WEBVTT

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It's the biggest invention we've ever had.

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If you think the 747 is big, look at a city.

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If you think going to the moon is big, look at a city.

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It is where all inventions have come from.

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It's where people meet people.

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It's the most complex series of systems we've yet to devise.

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It's where we have chosen to live for culture, for exchange of ideas.

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This man-made environment that we're all absolutely immersed and submerged in.

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We all live in a yellow submarine.

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Yellow submarine. Yellow submarine.

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And our friends are all aboard.

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Many more of them live next door.

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And the band begins to play.

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We all live in a yellow submarine.

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What's going on? What's going on?

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What's going on?

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What does the word Megopoulos mean to you?

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It sort of sounds like a word that would get you all mixed up.

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I have no idea. None whatsoever.

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Megopoulos?

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Oh boy. New York, Chicago, New Jersey.

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When cities come together and meet and form into just a tremendously sprawling area of urban mess.

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Masses of intertwining cities that have grown so large they're combining and interchanging

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without even knowing which one is which.

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Octopus growth cities are Megalopoulos I think is the exact pronunciation of it though.

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Megalopoulos and Megopoulos mean the same thing.

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A big city getting bigger. One city growing into another.

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Megopoulos. Sounds like a bunch of stuff on the, you know, junk on the ground.

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Megopoulos. The urban environment.

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Vast human settlements called New York or Chicago but stretching beyond.

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The phenomenon of our age. Incubated by technology.

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The city that never stops growing.

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The city is our man-made environment. The world we build and then must live with.

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Today, two-thirds of the American people live in cities.

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In the next 30 years we will double our man-made environment.

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We'll build another New York. Another Los Angeles. Another Chicago.

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Perhaps, if we are smart enough, we will not double our mistakes.

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We must grow in a different way than we've been growing in the past.

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Our institutions are so arranged as to support congestion and inordinate profits based on congestion.

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We have to change that pattern.

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For thousands of years people have lived together in small communities and in relatively small houses

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where they knew their neighbors, where they had daily intercourse with them, they knew them face to face

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as we still do in the country, in country communities.

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Because of the immense profit to be made by the exploitation of real estate in a great city.

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And the bigger the city, the greater the population, the more valuable the real estate.

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We've had the building on a large scale, not merely by individual corporate enterprises,

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by real estate speculators, but by the government itself.

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The problem has just evolved this way and the federal government's contribution, of course, was in effect,

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particularly since World War II, to pay for a great deal of it.

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They built the highways, they paid for the sewer systems,

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federal programs paid for mortgages for homes out in the suburbs,

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though not very many for homes in the central city until recently.

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But this is something that I feel was done without really being conscious of the later impact.

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That's in a sense what I mean by mindlessness.

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In the past, federal programs have contributed a lot to this mindlessness.

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Each man paddling his own canoe has become each man paddling his own automobile.

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Our present system of one man, one car,

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gluts the city with cars and pavement, pollution and congestion.

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In Los Angeles, 67% of downtown land is devoted to cars, and only 33% to people.

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The auto has done us dirty in other ways, too.

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It has become built into our way of life.

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We have built cities and suburbs where automobiles are almost a necessity,

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so spread out that life is nearly impossible without one.

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The unsystematic sprawl of Megapolis is made possible by the private car.

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The automobile itself is probably one of the greatest liberations

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that we in our personal lives have experienced.

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We're now into an era where almost everybody who can afford to has a car.

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In families all over the country, there may be three cars even.

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It's getting to the point, as we all know, where we're choking ourselves.

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We really can't continue this way.

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The automobile's primary advantage is freedom of movement,

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and movement is what a city is all about.

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Architect Paulo Soleri defines a city as

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a plumbing system for the movement of people, ideas and goods.

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Our problem is to design a system that satisfies human needs,

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including the need to move about quickly and pleasantly.

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Several of the country's largest transportation companies are developing people movers,

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cars that operate at the user's command, just as the private automobile does.

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Personal rapid transit systems move quietly on rubber tires or cushions of air.

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The user enters a station and presses a button that indicates his destination.

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A computerized control center dispatches a car that picks him up,

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bypasses other stations, and takes him directly to his destination.

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Once empty, the car is taken to the next station.

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The car is dispatched to other destinations.

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The same car is used again and again by different people.

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The result is more transportation, more movement of people from place to place,

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with less machinery, a movement system that, unlike most of what we have today,

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is both public and pleasant.

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You here to make a personal injury claim against the Transit Authority?

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Excuse me, Mr. Hopkins.

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Now, what was your position at the time of the accident, would you say?

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Prone and squashed.

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Prone and squashed, uh-huh.

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Did you get the identification number of the badge and the driver?

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It's not a badge, it's a badge.

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It's very difficult without that.

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I couldn't see it from where I was.

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But I got the serial number on the engine.

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Oh, yes.

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Yeah, I'll bet you did.

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I'll bet that's emblazoned in your memory, isn't it, Mr. Hopkins?

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Yeah, it's etched on my forehead.

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All right.

