The City Time of Decision (1967)

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey. [Music] This is the rhythm of a city. Any big city anywhere. In this case, it is an American city. Yet, its problems and potentials are shared by cities all over the world. Today, American cities are facing a crisis. They are running a high fever of unplanned growth. They are overcrowded and overwhelmed. For the first time, Americans are beginning to seriously examine how their cities got that way. [Music] To raise a log cabin on the shores of a strange new world took only a few days. To build a trading post required months. But to build a city takes time. Time for seasoning and character. This was the new world. This was America in the 1600s. Settlers from Europe brought their own culture and traditions. Slowly they built communities which reflected their tastes and ideas. [Applause] The settlements along the eastern seabboard soon changed from frontier villages into towns with plazas and boulevards. Places of worship decorated the avenues. Universities, town halls, and museums were built. By 1770, Philadelphia was second in size only to London in the English-speaking world. [Music] More people were drawn to the beckoning freedom of the new land. Cities began to grow with increasing speed. Buildings got high, wide, and less handsome. The big squeeze was on. [Music] Some cities were designed in a prevailing grand manner. Washington DC was planned with broad avenues converging on the capital. Other cities like New York were laid out in a grid iron pattern, a crossing of avenues and streets, organized, efficient, and unmistakably American. [Music] disaster struck these cities of wood and they were rebuilt in brick. Pledges were made to build them bigger and better. Building and rebuilding brought more people to town, more jobs, more money, more people. They came by the thousands from neighboring farmlands. They came by the millions from all over the world. 1900 ushered in the age of practical inventions. Electricity brought power and light and wires. The telephone added communications and more wires to the tangle above the streets. Elevated trains supplied mass transportation and plenty of noise. The city of commerce became a center of manufacturing. Peaceful and clean neighborhoods were soon threatened with smoke and clamor. Those who could afford it moved to better neighborhoods and abandoned their homes to newcomers, immigrants, and the poor. The skyscraper was born of the increasing need for space. With the use of steel construction and the elevator, Americans began to build vertically. Buildings grew taller and taller. Only the sky was the limit. [Music] [Applause] [Music] The automobile brought a new pace to city life. People were able to move farther, faster, and more comfortably. The personal vehicle became a mass transportation system which crowded the wide avenues of the past. These were the early years of the mobile society. Cities acquired a new shape and a new size. As they grew, their problems became more and more acute. The city had become a [Music] metropolis. Today, the United States is an urban nation. Seven out of 10 Americans live in cities. The future of the American people, as with all peoples, will be determined in the city. This is a time of decision. For the first time, the United States is making a nationwide commitment to make the city a better place to live. For the first time ever, all the problems of urban living are being attacked at once. Slums, traffic, pollution, and crowding. Heat. Heat. The first battle against urban blight was fought with the bulldozer. Urban renewal was a quick remedy for the ills of housing. Boston built a handsome civic center. To give new life to the central city, Pittsburgh built an important downtown commercial center. Hartford built a great plaza above the streets. Cars conveniently park in the garages below. The sunlet space is strictly for pedestrians. Downtown Hartford means not only an active business center, it also means a quiet place to relax. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] in Hartford as in other cities. Urban renewal often meant radical surgery. Run-down neighborhoods were replaced with glistening high-rise apartments. The results were immediate but controversial. Too often, displaced residents could not afford to return to the shiny new apartments. The city lost something, too. The nourishing roots of neighborhood life. In the search for solutions, urban renewal was just a first step. [Music] In traditional parts of American cities like Boston's Beacon Hill, citizens maintain the charm and integrity of historic communities. They have learned that not everything old must be torn down. So a new remedy for the ills of housing has come into widespread use. Curing by healing, rehabilitation instead of removal. Federal funds and private corporations provide the means. Local governments and citizens groups make the decisions. With rehabilitation, communities remain intact. People improve their own homes and their own neighborhood. Do-it-yourself painting and fixing works well with small family dwellings, but often deterioration is too serious for smallcale repair. Rehabilitation of large tenementss requires experimenting with new techniques. This is instant rehab. It is one way that new technology is used to renovate old buildings. First, the inside of the building is gutted out. Then, packaged units containing modern kitchen and bathroom facilities are lowered through the roof into each apartment. [Applause] With the use of instant rehab, residents are not uprooted. The same families returned to their apartments in just two days. I know. By trial and error, by searching out and applying new methods, the urban scene has been brightened. But improved housing is only part of a new effort to save the city. [Applause] In recent years, over 35 million Americans have moved to the suburbs at the edge of the city. They hope to escape from the traffic, noise, and