THE TOWN SCAPE 85 



Quality today can only be produced by the full use of the conscious 

 design process. This is more than a planning process; although it 

 includes planning, it also involves positive, creative action. It is 

 essential that the design process be invoked at the beginning and not 

 come after many decisions have been made. It must encompass 

 the total area under consideration and must be involved with the 

 continuity of space and time. 



We have to concentrate on the autonomy and responsibility of the 

 designer. The city has to become a client of good design. We are 

 going to have to remove a lot of arbitrary, negative restrictions which 

 limit the design process on the theory that it is not reliable. Stand- 

 ards, codes, rules and regulations are essentially efforts to bypass 

 design. Instead of these, we must obtain competent personnel to 

 perform design and require them to police themselves in a respon- 

 sible way. 



We must realize that quality in the townscape is more than func- 

 tional, utilitarian, scientific, or rational. It is also poetic, lyric, 

 romantic, classic, subjective, intuitive all those words that are so 

 hard for practical people to live with. 



Trees are a measure of urban culture and liveability. Their re- 

 quirements are similar to the requirements of people, in light, air, and 

 space. But you cannot salvage an urban environment by squeezing 

 trees into it. The trees have to be an integral part of the original 

 planning, which is something we rarely see. 



If you look at general education in America you will find a lot 

 of material on the quality and quantity of the social environment 

 and on the quantity but not the quality of the physical environ- 

 ment. Yet, taste and interest in the quality of the environment is an 

 acquired factor. We are not born with it and we cannot expect the 

 American public to become good clients of urban design unless 

 material is introduced at all levels of their education to help them 

 develop this interest. 



I think, finally, that we need in all urban areas what might be 

 called a community development agency, which might be a new 

 body or might develop from a municipal planning body. This would 

 be concerned in a positive way with all elements in the local land- 

 scape, not in a fragmentary way as, for instance, redevelopment 

 agencies are. It would be concerned with the future rather than 

 the past, although not neglecting the best of what now exists. 