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Now, I have to make a diagram here.

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A little picture.

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Yes.

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Now, relative to the bus here, where would you...

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Well, now, you just draw a little stick figure.

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Uh-huh.

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Now, break all the sticks.

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I'll do the drawing.

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Okay, just put it between the wheel and the pavement.

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Right between.

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Oh, between the wheel and the pavement.

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Like a sandwich cookie.

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Uh-huh.

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The pavement was involved in this accident.

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Yeah, it was the bottom part of the cookie.

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Uh-huh.

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In other words, if the pavement would not have been here or there,

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then you would not have incurred an injury, is that correct?

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That's correct.

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That had fallen all the way to China.

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That's what I thought, Mr. Hopkins.

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I'm sorry, but it wasn't our fault.

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It was the pavement's fault.

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Uh-huh.

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Yes, you'll have to go to Bureau of Streets on that.

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Well, how do I get there?

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Well, it's very easy.

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You take the Irving Park bus.

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Oh, no!

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Having been conned into total dependence on the automobile,

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no one could realize the massive problems that would ensue.

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It's not only the automobile, though.

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It's land use, land price.

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Three things that are determined of the shape of our cities today,

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beginning with the permissiveness of the rubber tire,

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and by the way, the invention of the septic tank,

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which allowed people to escape traditional movement systems.

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This caused the Scatteration Sprawl in the,

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we were looking for the greener pasture where the land was cheaper.

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And as we have this suction of dispersal out into the hinterland,

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this boiling the hinterland,

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making it farther away from the people who need to use it,

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recreational and all that,

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we have a counter element which is upward, outward and upward,

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and nothing in between.

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We don't need any more great metropolises.

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In order to make them sufficiently habitable,

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we have to drain some of the population away

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so that realty values will go down.

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And on the new population pattern,

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with a far greater, far more even distribution,

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you'd have better cities all around.

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Even the big ones would be much better.

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There are no easy answers to the problems of the urban environment.

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The pattern of development we have now,

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the mindless proliferation of megalopolitan areas,

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does not work.

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Our problem is to find something that does work.

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If we understood why our problems were sufficient,

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we'd see great growth of cities under 100,000 in population.

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And there'd be great variety among them.

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There'd be villages with no more than 5 or 10,000 people,

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sometimes new villages.

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There'd be other towns with 25 or 50,000 people.

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Basic to the solution of urban problems is the creation of new towns.

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Not dormitory suburbs, but viable, self-contained, and functioning communities.

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Traditional suburbs are really parasitic offshoots of a larger city.

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The employment centers were still in town.

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These were really refuges, escapes from the problems of the larger city.

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I think it's a very sterile way to live,

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and it's counter to what cities have always meant and what they provide,

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which is a human interchange of the utmost diversity.

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The modern automobile-oriented suburb, of course, is...

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Architect Harry Weiss has had occasion to do a lot of thinking about what it takes to make a town.

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His design for a new town is now being built in Park Forest South, Illinois.

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Park Forest South is not going to be an instant Paris or anything of its kind,

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but it will be a community of...

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big enough to encompass many activities, including employment, education.

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It also provides for varying lifestyles and income groups.

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And this is designed in, and so we are in a different kind of new era of community building,

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much more responsible than here before, where the only thing that mattered was the buck.

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The people are going to move to a new town.

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They expect to get something that's a little better, just something like this, a bit of nature.

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We've had a wonderful response.

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People come here, fathers and sons, they come to the town,

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sons, kids fishing.

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You see today the kids are having a fishing contest.

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It's a natural place.

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We have only built this open pavilion and a little pier, and everything else is left alone.

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And people spend, I suppose, most of their time here just walking around and feeling a peace, I hope.

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It seems to me what's happening in this country very clearly,

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that the people are demanding better, they're demanding a more comprehensive plan,

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they're demanding better buildings, they're demanding a greater respect for the environment.

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And the fact, quite simply, we're making a rather substantial bet that that's what people really want,

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and that's why we're building a new community, a totally planned new town to deal with those problems.

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One of the first concerns in any new town is the movement system, how people get around.

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And in that respect, Park Forest South is very sophisticated.

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The town is laced with walkways that dip under main roads.

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Pedestrians and bicyclists can go great distances without ever crossing a street.

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Mass transit systems have been designed into the structure of the town.

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How do you structure any kind of community development?

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Obviously it's the movement system that forms it.

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Why did our early cities grow up on rivers or on harbors?

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Why then did they grow up on railroads?

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Take this diagram of the structure of Park Forest South.

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First the railroad, mainline IC railroad with a new commuter station.

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Then the spinal column of the community.

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These circulators here, which embrace the linear town center,

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and which also are the path of a movement system, which is local.

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Probably like those trains that you see in World's Fair, which are rubber-tired,

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and which after the rush hour, where they would pick up back and forth,

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distributing from the IC station and from the Governor's State University, located here, to the town center.

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Off peak hours, this could be a dial-up bus where these vehicles could then go off into the community

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and pick up people who call.

