical 00:01:15.260 --> 00:01:22.857 flaw, the military of the participant of the citizen. To be able to make 00:01:22.890 --> 00:01:29.286 use of the city. The city is an institution for the citizens and this 00:01:29.319 --> 00:01:36.986 demands physically a great compactness and a reduction of of the area that 00:01:37.019 --> 00:01:40.206 the city's occupies 00:01:40.239 --> 00:01:46.706 and mailing through this compression of things much greater liveliness, 00:01:46.739 --> 00:01:50.007 which somehow indicates for instance, in the ghetto is more life than 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:52.107 suburbia. 00:01:52.140 --> 00:01:57.947 He proposes archaeology architecture plus ecology. Archaeology seeks order 00:01:57.980 --> 00:02:02.197 and harmony with nature rather than the haphazard and wasteful growth. 00:02:02.230 --> 00:02:07.906 That has been our style salary cities would be tall, dense, multi layered 00:02:07.939 --> 00:02:12.006 paolo Soleri discusses the ramifications of archaeology with a variety of 00:02:12.039 --> 00:02:17.506 men from different fields. How do we begin to alter the present situation 00:02:17.539 --> 00:02:21.527 as I see it. Major systems in the society are out of control. We're 00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:26.027 experiencing a fantastic break in history where we're moving with extreme 00:02:26.060 --> 00:02:30.277 rapidity from a an industrial society into something totally new a super 00:02:30.310 --> 00:02:34.747 industrial society or call it what you will, but radically different from 00:02:34.780 --> 00:02:38.666 the past. The major institutions of society are trying to grow up with 00:02:38.699 --> 00:02:42.166 this and they can't so that there are breakdowns of health services, 00:02:42.199 --> 00:02:46.807 transportation services, sanitation services, education services and so on. 00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:49.807 Not just breakdowns in government, but in private industry and in 00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:55.117 international relations and so forth. Given this situation, where does one 00:02:55.150 --> 00:03:02.267 begin to apply what leverage is possible in a democratic way? Well, I 00:03:02.300 --> 00:03:07.656 think we have to be more radical in the sense that we had to stop one 00:03:07.689 --> 00:03:12.846 instance, look back and see what our roots are and then possibly make a 00:03:12.879 --> 00:03:20.879 decision for for an alternate route. And this is this is might be almost 00:03:21.620 --> 00:03:27.707 impossible, but it might be very necessary. 00:03:27.740 --> 00:03:32.647 And of course of your work, you mentioned the key to a lovely city is a 00:03:32.680 --> 00:03:37.147 lovely person and a lovely person is not an accident. Do you think that 00:03:37.180 --> 00:03:41.876 would be the way in which people might organize themselves to live within 00:03:41.909 --> 00:03:44.297 our ecologies? 00:03:44.330 --> 00:03:51.166 Um, well, this is very much to do with the fact that we are defined by the 00:03:51.199 --> 00:03:58.406 environment in a very high degree. We are defined by by a genetic code, 00:03:58.439 --> 00:04:02.186 but then we are defined by the environment, which becomes for us a 00:04:02.219 --> 00:04:10.219 cultural environment. And I think that if you can expose a child not to a 00:04:11.090 --> 00:04:16.277 dirty street, a chaotic and squalid environment, but if you can expose a 00:04:16.310 --> 00:04:24.197 child to wholesome and really inspiring situation for incident, being able 00:04:24.230 --> 00:04:29.207 to open a window and, and and see a landscape which is not cluttered or 00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:33.056 devastated, but it's beautiful. I think this is going to almost 00:04:33.089 --> 00:04:38.447 genetically work into into this charming. It's going to be a, an element 00:04:38.480 --> 00:04:44.217 is going to be positive for him for for good. One of the important initial 00:04:44.250 --> 00:04:48.286 objections that some people have had to Scolari's plans is that somehow 00:04:48.319 --> 00:04:53.056 these extremely complex structures will limit personal freedom. Well, 00:04:53.089 --> 00:04:58.306 personal freedom is makes sense when it becomes the freedom of the society 00:04:58.339 --> 00:05:03.246 that the person is part of because if the site is not free in itself, the 00:05:03.279 --> 00:05:07.356 individual is not going to be free. So we are free only as individuals and 00:05:07.389 --> 00:05:13.366 as a collectivity. So when personal freedom becomes a personal license, it 00:05:13.399 --> 00:05:18.656 negates the premises so that there's no freedom in license. There's only 00:05:18.689 --> 00:05:26.689 freedom in inability to be part of a larger system which are the social, 00:05:26.839 --> 00:05:33.236 political, environmental ecological system. Mhm. Crowding may seem to be 00:05:33.269 --> 00:05:37.246 one of the plagues of modern cities, but environmentalists recognize 00:05:37.279 --> 00:05:41.356 different kinds of crowding. And so Larry believes crowding can be a force 00:05:41.389 --> 00:05:45.866 for good. We're always reminded of the enormous densities in a city like 00:05:45.899 --> 00:05:49.577 Hong kong for instance, where where, where they're building new towns 00:05:49.610 --> 00:05:55.397 densities that are very great indeed, without seemingly any detrimental 00:05:55.430 --> 00:05:58.207 effects. 00:05:58.240 --> 00:06:03.127 Well, I had in density in itself doesn't have to be negative. I think 00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:07.906 crowding is a very positive thing, but naturally has to be a crowding 00:06:07.939 --> 00:06:13.277 based on the fact that this, this crowding is producing a certain sap and 00:06:13.310 --> 00:06:16.846 which is what I would call the cultural sap. And if this is absent then 00:06:16.879 --> 00:06:23.327 crowding becomes a cluttering and becomes a negative thing. But crowding 00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:29.976 in a way is is that that kind of condition when man becomes more intensely 00:06:30.009 --> 00:06:34.656 involved in things and it becomes really more more of a manner. I feel. So 00:06:34.689 --> 00:06:39.176 there's a negative crowding and positive crowding salaries idea of three 00:06:39.209 --> 00:06:43.176 dimensionality means that a great deal of what we now have at ground level 00:06:43.209 --> 00:06:47.397 markets, churches, parks, schools would be integrated into his huge 00:06:47.430 --> 00:06:49.707 structures 00:06:49.740 --> 00:06:53.877 by introducing the third dimension in a very substantial way. You would 00:06:53.910 --> 00:06:59.606 define for instance, especially you would define all new kinds of spaces. 00:06:59.639 --> 00:07:05.507 So the visual experiences would be enriched in a very, very large degree. 00:07:05.540 --> 00:07:10.746 Think for instance, and what the views would be from many of the points 00:07:10.779 --> 00:07:15.546 within the city itself, into the cityscape and also from the cityscape out 00:07:15.579 --> 00:07:19.746 into the environment, into the natural environment. Getting from here to 00:07:19.779 --> 00:07:24.577 there in an archaeology does not involve going back to ground level. Our 00:07:24.610 --> 00:07:28.137 present cities are dominated by automobiles, which salary sees as a 00:07:28.170 --> 00:07:34.606 terrible waste. We try to to fight the battle of time by, by speed in the 00:07:34.639 --> 00:07:38.476 cities. You know, we try to conquer space to speed. I think that's a 00:07:38.509 --> 00:07:45.627 mistake and we will never do that because diasporas cannot be Mhm served 00:07:45.660 --> 00:07:49.976 by speed. So we have to shrink distances by the shrinking of distances. We 00:07:50.009 --> 00:07:57.106 we conquered the problem of time and it becomes also a very human kind of 00:07:57.139 --> 00:08:02.116 contest because we started walking again. We reintroduce our biological 00:08:02.149 --> 00:08:07.957 means of moving around. And so many things become much simpler. You know, 00:08:07.990 --> 00:08:12.606 you can reach anywhere within the city by walking by elevator by escalator 00:08:12.639 --> 00:08:17.947 and you can reach outside of the city. Yes, I'm all in favor of walking 00:08:17.980 --> 00:08:22.717 and bicycles. I have only have only used for two means of transportation. 