Middle Atlantic Region, The

I [Music] [Music] we [Music] [Music] the Middle Atlantic region isn't very big compared to some other areas of the country but we have more of almost everything here more people more productivity and more problems here we really live in a super City stretching along the Atlantic seab board to understand our region it takes a special point of view I'm a television reporter most days I spend going around the city trying to find out what's going on and to illustrate it with Motion Picture film being a reporter is a splendid way to find out about this part of the country to get some kind of overview I cover all sorts of events out in the street indoors Outdoors Uptown downtown to me this area of the country is cities they're all separate but they all share a lot too the same way of living many of the same difficulties housing social welfare Public Services like hospitals and garbage collection the kinds of problems I report about in my work despite all the problems of the city I wouldn't live anywhere else because there's a variety and excitement I don't think I could find someplace else some of the excitement in our region comes from the feeling that everything is on the Move we've developed a transportation Network that can move people and goods wherever they need to go I would say that this really is a transportation capital of the country on the Eastern Seaboard as an independent trucker having a fleet of four tractors and eight trailers we pick up the raw materials and deliver them to the C the manufacturer and trucking brings and takes just about every commodity that we use from clothing to food to uh uh lotions or Pharmaceuticals or medicine it has to be brought somewhere or somehow by a truck being a black man the doors are not open to us as commonly as they are to the other whites who have trucks as I do the name of the game in the trucking business is dependability courtesy and proven to your customer that you can be on [Music] [Applause] time to be a businessman you have to go to the bank and establish good credit and if the bank thinks that you are a good risk they will allow you to have the amount which you need which of course is in turn keeping the business rolling and successful business flourishes when there's a big banking center to provide money and expertise and here in this region we have Wall Street the financial heart of the country of the world in fact the Middle Atlantic region acts as a magnet that attracts business people and bankers and can support a cultural community of artists and writers and musicians as well [Music] I'm a concert pianist there's such a concentration of cultural life in this part of the country there are at least three of the world's great orchestras there are opera companies ballet companies theaters films it's all here I'm from California but I came here to study with one of the world's great teachers and I decided to stay and now I'm raising my family here if I love the walks down the broad Avenues I love to look at the shops uh look at the galleries or who knows 20 25 plays to be seen that night or or eight concerts to go to or or endless movies that's a pretty exciting thing to me and living 5 minutes from Carnegie Hall or Fisher Hall in New York uh puts it all there uh with within the easiest reach New York is special it really offers everything to the artist it can't help but stimulate me and my own work our area of the country is not only a center for business and the Arts it's a Communication Center as well one way the Arts and business work together is advertising I'm primarily a writer I write magazine ads and television commercials the Middle Atlantic region does have most of the big advertising agencies and all of our most important clients it's really a magnet that attracts the kind of people whose special talents help me do my job better I work with the best art directors the best photographers graphic designers printers actors some people complain that the East dominates the Communications business too much that we're trying to sell say a New York look to the rest of the country but I think we're just trying to sell a product I would be absolutely miserable moving out of the city I'm not a commuter we live on Central Park and it's it's like having the biggest backyard in the whole world I love the dirt I love the screaming the yelling the buses the fire engines the ambulances whatever it is coming down the street and of course having a Child in the City opens up even more things to you you you end up doing things that you don't do as an adult that are enormous fun I'm sure a lot of people move out of the city because of their kids I don't feel that I have to do that I think that Claudia is going to get kind of life that we have and more than that I can't offer her I don't want to change my lifestyle to bring her up and I must say my experiences have been awfully good in the city to me the city is nothing but a jungle mainly because I do have children and it's really no place for any child to grow up in there are a lot of burglaries and addicts in the neighborhood you can't stop children from finding out about things like this but you don't have to expose them to it either if I could get away today or tomorrow I would move in a hurry I'm what people call a welfare mother and a welfare mother is simply a mother who has to go on welfare because she's not able to go out and go to work welfare and public assistance is the same thing they give you money every two weeks the city gets the money from taxpayers money as they say it being on welfare is really no picnic because they really just give you enough just to pay rent and buy food it makes me feel very bad to have to go and stand online and feel like you're begging for something but that's the way welfare makes you feel like you have to beg them in order to get what you want I got on public assistance after my husband and I separated and uh it was hard to go out and I worked for a while but it's very hard to have somebody to take care of a baby and pay rent or whatever and at that time you didn't make that much like you do now when my daughter's old enough to go to school I like to go back to school too but right now I feel that my place is here at home with my children and I couldn't be here without [Music] welfare life in a city can be hard but cities offer special opportunities too in the last century millions of European immigrants have come to our region looking for a new life struggling to survive one recent group has come from the islands of the Caribbean especially Puerto Rico this is an area of the city called alario where many Puerto Rican come to live here they can speak Spanish eat their favorite can of F and listen to Spanish [Music] music to be honest alario is a slum it is very hard to be a Puerto Rican in the city but not like it used to be it is against the laone now to discriminate openly but they still do it in jobs in housing in almost everything but not like it used to be [Music] I am an ambulance technician I go out in the ambulance every day people call for help we go out and talk to them and find out what's wrong with them and give them first aid depending on what kind of illness they have most of the people are poor people they don't have nobody to take care of them your blood pressure is normal do you have any problem before no this is the first time yeah okay I'm going to give you some oxygen okay we always try to uh do something for them to help them make me feel really good when we can save somebody's life a lot of these people sometimes uh they call the ambulance when they really don't need an ambulance a lot of old people very Lely they don't find nobody to talk to because they don't have nobody to go andsit then sometimes make make me feel real bad that I can't do nothing to uh help those [Music] people every day in my job I see how important help care is to the people of the city it's really a matter of life or death I can think of anything that is more important when it comes to sanitation I feel it's just as important as the police department or the fire department the water department this is one of the few landfills we have left in Philadelphia and we use this to dump buling material as you can see tires Furniture things like like that everything is throwaway bottles cartons bags years ago junk men would pick up this stuff and sell it but they nobody wants it so we're stuck with the problem of moving everything you see out there hey I'm what they call area supervisor I have an average of about 700 men under me years ago to crashman they were considered do but today it's a good job the dumps are very important to this city in fact we're running outan in fields we have a problem the pollution people won't let us burn and we're trying to get more landfills but uh there just isn't any around this is one of the last few in the city now the only alternative is the uh strip mines up state which the city's working on that there's holes in the ground air can be filled up and a we can dump there for about the next 40 years now if we ever lose that we have a problem there wasn't sanitation you could just imagine yourself what would happen it's a health hazard you'd have disease you'd have trash all over the place to me I think it's most most important thing around and it's never going to slow down in our region just providing basic services like health care and sanitation can create enormous problems sometimes our cities just can't keep up housing begins to deteriorate crime rates go up and everything becomes more expensive as a result many people who can afford it have left the older cities of our region to move to surrounding areas a lot of people have left the oldest cities to move out into what used to be the countryside here we're seeing new cities growing up between the older [Music] ones I work for a company that builds a lot of Housing and we're noticing the difference we're not building many single family homes anymore we're building Garden Apartments and eight and nine story buildings out here in what you to be called the suburbs and most of the people who will live here will not be commuting to work in the city they'll be working all around here we also build industrial parks to accommodate the new businesses that have moved out here theaters have begun to move out universities have begun to be developed now white ples for instance has I don't know 12 department stores people less than and less are dependent upon big city I left Brooklyn when I was 16 to go to college and I haven't returned but uh I still have the sense of a city as a city as New York but to my children and to the kids who have been born in Suburbia since the early 1950s is their city is a very large area where you move around by car there's no way that the suburbs or Rural America is ever going to duplicate the kind of Lifestyle that's in the city in fact I think things are much better in the city now than they were 10 15 years ago and things are not as good in the suburbs as they were 10 or 15 years ago mainly because there are more people out there causing more of a drain on the bilities out there I live in the city frankly because I like the city I lived in the city all my life Philadelphia has has not remained stagnant General cities go through a number of stages first one is growth then there's stagnation and finally Decline and during the 1950s and even a little bit after the second world war in the late 19 middle 1940s Philadelphia started to plan someone has to look at the downtown someone has to look at the schools we can relate to the old you can point to something that's that's contemporary as well [Music] the cities uh of the Eastern Seaboard virtually extend uh from a regional standpoint up and down the entire East Coast certainly uh scientists and planners like to use the term megalopolis and we I guess have a megop today our region is becoming more interconnected our city reach out toward each other and we're still building highways and housing tracks to bring us even closer together since we all depend on each other and we share so many of the same problems we're going to have to keep working together to survive problems like transportation problems of sewage those kind of problems are not just City problems those kind of things are are Regional we don't have a mask at the City Line or a screen that prevents air pollution either coming in or going out from the city so they growing concern a lot more of regional problems but you really have to remember you're dealing with lives and people [Music] I [Music] [Applause]