confusion of urban life. In fact, they have created a new problem. The problem of moving millions of commuters to and from the city every day. [Music] Thank you. There are 80 million cars on American roads and A million more are added every year. If all the automobiles in the United States were put bumper to bumper, they would stretch eight times around the Earth, which is often how it looks to many a traffic jammed motorist. Most major cities in the world are developing hardening of the traffic arteries bumperto-bumper. Pure Air polluting rush hour traffic has become a way of life. Cities everywhere are searching for an answer. [Applause] To ease highway traffic and save space downtown, a new type of mass transit system is being developed in Pittsburgh. The cars comfortably carry as many people as a 100 automobiles. The train speeds quietly on rubber tires and its electric motor does not contaminate the city with gasoline fumes. There is no driver. The system is safely controlled by an electronic computer. Highway traffic can also be controlled. In Detroit, traffic specialists regulate the flow of automobiles using television monitors. Their speed signals are a step toward the remote control highway guide systems of the near future. 15. Go ahead. 261. 261 to base. 2611. Standby. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Civilization creates waste. Most of the wastes are poured into the air. This is the air we breathe. In the United States alone, the power that runs factories, moves transportation, heats homes, annually pours 140 million tons of pollutants into the air. Billowing smoke stacks, which once symbolized prosperity, are now a sign of peril. In American cities, air pollution has reached a dangerous level. Motor vehicles are among the most serious offenders. Cars, trucks, and buses contribute as much pollution as all other sources combined. Their fumes may just annoy some, but others are more seriously affected. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Medical research has established the relationship between air pollution and public health. Tests have linked air pollution with pneumonia, tuberculosis, empythema, and lung cancer. As pollution rises, so does the sickness and death rate. For years, smoke and soot from steel mills darkened the Pittsburgh sky. Today, this center of industry is one place where pollution is being controlled. Continuous protests from citizens condemning the rising pollution brought about legislation to end the era of a black city. Nearby power plants and steel mills were required to limit their smoke. As the air was cleaned, a new initiative came to Pittsburgh. The result was Gateway Plaza, an extensive urban redevelopment and a new business center. At this steel plant in Pittsburgh, smoke is reduced through the use of electrostatic filters. These filters separate chemical waste from the air. Trucks now cart away tons of dust which otherwise would have poisoned the [Applause] air. The smokeless stack of the atomic energy plant represents another promising answer to air pollution. More and more power is being produced for industry and household and atomic plants throughout the country. The development of nuclear fuel can guarantee mankind the right to clean air. Civilization caused pollution. Now civilization will have to get rid of it. Pollution, slums, and traffic do not trouble the citizens of new towns. This is Reston, one of 70 new towns being built throughout the United States. It represents a new concept in urban planning. Reston is a self-supporting community complete with industry, commercial centers, and attractive housing. Restston is set in the rolling land outside Washington DC. People can choose to live in high-rise apartments near the plaza or small family houses clustered around a man-made lake. Industry doesn't pollute the air. It is separated from residential areas by a green belt of permanent parkland. Cars are restricted to the town's [Music] perimeter. There is no traffic problem in Reston. Schools, shops, cultural facilities, and even some jobs are within walking distance. For safety and convenience, people on foot are separated from people in cars. [Music] Please, please. [Music] New towns like Reston have shown the potentials of intelligent urban planning. Reston is considered rather exceptional now. Perhaps one day its concepts and comforts will be typical of all new cities. [Applause] like a puppy. Like a puppy. Yeah. Every 12 seconds, a new American is born. Every 12 seconds, the pressure of growing population becomes more acute. Every 12 seconds, a newborn citizen asks, "Do you have hospitals ready for me? Do you have enough recreation facilities, beaches, and parks? Do you have enough playgrounds, kindergartens, and elementary schools for all of us? Will you have enough space in colleges, universities, and other places of learning? Will society assure me all the rights of citizenship? And when I grow old, will there be a place to enjoy my years in dignity, in social [Applause] security, a new American is born every 12 seconds. There will be millions more by the end of this century. Nearly all of them will live in the city. Architects and city planners are already developing new ideas for the city of the future. They are exploring new designs, shapes, and materials to fit the needs of man in the 21st century. Linear cities, mega structures, platform towns in the air, high-speed transportation corridors, fumeless electrical automobiles. These are on the agenda of future city living. Today, a new awareness to the problems of urban living has challenged the nation. The American city has come to its time of decision. Americans are seeking answers to problems which face their cities and cities all over the world. Although architects, scientists, and city planners have improved the American urban scene, they do not claim to know all the answers. They do know, however, that nothing they have ever done in the past will be good enough for the future.