00:08:22.750 --> 00:08:26.527 A bicycle on the rocket. I'm not interested in anything in between. I 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:34.106 wouldn't agree the bicycle is a very good bio technique. 00:08:34.139 --> 00:08:42.139 There is I think here a reliance on a centralized technology, 00:08:42.139 --> 00:08:47.427 the form of technology that allows us transportation now is is a very 00:08:47.460 --> 00:08:54.817 multiple forms which consists of units that consisted in many units. 00:08:54.850 --> 00:08:59.837 So it has many disadvantages. It has perhaps one advantage and that is 00:08:59.870 --> 00:09:05.776 that since their autonomous, their breakdowns are scattered and are not 00:09:05.809 --> 00:09:12.126 necessarily of disastrous consequences. We are are we building in into a 00:09:12.159 --> 00:09:18.276 city of this nature a liability for for 22 failures that are that are more 00:09:18.309 --> 00:09:22.207 serious than they are in general and present now. Well, you have to build 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:27.577 in some red redundant and some auxiliary systems. It's quite evident, but 00:09:27.610 --> 00:09:35.610 I would question this, you know, this disability of this autonomy because 00:09:36.600 --> 00:09:40.516 well suppose that the gasoline for some reason doesn't come into an area. 00:09:40.549 --> 00:09:45.337 Well not only the city but the life is killed. I mean in in one week 00:09:45.370 --> 00:09:50.516 people are going to start dying of starvation or there's another form of 00:09:50.549 --> 00:09:58.457 attendance and not only that but the daily the pay that we I mean the the 00:09:58.490 --> 00:10:06.297 price tag for this kind of autonomy is so fantastic that really to be To 00:10:06.330 --> 00:10:12.236 be realistic, I think it would require require a reshuffling of our 00:10:12.269 --> 00:10:16.516 pattern on a continental basis. And this is not feasible in one day or one 00:10:16.549 --> 00:10:22.657 year or 10 years. But we should try some somehow soon to try better 00:10:22.690 --> 00:10:28.907 parents where the car becomes a nonsense within a maybe a very small area 00:10:28.940 --> 00:10:34.407 and then slowly pushed the car into the into being an instrument for 00:10:34.440 --> 00:10:39.476 leisure instead of being an instrument for work. The designing of whole 00:10:39.509 --> 00:10:44.087 organic systems has never been as critical as it is now. Yet. The history 00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:48.396 of architecture turns up some surprisingly ancient examples of visionary 00:10:48.429 --> 00:10:54.087 planning in the first century, the roman architect Vitruvian as proposed 00:10:54.120 --> 00:10:59.726 Mount Athos as a city literally in the image of man, one hand cradles The 00:10:59.759 --> 00:11:05.307 houses, the other, the city's reservoir men of genius have long indulged 00:11:05.340 --> 00:11:11.366 their dreams for a perfect and complete community Pieter bruegel painted 00:11:11.399 --> 00:11:16.246 the city of Babel A Mega structure that seems to integrate the facets of 00:11:16.279 --> 00:11:21.827 16th century agricultural life all the way to the top. Even far up the 00:11:21.860 --> 00:11:28.687 ramp, the floor is solid earth, a multilevel town by Leonardo da Vinci, 00:11:28.720 --> 00:11:35.537 sidewalks, roads and canals on different strata. A systems approach in the 00:11:35.570 --> 00:11:39.776 quest for greater human efficiency imagined in an age when the pace of the 00:11:39.809 --> 00:11:45.516 city was slow where the explosion of urban centers in the industrial age, 00:11:45.549 --> 00:11:51.726 such dreams became necessities. Grand central terminal new york city is 00:11:51.759 --> 00:11:56.006 depicted in a cutaway view, published by the first serious english 00:11:56.039 --> 00:12:02.136 language town planning journal in Grand Central as in any mega structure. 