512 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



dynamic problem that can be imagined. The population of Amer- 

 ica will be 225 million by the end of the century; we need re- 

 minding that as many buildings will go up in the next 40 years 

 as in the whole of the past history of America. 



We are in a situation which is, as it were, sliding from us as 

 we try to deal with it, and unless this dimension or dynamism 

 is put into our thinking, we are not going to think about it straight. 



The second thing is that all over the world the people are mov- 

 ing into the cities and into the suburban areas around the city. 

 Population growth in the world is 2 percent a year. Population 

 growth in the median city is 4 percent a year. Population growth 

 in the megalopolitan area is 8 percent a year. 



People stream into Rio de Janeiro at the rate of 5,000 a week. 

 Therefore we have to see the city itself as an explosion; it is where 

 most of the people are going to live. This is the environment 

 about which we have to think, if we are going to have beauty in 

 the majority of the citizens' lives. 



If you add to that and I will be brief the fact that we are 

 trying to stuff both men and machines into the same area at an 

 increasing speed, then again you have another dimension of the 

 problem. 



Then you have the whole question of our economic interests. 

 Many of these economic interests, in fact, contradict each other, 

 and also contradict the idea of a diversified neighborhood or the idea 

 of access to natural beauty. We encounter this as a plain fact right 

 through the world ; it even comes up in socialist societies, in spite of all 

 their supposed ability to control land use. The land on the fringe 

 of the growing city is economically the most attractive thing to trans- 

 fer quickly into the largest number of small houses in a grid pattern 

 and, therefore, we get an extension of our suburbia by economic 

 interests, unless we do something about it. 



This is a worldwide problem, and perhaps the only excuse for 

 me to come to speak as a foreigner (although it is hard to realize 

 I am, but I am) is that the problems are coming up in exactly the 

 same way all round the world. There are no good models. There 

 is hardly a city you can see that isn't bursting out at the seams. 

 There is hardly one where the beauty was not achieved by an arch- 

 duke about three centuries ago, with nothing much done since. 



This problem is a worldwide one, and if the United States, 

 which is the wealthiest country in the world, which has more re- 



