THE DESIGN OF THE HIGHWAY 195 



story pigeonhole parking. It seems to me it varies so much you 

 couldn't possibly consider it as a basis for any design at all. 



Mr. HALPRIN. Quite the reverse; I don't agree. It seems to me 

 that you have to understand that the city comes first. That is to say, 

 the people in the city come first. It is my view that it is very 

 much like this auditorium. In order to keep some configuration in 

 this auditorium, not overloading the air conditioning and seating, we 

 have a certain number of seats in this auditorium which people can 

 occupy. If you get too many it would become an untenable situa- 

 tion and nobody could breathe well even though you are not allowed 

 to smoke here. You can apply the same kind of criteria as this 

 to a building whose capacity is limited, and also to elevators which are 

 in fact doing what freeways ought to do in cities, that is moving a 

 certain number of people through them. You can determine the 

 absorptive capacity of the city in terms of what the city should be 

 doing for its citizens in terms of the environment. That is what Mr. 

 Buchanan was talking about. The capacity is limited and you can- 

 not take any more cars. That is that. You can design it in a 

 way that it will just absorb so many cars. At that point you ought 

 to quit; no more freeways. 



Mr. RYAN. In the city of New York they built the Pan American 

 Building. If you were to give the occupants of this building space to 

 park their cars, you would have to tear down everything else in the 

 neighborhood, or build parking garages 25 stories high. 



Mr. HALPRIN. My answer to that is you should not then have 

 built the Pan American Building. And I think cities have to accept, 

 too, that they are organisms just as any other organism. Just as any 

 organism cannot proliferate endlessly, cities cannot. 



Mr. SARGENT. I wouldn't be surprised if someone proposes con- 

 sideration of birth control. Is this an appropriate subject for us to 

 discuss? 



Mr. BABCOCK. I don't know what the laws are in the District of 

 Columbia. 



Mr. WHITTON. Perhaps much to the surprise of a lot of the audi- 

 ence, the Bureau of Public Roads has been resisting for some time 

 the building of extrawide expressways through urban areas and 

 through rural areas. So I was quite interested in what Mr. 

 Clarkeson had to say, that a highway or expressway shouldn't be 



