DISCUSSION

Moderator:

Paper 7: Mr Jack R. Newville

Replanning, rehabilitation and redevelopment of areas of a city that have become obsolete is the natural form of cure, and it is going to happen inevitably, either through private entrepreneurs or public mandate. This cure is not really connected to the question of new towns and it is not the solution to the more basic problem of where we are to put the 100 million or so people who will have arrived in the United States before the end of the century. It seems unthinkable that these increased numbers will simply be added to our present metropolitan areas. If they are, these areas will double before the end of the century. Yet if we do not wish to add the people to our metropolitan areas, where do we put them? The building of new towns is a comparatively recent development in the United States, encouraged, no-doubt, by their success in Britain and in several other European countries. It has the appeal of starting afresh to build a city which is not constrained by past mistakes in planning or lack of planning, where one is free to plan the ideal environment for living, working and playing, but somehow the casual ease with which new towns are advanced as a cure for urban ills left me with a feeling that something had not been really thought out.