00:12:02.169 --> 00:12:06.596 The individual loses perspective of where he is in the whole environment. 00:12:06.629 --> 00:12:13.429 Indeed, except from a great distance, the hole is so big it is invisible. 00:12:14.039 --> 00:12:16.039 The self generating city. Edgar shambles designed for road town a 00:12:20.039 --> 00:12:24.667 continuous amalgam of homes and workshops that was to be built between 00:12:24.700 --> 00:12:30.297 Baltimore and Washington transportation is underground promenades on the 00:12:30.330 --> 00:12:34.636 roof and every so often the corridor is interrupted by a civic and 00:12:34.669 --> 00:12:39.587 shopping center, farms would surround the road town and everyone would be 00:12:39.620 --> 00:12:44.626 close to the land. It was to extend itself through the countryside 00:12:44.659 --> 00:12:47.506 indefinitely. 00:12:47.539 --> 00:12:52.266 Visionary architects have often thought in terms of frames to hold easily 00:12:52.299 --> 00:12:56.967 renewable units. As in like Corbusier's plan for the waterfront of Algiers 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:03.337 , a continuous layer of shelves. People would rent space and build as they 00:13:03.370 --> 00:13:08.297 like appointment. Corbusier emphasized by the insertion of a Moorish 00:13:08.330 --> 00:13:11.506 doorway in his design 00:13:11.539 --> 00:13:14.886 after the Second World War, he actually did get a chance to build one of 00:13:14.919 --> 00:13:19.606 his support structure ideas. An apartment house with self contained 00:13:19.639 --> 00:13:24.646 shopping mall and a playground on top, imagine as a frame into which 00:13:24.679 --> 00:13:30.217 dwellings would slip as he said, like champagne bottles into Iraq. It was 00:13:30.250 --> 00:13:35.106 in fact constructed in the ordinary way of poured concrete. 00:13:35.139 --> 00:13:39.077 Other modern architectural schools have been fascinated by the idea of 00:13:39.110 --> 00:13:43.687 interchangeable parts for a city. This design is the work of a group of 00:13:43.720 --> 00:13:49.657 japanese architects. It consists of large service towers around which are 00:13:49.690 --> 00:13:55.707 clustered small units on cantilevered arms. The arms can be moved about 00:13:55.740 --> 00:14:01.307 and the units plugged and unplugged to form new configurations. 00:14:01.340 --> 00:14:05.376 Unrealistic solutions which nevertheless point out the nature of urban 00:14:05.409 --> 00:14:09.947 centers and the options open to future planning includes such designs as 00:14:09.980 --> 00:14:14.976 hands, whole lines, aircraft carrier, a big ship has everything a town 00:14:15.009 --> 00:14:21.047 needs plus an airfield, so why not just dig one into the landscape. Cities 00:14:21.080 --> 00:14:24.526 with critical population and financial problems are under constant 00:14:24.559 --> 00:14:30.197 pressure to sacrifice open land to buildings. Modern technology sometimes 00:14:30.230 --> 00:14:34.866 makes possible other solutions like the plan to construct over the water 00:14:34.899 --> 00:14:39.427 of new york's Hudson river near the World Trade Center. In this case, the 00:14:39.460 --> 00:14:44.337 new buildings would not displace established residents coming to grips 00:14:44.370 --> 00:14:47.797 with the fact that concentrated populations must continue to maintain 00:14:47.830 --> 00:14:51.707 their environments even while new environments are built, Yona Friedman 00:14:51.740 --> 00:14:57.276 proposes a huge framework for the city of tunis. While roads, dwellings 00:14:57.309 --> 00:15:02.496 and shops are built in this framework, life goes on below gradually people 00:15:02.529 --> 00:15:08.157 move up into the new city, Friedman has a similar plan for paris. The 00:15:08.190 --> 