88 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



cities and make them fit to live in. The American city has a 

 spacious quality and at best incorporates a natural framework and 

 landscape pattern that runs into almost every block. This pattern 

 of warp and woof, of buildings and nature, is most decisively ex- 

 pressed in shade trees. These are not only the ornament of our 

 streets, public squares, and parks, but run through all open areas of 

 cities. The planting of large shade trees must become a paramount 

 objective of all those who would improve the appearance of cities, 

 and it is the main hope for any early redemption of the lost character 

 of American cities. A prompt start should be made to improve and 

 coordinate the technical processes of large scale, mass moving of big 

 trees, and to reduce the costs of such operations. 



At the metropolitan scale, big trees establish the natural framework 

 of cities, like rivers, and hills, and carry it into each street and open 

 space. But the design of those most intimate and intensively used 

 areas must succeed in coordinating all elements of these decisive 

 features. Urban design today is frustrated by the divided respon- 

 sibility for trees and park planting, the design of streets and side- 

 walks, paving, public and private buildings, shopfronts and signs, 

 lamp posts and mailboxes, litter baskets and light fixtures all the 

 fine grain of street furniture that goes into these public living rooms. 

 To introduce a kiosk or a bus shelter is to add to this chaos, not to 

 clarify it. 



Streets and public open spaces of special character demand a kind 

 of systematic and continuous design coordination that will come only 

 from a design center established for this purpose. Recognizing the 

 human scale and more careful detail of townscape, a design center 

 should work with architects, landscape architects, planners, indus- 

 trial and interior designers with all who are able to contribute to 

 townscape design. It should work to express the needs and co- 

 ordinate the demands of all Federal, State, and local government 

 agencies which post signs, specify materials and fixtures, determine 

 spaces and relationships and uses. It should work with manufac- 

 turers of lighting equipment, fireplugs, paving systems, baskets with 

 all whose products hope to be used in these areas of cities. Design 

 coordination is the object, and without it our cities will be a vast col- 

 lection of separate items, a junk pile in the course of creation rather 

 than the unified and beautiful areas we seek. 



The creation of such a design center, a public, nonprofit institu- 

 tion of imagination and flexibility, should be undertaken by the great 



