ABEL WOLM AN 153 



suburbia, the other costs appear in less obtrusive disguises. They are 

 all part of costs, however, which so far are ignored in perpetuating 

 the myth of lower servicing costs and taxes in suburbia. 



All these observations simply reinforce the actions suggested by 

 Dr. Gulick in the last pages of his text. The pleas which I add are 

 simply pleas for more speed of plan, more realism of participation in 

 action, more rather than less improvisation, and far more militancy 

 in public and private discussion of all of the functional issues so dra- 

 matically forced upon us by urbanization. 



As is so often the case, these general observations were so much 

 better stated some thirty years ago by the Committee on the Regional 

 Plan of New York and its Environs, in the following terms: 



Generally speaking planning may be inspired by one of three 

 policies. The two that are easiest to follow in planning for the 

 future are, first, that practical policy which does not extend beyond 

 the concrete and the present, and, second, that idealistic policy that 

 is based solely on the abstract and the future. Under the former 

 policy proposals are made to flow with the current created by es- 

 tablished habits and vested interests; and under the second they are 

 confined to what ought to be, without regard to the limits imposed 

 by unalterable conditions. The one policy lacks soul, and the other 

 flesh and blood, and those who follow them find planning a simple 

 exercise. 



The third, which seeks an ideal based on realities — an ideal 

 shaped by the processes of reason and not by the play of fancy — 

 involves the greater labor but seems to present the only possibility 

 for improving conditions of life and society. . . . An ideal, to be a 

 worthy one, must be capable of being expressed in action; ... To 

 make an ideal real, we must believe it is a good thing to do, but 

 also that it can be done. Because of this, a plan may appear to be of 

 the highest quality in the sphere of what is attainable and yet of 

 comparatively poor quahty in the sphere of what is desirable in the 

 abstract. Life offers ample scope for achievement within the realms 

 of the practical, and greater satisfaction comes from conceiving the 

 smaller things that can be done than in dreaming of ihe larger 

 things that cannot be done. 



NOTE BY DR. GULICK There is no planner in America who has 

 done more for the philosophical, unattainable, perfect solution of the 

 major water resource distributions of the United States than Abel Wolman, 

 who tells us that he is against it. 



I am hopeful in the face of manifest impossibility because I have seen 