00:15:12.537 desire to maintain the old city while the new one is built characterizes a 00:15:12.570 --> 00:15:18.317 good deal of the large scale planning proposed today stratus system. The 00:15:18.350 --> 00:15:23.226 theoretical proposition for renewing any large metropolis was worked out 00:15:23.259 --> 00:15:28.907 by a fairly conservative architectural firm. Step by step, city, life is 00:15:28.940 --> 00:15:33.217 moved up above ground level. The new structures are supported on a 00:15:33.250 --> 00:15:38.957 framework of girders neighborhoods, families and clans are kept as intact 00:15:38.990 --> 00:15:45.667 as possible Below them. There old 10ements are cleaned out. 00:15:45.700 --> 00:15:50.596 This procedure is followed in one area after another. Large buildings 00:15:50.629 --> 00:15:56.596 sloped to meet the sun are joined by elevated walks and streets. 00:15:56.629 --> 00:16:00.947 In the final result, transportation is at ground level service levels 00:16:00.980 --> 00:16:06.587 above that, shops in areas with only marginal light and dwellings on the 00:16:06.620 --> 00:16:08.606 top. 00:16:08.639 --> 00:16:13.226 This scheme is said to be possible with the technology now at hand in 00:16:13.259 --> 00:16:17.626 these plans, the uncompromising vision of a perfect city has given way to 00:16:17.659 --> 00:16:22.756 practical considerations. Yet these architects share a tradition in 00:16:22.789 --> 00:16:27.317 designing for millions of people, they forced themselves beyond the 00:16:27.350 --> 00:16:31.157 building of better buildings, they become concerned with whole 00:16:31.190 --> 00:16:36.807 environments by training, I am an environmentalist, 00:16:36.840 --> 00:16:41.447 so called architect and I feel strongly that unless we are able to do to 00:16:41.480 --> 00:16:45.986 define a better physical environment, we are going to defeat our efforts 00:16:46.019 --> 00:16:50.486 into finding a better social environment because it seems that there is 00:16:50.519 --> 00:16:53.726 always some kind of a precedence 00:16:53.759 --> 00:16:59.437 of the instrument that is going to serve a certain function and in a way, 00:16:59.470 --> 00:17:04.947 not vice versa. So my concern is very much of how we can improve the 00:17:04.980 --> 00:17:10.657 environment so that the performance of the town might become better, which 00:17:10.690 --> 00:17:15.177 means the performance of the people for themselves and for the social 00:17:15.210 --> 00:17:21.486 system. Right now. I think that you're right, but I think it's a question 00:17:21.519 --> 00:17:27.897 of which comes first. I've read of course about some of your work. The 00:17:27.930 --> 00:17:34.486 real question is not so much the, the pros and cons of the visionary work 00:17:34.519 --> 00:17:38.476 that you've done. The real question is whether or not we can put it into 00:17:38.509 --> 00:17:45.536 practice and the people that make the decisions are not us, engineers and 00:17:45.569 --> 00:17:51.607 architects really, we could come up with the best system available for, 00:17:51.640 --> 00:17:55.546 for the quality of life and how people live unless we can get those people 00:17:55.579 --> 00:18:00.637 who make the decisions to adopt the ideas that we have, then we end up 00:18:00.670 --> 00:18:06.566 with just a plan. Well, it seems to me that in general we don't, we don't 00:18:06.599 --> 00:18:10.927 have an idea of what we want, which I found very stifling because if we 00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:14.766 don't know where we're going, we are not going anywhere. So it seems to be 00:18:14.799 --> 00:18:21.107 very important that we are able to define a goal to begin with. An idea, 00:18:21.140 --> 00:18:26.627 not a mortgage is hilarious dream. We need a plan that considers the 00:18:26.660 --> 00:18:31.766 ultimate goal. We need a flexible plan which we will test fully aware of 00:18:31.799 --> 00:18:37.006 the tests often fail. The logistics of our cities don't work yet. We tax 00:18:37.039 --> 00:18:41.236 them harder and harder, improve them piecemeal and pay for them dearly. 