CHAPTER 6 



PARKS AND OPEN SPACES 



1:30 p.m., Monday, May 24 



The Chairman, Mr. SIMONDS. Fellow dreamers, you who have 

 a vision of a more vital, more refreshing, more stimulating living 

 environment; fellow crusaders, you who share an urgent compulsion 

 to make this dream come true, welcome to this panel on Parks and 

 Open Spaces. 



It is fitting that this conference should be held in our capital city 

 of Washington, where one finds some of the most beautiful open 

 spaces of the western world. 



This conference is symbolic. It is an historic underscoring of an 

 awakened concern for our national heritage. Under the perceptive 

 leadership of our President and his Lady, the tide is running as never 

 before for the preservation and development of the natural beauty of 

 our country and for the creation for our people of more beautiful 

 highways, more beautiful countryside, more beautiful cities and thus, 

 a more beautiful United States. 



For this objective to be achieved, it must be approached with all 

 the planning skill and idealism that can be applied. 



One is reminded in this task that the great Kublai Khan who, 

 in the planning of his magnificent city, Cambaluc, said: "We must 

 plan here on these northern plains, a city with which men will find 

 themselves in harmony with nature, God, and with their fellow men." 

 And then he set about to do it. We can afford no less lofty a con- 

 cept in the planning or replanning of our cities today. 



Members of the Panel on Parks and Open Spaces were Arthur A. 

 Davis, Charles W. Eliot II, Jane Jacobs, John O. Simonds (Chair- 

 man), Otis A. Singletary, Arnold H. Vollmer, Walter E. Wash- 

 ington, and Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. Staff Associate was 

 Milton B. Davis. 



Ill 



