186 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



as acceptable in relation to motor traffic in our civilized urban areas. 



It is a difficult field with a large subjective element in which little 

 serious research work has been carried out, but I think it is funda- 

 mental to dealing with traffic in cities. 



I think the beautification of highways must be seen as part of this 

 comprehensive process, which, of course, is no less than city planning 

 itself. 



If this process be based on the principle that buildings, access 

 ways, and all the material stuff of cities are there for us to mold 

 deliberately for our own convenience and delight, then there is hope 

 that we shall make progress with what is now coming into view, all 

 over the world, as the major social problem for the rest of this cen- 

 tury ; namely, the form and organization of cities. 



Mr. HALPRIN. First I would like to define the parameters for my 

 discussion. I would like to confine my remarks to the design of 

 freeways within dense urban cores, understanding as I do that 

 there are areas out in the countryside for which handsome freeways 

 also must be designed. 



Some years ago I was asked by the State Division of Highways in 

 California to work as a consultant on urban freeways. Their inten- 

 tion was, I believe, that I would evolve some technique by which the 

 planting of massed trees and shrubs would screen out the ugly 

 structures and make them beautiful possibly evolve a technique of 

 parkway design which would make freeways more palatable in a 

 city. 



As I began to look into the problem, however, I began to realize 

 in a very clear way that the urban freeway was in fact a new breed 

 of cat and that it had to be designed as such. The more I thought 

 about it the more I realized that most of the principles which had 

 been evolved for freeways in the country were completely wrong 

 in the city. 



The city freeway had to deal with the city. The important point 

 was to make the freeway a part of the city to evolve a new urban 

 form of traffic architecture whose ultimate aim was to improve the 

 city, not just move traffic about. 



Handsome freeways can readily be designed for new cities or for 

 new sections of older cities as parkways whose characteristics are 

 similar to freeways in the country with wide rights-of-way, widely 

 separated roadbeds and heavily screened verges. 