00:18:41.269 --> 00:18:45.857 Every hour of every day. A prototype archaeology would be expensive to be 00:18:45.890 --> 00:18:52.306 sure. But can we afford not to build one? We also have to consider costs 00:18:52.339 --> 00:19:00.339 and these kinds of projections and being mayor of a city where we have 00:19:01.140 --> 00:19:07.467 very serious financial problems. We have all we can do just to hang on 00:19:07.500 --> 00:19:12.826 where we are. You see, mm hmm, how do we deal with the, the physical 00:19:12.859 --> 00:19:20.859 change necessary on a financial basis? Well, it's a it's a vicious cycle 00:19:21.140 --> 00:19:26.496 circle. And the answer I think would be only in an emergency, some kind of 00:19:26.529 --> 00:19:30.246 of a national emergency that we would accept as we accept the emergency of 00:19:30.279 --> 00:19:34.917 war or something like that. And then we could start really to not to patch 00:19:34.950 --> 00:19:41.046 and survive but develop, evolve and create. And somehow we are paying now 00:19:41.079 --> 00:19:48.167 the for what our fathers and the fathers, our fathers did. And unless we 00:19:48.200 --> 00:19:52.717 are trying to go just beyond somehow, the critical phase we're in, we are 00:19:52.750 --> 00:19:58.726 doing the same thing for our Children, our grandchildren and they to to 00:19:58.759 --> 00:20:04.306 ignore As systematically the fact that there is a future that is not just 00:20:04.339 --> 00:20:09.097 going to be the future of tomorrow. The future of 2030, 50 years from now 00:20:09.130 --> 00:20:14.786 is to keep somehow a status quo, which is disastrous. So we have to manage 00:20:14.819 --> 00:20:20.236 two things. One is to survive. As you said, the best we can and the other 00:20:20.269 --> 00:20:28.269 one is to be able to look a little further and tie our best two define a 00:20:29.109 --> 00:20:35.937 future right now that it might be more, might be more awful because keep 00:20:35.970 --> 00:20:41.006 things going is not sufficient. We are not just that kind of creatures 00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:46.907 unless there is more hope than that. We become cynical and we are, we 00:20:46.940 --> 00:20:53.036 become suicidal and so on. And this is great danger that we are in Now. We 00:20:53.069 --> 00:20:57.536 made very much get what we asked for and the fact that we are not able to 00:20:57.569 --> 00:21:02.407 see the emergency speaks very poorly of what we are and what we asked for. 00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:05.677 So I really think that it's it's an ethical problem that we are faced 00:21:05.710 --> 00:21:11.407 with. We don't want to understand where the real humaneness of mankind is. 00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:17.296 And by doing this, we are sitting on a dynamite box. 00:21:17.329 --> 00:21:22.016 The future of urban man is of course much discussed in our time. Celery 00:21:22.049 --> 00:21:26.387 has no corner on solutions yet. His vision utterly denies the assumptions 00:21:26.420 --> 00:21:30.447 on which so much of the most respectable current thinking is based Here 00:21:30.480 --> 00:21:34.756 are two examples. First from Science magazine, a forum published by the 00:21:34.789 --> 00:21:39.306 American Association for the Advancement of Science. An editorial state 00:21:39.339 --> 00:21:44.207 quote, the disease is simply too many people in areas that are too small. 