86 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



Mr. SLAYTON. I have noticed there has been no hesitation at all 

 on the part of local officials to come to me and suggest revisions in the 

 urban renewal program, and I have noticed no timidity at all arising 

 out of any worry about offending Federal officials. 



Let me say I do have a worry about offending them. 



I would like to pick up where Mr. Eckbo left off and talk basically 

 about the city organization which is necessary to carry out a beauti- 

 fication program. We can sit here and talk all day, but unless there 

 is an adequate government mechanism to carry out our plans, we 

 will not realize them. 



Mr. Eckbo has suggested some kind of development commission. 

 This is an excellent suggestion and I would like to expand on it. 



First, you have to have a local citizenry which is really interested 

 and really pushing their local officials very hard to get something 

 done. You must then have the public officials themselves. As Mr. 

 Eckbo said, they are clients ; they are the ones who make the decisions 

 on what is is going to be built, how it is going to be built, and what 

 its design will be. It is important that they understand the im- 

 portance of beautification and of good design. We need education 

 for public officials as well as for the public at large. 



But public officials and the citizenry are not enough ; we must have 

 the professional, who understands design the landscape architect 

 and the architect. As employees retained by the public officials, they 

 are the ones to come in and prepare the designs we are talking about. 



With public officials, the citizenry and the professional, there must 

 be developed a really positive program for improving the townscape 

 and improving urban design. It seems to me that such a program 

 must have three subprograms; I will skip through them very briefly. 



First, each city has to have an urban design plan, something like 

 Charles Blessing is trying to prepare and is preparing in Detroit. 

 L'Enf ant had a design ; Burnham had a design plan for Chicago and 

 I guess Mr. Hamilton is going to get a design approach plan in for 

 his city. 



In addition to a design, it seems to me, a city has to have an urban 

 beautification program. It cannot just say it would like to have 

 urban beautification, it must have a program laid out calling for the 

 specific things it wants in order to achieve beautification. 



You know we have a housing act coming up which has been re- 

 ported out favorably by the House committee, which calls for urban 

 beautification in the open space land program. I think there is 

 hardly a city in the United States today that is geared up to begin 



