448 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



elements are often found in linear and other ecological patterns 

 which may, when coordinated with the density patterns of circula- 

 tion systems, give scale and coherence to the city. Design structure 

 will be sequential as contrasted to the traditional notion of form or 

 shape of the over-all city. 



Mr. McHarg (who was also on this morning's panel) once said 

 that there are three things which give unity and coherence to our 

 urban environment snow, nightfall, and the landscape. Since 

 we cannot control snowfall and since we cannot live by night alone, 

 my bit of parochial advice would be when in doubt plant ! 



Open areas should exist at various levels from neighborhood 

 parks and greenways, which provide relief and amenities to con- 

 gested urban areas, to large regional parks and State parks. The 

 backup areas of the Laurentians, Adirondacks, and the Appalachian 

 Highlands, though not spectacular as compared to the western 

 mountains, are essential to the sanity and well-being of the urbanized 

 eastern seaboard and are worthy of preservation as are our national 

 parks. 



The nature and the new dimensions of the problems of our cities 

 will need to be understood. There is a new urgency to both the 

 physical and social problems. The fried egg pattern has become 

 scrambled. For the good health of both the center city and the 

 suburbs, racial restrictions must give way. Only by the humane 

 restructuring of our physical and social environment will we develop 

 a viable society. 



Mr. ROCKWELL. My comments are directed to two points: (1) 

 that the new suburbia (which I choose to call the city-region) 

 can be the guided product of comprehensive metropolitan planning, 

 and (2) that the most practical and the most dramatic shaper of 

 the planning process can be the predominating natural resources 

 of any particular area. 



With the assistance of HHFA programs, metropolitan planning 

 has come of age. True it has its shortcomings in some cases it is 

 too dominated by a transportation plan and in other cases the 

 virtual smothering of an area by its particular web of political agen- 

 cies (Chicago's region has over 1,000) gives much to hope for. 



But the millenium should arrive with the passage of Senator 

 Muskie's bill to require almost all new Federal assistance projects 

 to show some degree of correlation to a comprehensive metropolitan 

 plan. 