00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:48.506 Why cannot people live wherever they wish and congregate electronically 00:21:48.539 --> 00:21:52.526 sight. Sound. The sense of touch and in the near future, even the sense of 00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:57.707 smell can be transmitted anywhere in the world. Unquote, how different is 00:21:57.740 --> 00:22:02.786 Scolari's view? I think people have have different views as to what the 00:22:02.819 --> 00:22:08.137 city should be, what what it should provide or whether something should be 00:22:08.170 --> 00:22:11.006 provided to it. 00:22:11.039 --> 00:22:18.137 Well, if the city was only a tool for for affluence, I would say that it's 00:22:18.170 --> 00:22:23.857 very unimportant we might get away from it. But if the city is that 00:22:23.890 --> 00:22:29.516 specific place, that cityscape, that man made landscape, well, the 00:22:29.549 --> 00:22:34.976 institutions that makes civilization can survive and develop, then the 00:22:35.009 --> 00:22:39.296 city becomes the most important instrument that we have to to really 00:22:39.329 --> 00:22:44.746 produce a better life for mankind. And apparently, if you take away from 00:22:44.779 --> 00:22:48.677 history, the history of the cities and the towns and the villages, you're 00:22:48.710 --> 00:22:53.617 somehow cancel civilization itself. So the concept of the city is 00:22:53.650 --> 00:22:58.927 absolutely fundamental and central to the development of civilization, of 00:22:58.960 --> 00:23:05.786 culture, of men as a person in men as a group. I'm I'm sure that the model 00:23:05.819 --> 00:23:11.877 of the future is going to be don't communicate, communicate. And this idea 00:23:11.910 --> 00:23:16.776 is now getting around very widely. I've seen Dr. Peter Goldmark has just 00:23:16.809 --> 00:23:22.046 given us a beach on this saying that 90% of the things you need to can be 00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:26.496 obtained through communications consoles in in the in your home. And I'm 00:23:26.529 --> 00:23:30.016 sure this is the pattern of the future that we work through these consoles 00:23:30.049 --> 00:23:34.016 and very much little traveling for business, although we still travel 00:23:34.049 --> 00:23:37.447 across as much as you want for pleasure. What about learning though? Can 00:23:37.480 --> 00:23:40.336 you can you learn only by sitting in front of a concept? No, you must 00:23:40.369 --> 00:23:44.536 interact with people. But I think suspect that pretty well all the 00:23:44.569 --> 00:23:49.367 learning such as it is, it's done in schools today. It could be obtained 00:23:49.400 --> 00:23:53.826 through a concert with interaction. Well yeah, but it is in school somehow 00:23:53.859 --> 00:23:58.897 at a very raw kind of remote information. You know what shouldn't the 00:23:58.930 --> 00:24:04.167 school be environmental so that the child is in the environment and learn 00:24:04.200 --> 00:24:07.506 through the environment through his own senses and so on. Our schools. Our 00:24:07.539 --> 00:24:12.806 educational systems are obviously appallingly inefficient 00:24:12.839 --> 00:24:16.756 because I I really see that the the city, the structure of the city as the 00:24:16.789 --> 00:24:21.806 main learning device not just for Children but for adults and everybody. 00:24:21.839 --> 00:24:29.667 And my fear is that if we if we go too far in in teaching our ourselves to 00:24:29.700 --> 00:24:34.766 remote kind of information but just by feeling directly into the brain, we 00:24:34.799 --> 00:24:40.256 might come up with a savage mind which is a very well informed mind but 00:24:40.289 --> 00:24:46.187 totally abstract because it has not was never able to connect the the 00:24:46.220 --> 00:24:50.776 intellectual aspect of things with the with the actual performance of 00:24:50.809 --> 00:24:55.516 things so that we might end up by having some kind of a roboticist 00:24:55.549 --> 00:25:01.127 intelligence very sharp, very powerful but extremely dangerous in a way, 00:25:01.160 --> 00:25:07.306 savage complexity and miniaturization lie at the heart of salaries vision. 