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The important thing being that the whole town is structured on a movement system.

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It's impossible to drive right through the center of town.

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In this way, the vehicular traffic is not dominating the scene.

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It has to stop and take notice of the fact that this is where the town center is.

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Every community has to have a center.

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Every small town in Europe in the pre-industrial age had a marketplace.

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Here it is a triangular space, approximately 150 on the side and 200 on the hypotenuse.

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And at the very center, apex, is a television antenna, which will be a 10-foot diameter tube,

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which is also sculptured, and on top are the antenna.

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That is very symbolic of communication, sort of the thing that ties invisibly the whole community together,

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in which in former times was the spire of the cathedral.

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A genuine new town needs many attributes, a movement system, industry, employment, education,

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including, if possible, a college, many different kinds of people,

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and a population that is dense enough to support transit and other systems.

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The one thing a new town cannot do without is planning,

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a structure that provides for the spectrum of human needs,

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and which will allow the town to grow and develop in a coordinated way.

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And now, a WOMP-TV editorial.

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For some time now, public apathy toward unchecked urban sprawl has been raging through our community like fire through a dry forest.

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We think it's about time that someone put it out.

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After all, Mr. Citizen, enough is enough.

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This has been a WOMP-TV editorial.

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And now, WOMP-TV presents a reply to a recent editorial.

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Oh yeah? What do you know?

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This has been a reply to a WOMP-TV editorial.

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Apathy has destroyed the city more than wanton destruction.

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I mean, there has to be a change of attitude to save the city.

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You know, Bookie Fuller describes the environment as everything but me.

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And yet, we don't have any part of our education, whether in the schools or without the schools,

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which has to do with this everything but me that I made, or that man made.

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We made all these decisions, and yet we have no sense of how we get at those decisions, how they happen, what the trade-offs were.

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Technology has given us the tools to build cities like there's no tomorrow.

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And because we can, we have, with little thought to the consequences.

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We've continued to play the game the way it's always been played,

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even though technology and time have changed the stakes.

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The ground rules under which we must operate and which developers must act,

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and builders and architects and engineers and all the rest of us involved in this have to play, is rigged.

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Rigged in such a fashion that it's very hard for us to do what ought to be done,

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namely to build socially responsible conditions to the environment that fulfill market need.

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It's very hard to find a townhouse.

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That type of house isn't being built now because the land underneath it is too expensive.

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So that's why the high rises are getting higher and why the suburbs are going out farther.

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There is no shortage of land.

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Chicago is a very undense city.

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It's five times less dense than Paris, 15,000 per square mile versus 75,000.

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There's no question there isn't enough land. It's just the way we use it, the way we manage it.

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I can't say that I'm against profit, but when profit becomes the paramount issue,

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in affairs that affect our total lives together like the whole city,

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I think the profit motive has to be looked at very hard.

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No wonder that in Stockholm the land was always owned by the Crown

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and they started selling it privately in the late 30s and now they're getting it all back.

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Stockholm is publicly owned.

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Amsterdam owned by the Queen.

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Large amounts of urban critical land I think need to be taken out of private control

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in order that we can control the destiny of our cities.

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I won't deny that any developer goes into a development expecting to make a profit.

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I do. My partners certainly do.

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I don't think the desire to make a profit requires that you do things that are inimical

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to urban growth, inimical to the land.

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And only if we're going to be able to develop land use rules, guidelines, controls

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that are binding and effective on all kinds of developers, it's going to make any sense whatsoever.

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I don't resent being held to pretty strict guidelines,

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but I think it's necessary that everybody else be held to some semblance of the same kind of guidelines.

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I believe very strongly that one of the major issues of this decade is going to be urban growth policy,

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a term we don't even understand yet.

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Urban growth is, in the short run, inevitable.

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Expert estimates are that population will continue to increase for at least the next half century.

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If we grow as we have, our problems may be only beginning.

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The uncontrolled explosive expansion of our cities has ridden roughshod over the land

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and ignored many basic human needs.

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The need for life.

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We have a money economy dedicated to expanding power and pecuniary aggrandizement.

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We need an economy in which these things are subordinate to the needs of life.

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The needs of life are, first of all, to be born and to be born under the best possible conditions,

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to be well-nurtured, to be looked after by loving parents and well-disposed neighbors,

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to live in healthy neighborhoods, to have access to all the facilities,

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natural and cultural, that a human being needs to become human.

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The ultimate purpose of such an economy is to humanize man.

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Ours has been a private society, dedicated to private enterprise, private profit,

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private means of transportation, private goods.

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The environment, both natural and man-made, is a public good.

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Public goods are not our first priority, and neither are what Mumford calls the needs of life.

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Consequently, both have taken a back seat.

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As far as our cities are concerned, the economy has been set to produce maximum financial return.

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The profits are downtown, in big office buildings,

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and at the city's growing edge where land value skyrockets.

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Profits at both ends fuel metropolitan growth.

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People frequently get caught in the middle. Megapolis, stuck in high gear.

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And the most frightening thing of all is that nobody is at the wheel.