454 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



Mr. SIMON. If the new suburbia is to help preserve natural beauty, 

 the most important single tool, in my opinion, would be density zon- 

 ing. I was interested to hear Mr. Connor tell us that there is a Presi- 

 dential commission looking at zoning problems right now. 



I hope they will investigate the benefits of density zoning. This is 

 basically the zoning that allows a freedom to the developer to cluster 

 houses on less land and thereby create open space in the process. 



I don't believe that open space, per se, has any great significance. 

 I think it would be a good idea for us perhaps to stop talking about 

 greenbelts and green wedges because these don't relate to anything 

 except color on a piece of paper. Let us talk instead about parks, 

 playgrounds, tennis courts, lakes, golf courses, walkways, bridle 

 paths the kind of things that Mr. Rouse is including in his excellent 

 plan for the new city of Columbia, and we are including in our plan 

 for Reston. 



Open space can be a delusion. I am thinking of one particular 

 massive tract that looks marvelous on the master plan but it turns 

 out to be an impenetrable forest, never developed in any way. 



I believe the best open spaces are those closest to the people, which 

 they can use with great frequency. In other words, the small parks 

 that Jane Jacobs talked about are more important than the enormous 

 vacation resorts which are also Federally helped. 



It is the day-to-day use, the participating in the use of open space 

 that is most important. We have a design for a nature center in 

 Reston which I will use as an illustration. 



A study was made by a foundation which indicated that the land 

 we selected was marvelous and which recommended a program for 

 the exposure of 5th, 6th, and 7th grade children to a tour through 

 this nature area and to some lectures in a classroom. 



We feel that a much more significant program, and one which we 

 intend to implement, is to start with nursery school children and see 

 who amongst them is interested in dealing with nature and planting 

 at an early age. Later on, there would be training in cross fertiliza- 

 tion and planting trees and eventually grafting. We hope as the 

 years go on, there will be a sizable group of people living in Reston 

 who are actually working in the nature center and perhaps will be 

 out as volunteers working with the groundkeepers and maintenance 

 men. 



I would hope that the new suburbia would not only have natural 

 beauty, but would have manmade beauty. I would hope it would 

 be of the best in contemporary architecture. I don't believe it makes 