00:25:07.339 --> 00:25:11.877 Yet the establishment experts always favor decentralization example 00:25:11.910 --> 00:25:16.296 number two, writing a lead article in a highly esteemed magazine 00:25:16.329 --> 00:25:20.246 Scientific american. In an issue given over entirely to the best thinking 00:25:20.279 --> 00:25:25.147 on cities. An internationally famous urban planner concludes that quote, 00:25:25.180 --> 00:25:29.476 the most realistic of the many proposals is the finger metropolis, a 00:25:29.509 --> 00:25:34.556 nucleus city with long strings of towns radiating from it. The author then 00:25:34.589 --> 00:25:38.586 goes on to consider the necessary political changes in tax ramifications 00:25:38.619 --> 00:25:43.147 and a national housing policy to eliminate segregation. Now, of course 00:25:43.180 --> 00:25:47.627 salaries ideas are squarely against this supposedly realistic continuation 00:25:47.660 --> 00:25:52.576 of urban sprawl, but even more than that, his ideas abruptly radicalized 00:25:52.609 --> 00:25:57.036 all the argumentation about tax and real estate problems. He is looking 00:25:57.069 --> 00:26:02.056 further ahead. Does he assume too much 00:26:02.089 --> 00:26:04.986 in your, in your book? You quote, you say if there is no mention of 00:26:05.019 --> 00:26:09.536 segregated minorities of slum clearance of exploiter and exploited of tax 00:26:09.569 --> 00:26:13.306 unfairness of bosses, um, is because one assumes that in time the skill of 00:26:13.339 --> 00:26:18.157 man will take care of them all, the foundation of equity is thus granted. 00:26:18.190 --> 00:26:22.036 And this is what I was getting at, is assumed an awful lot. Well, the 00:26:22.069 --> 00:26:26.697 point I was making there is that we seem to be saying now that once we 00:26:26.730 --> 00:26:29.806 have reached this plateau of equity, we are going to be happy forever 00:26:29.839 --> 00:26:34.947 after. And my point is, yes, we are saying that it seems to me and I think 00:26:34.980 --> 00:26:38.947 that's a fallacy. It's it's an incredible fallacy because we are not going 00:26:38.980 --> 00:26:44.266 to be anything but happy animals, if this is, if this is really the 00:26:44.299 --> 00:26:48.197 plateau really want to reach. So I think it's very dangerous to work very 00:26:48.230 --> 00:26:52.326 hard for something that it's only a maintenance kind of problem at the, at 00:26:52.359 --> 00:26:58.256 the end. Yeah, if we have anything above an immorality, we have to reach 00:26:58.289 --> 00:27:02.586 this Plateau of Equity. I mean, we have to be able to to behave as 00:27:02.619 --> 00:27:08.407 brothers and so on and on. But if this is this is the goal, well, I'm 00:27:08.440 --> 00:27:12.286 afraid we're not going to go very far, the goal is really to become this 00:27:12.319 --> 00:27:16.717 kind of society that we can really create a new universe. Wouldn't you say 00:27:16.750 --> 00:27:20.107 though? Another goal was to try and give each man and as much freedom 00:27:20.140 --> 00:27:25.937 within within a society? Yes, I think that's a reasonable goal to work for. 00:27:25.970 --> 00:27:31.847 Yes. So that this man can really, in a way explode into a new universe 00:27:31.880 --> 00:27:39.880 mentally and with its own passions and so on, but to become just quiet, 00:27:43.339 --> 00:27:49.806 healthy and well behaved and well fed creatures, this is not really a 00:27:49.839 --> 00:27:54.687 great, it's great now at this point because there is so much inequity, but 00:27:54.720 --> 00:27:58.957 ultimately it's not the goal 00:27:58.990 --> 00:28:04.256 as for the cities we have right salary, we will live with them. We cannot 00:28:04.289 --> 00:28:08.907 live for them thus, while effort will go into improving what we have, 00:28:08.940 --> 00:28:12.286 great and persistent effort must go into the development parallel to the 00:28:12.319 --> 00:28:17.836 condemned patterns of new systems, coherent with man's needs. Some of the 00:28:17.869 --> 00:28:21.927 many very practical problems in attempting to achieve new cities are the 00:28:21.960 --> 00:28:26.546 focus of the fourth and last program. In this series next week on that 00:28:26.579 --> 00:28:30.736 program, Palace Hilary talks with an old friend, paul Ylva, soccer 00:28:30.769 --> 00:28:35.490 professor of public affairs and urban planning at Princeton University.