442 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



Columbia is planned to be a complete city, a whole city with all 

 of the texture and fabric and functions of a city. 



There will be as many people coming to work there in the morn- 

 ing as leaving to go to work elsewhere. There will be 30,000 dwell- 

 ing units, 70 schools, 50 churches, colleges, libraries and hospitals, 

 hamburger stands, auto sales rooms and retail lumber yards and all 

 of the other things which make up a city. All this will be provided 

 in an environment that will be designed for the growth of people.* 



Columbia is midway between Baltimore and Washington on 

 some 14,000 acres of land a little bigger than Manhattan Island, 

 about half the size of the District of Columbia. 



The land is rolling green hillsides, stream valleys, forests. 



There is already the beginning of urbanization. Some 8,000 

 people live within Columbia's boundaries in 15 or 20 small devel- 

 opments. 



The largest development has 300 homes, a fine small outlying 

 community, which, left to its fate, will grow into the urban sprawl 

 that reaches out from Washington and Baltimore. 



U.S. Route 29, which goes through the middle of the land, is 

 already pockmarked with commercial sprawl; and the entire road 

 can expect this fate by traditional experience in urban growth. 



The road coming to Columbia from Baltimore has the same com- 

 mercial squalor. 



The city of Columbia will be a system of 10 villages connected 

 and separated by open spaces, connected also by its own bus system 

 running on its own landscaped, separate right-of-way through the 

 village centers and town centers. U.S. Route 29 will be fully 

 decommercialized and will be a landscaped parkway through the 

 center of town. 



The villages are built out of a system of neighborhoods. All of 

 the houses will be on neighborhood loops or cul-de-sacs which carry 

 traffic only to the people's houses. 



There is a park running through the center of each neighborhood 

 with a system of walks connecting the houses to the elementary 

 school and the recreational area. All children can walk to school 

 without crossing major traffic thoroughfares. The high density 

 housing is built along the busline. 



*Mr. Rouse at this point showed a series of slides, illustrating the commercial 

 sprawl and squalor of nearby suburban communities and highways and contrasting 

 these with scenes of good environments here and abroad. 



