SIGURD F. OLSON 147 



kind of money, brains and organization, guidance and leadership 

 that we now seem to be throwing into the arms race. Only with a 

 similar sense of urgency, under dedicated and inspired leadership, 

 can this be done. Only through education and subsequent govern- 

 ment action can the problem be solved permanently. It will take an 

 enormous effort and all the ingenuity we possess. The tragedy of the 

 situation is that as yet there is no sense of urgency and no leadership 

 that might bring about powerful governmental support and financing. 



We are confronted with a situation where urban growth is so fast, 

 changes coming so swiftly, that we cannot wait for the slow processes 

 of education. New cities are mushrooming without any planning, 

 great housing and industrial developments going on with no thought 

 for breathing spaces, parks or recreational needs generally. Already 

 the need is being felt in suburbia, but still there is no design, no city 

 or community planning, the result being confusion and subsequent 

 loss of social values. In the city of Washington there is even serious 

 consideration of sacrificing park areas for expressways. The bull- 

 dozers of big contractors, real estate operators, and industrial engi- 

 neers are dictating the shape of cities of the future and the way a 

 people must live. There is no thought of living "in the flow of na- 

 ture." Urban man has thrown plans to the winds and is living a 

 catch-as-catch-can existence dominated by impermanence, speed, and 

 fluidity of movement. He is divorcing himself from the earth, and in 

 this divorcement he is losing contact with elemental and spiritual 

 things, his sense of oneness with his environment, psychological and 

 physiological needs for which he has been conditioned for a million 

 years by an entirely different existence. Ecological adjustments and 

 adaptations take aeons of time. They do not take place in the short 

 space of a few generations. Man is not yet ready for a capsule exist- 

 ence in a highly organized and artificial world, removed from the 

 privilege of living close to the earth and experiencing the forces of 

 nature and living in harmony with them. 



It is wonderful to have national parks and forests to go to, but 

 they are not enough. It is not enough to make a trip once a year or 

 to see these places occasionally over a long week-end. We need to 

 have places close at hand, breathing spaces in cities and towns, little 

 plots of ground where things have not changed; green belts, oases 



