Central City Planning in a metropolitan context
by Paul Opperman, Department of City Planning, City and County of San Francisco

I – World-wide Urbanization: A Phenomenon of Our Times.

The kinds of cities and urban regions our civilization is to have is not yet made clear. They are in a state of “becoming”. It is clear, however, that we are in revolutionary times. It is clear that world-wide urbanization is a major fact of these times. But the implications of this fact are not yet clear. Always in human terms, because our communities are for people and they are made by people, we must establish as well as we can what the city should be and can be; what the urban region should be and can be. The world is in turmoil. Many of us believe we are already in a new age, in its beginning. This age is “in being”. We feel its “becoming”. We do not know what it is becoming, however, or see at all clearly how it will change and be. We have not fully absorbed and adjusted to one major phase of the technological revolution which has given us urban concentration. Now another and perhaps a mightier phase, possibly the definitive one, is upon us, and may alter or even reverse some processes of change. It is, I believe, a responsibility of the Western World which gave us the Industrial Revolution to lead the way to consolidation of the changes it has wrought and to extend to the full its benefits, to curb and control its dangers. The atomic age, likewise, is the West’s creation. The West must have the wisdom to lead and guide the world community to a morality adequate to control the mighty challenge of these revolutionary forces. We urbanists are deeply involved in the common responsibility.

II - Policy on Urban Expansion and Development.

The American Institute of Planners, in its policy statement of 1951, said:
“It is essential to the country’s continued prosperity, welfare and safety that improved methods of urban development and redevelopment already available and being used in some cities, be put to use generally and that further improvements be devised and put into practice as soon as their practicability has been demonstrated. The design and construction of cities can no longer be allowed to lag so far behind the great advances taking place in other fields of American science and technology”.
The Institute’s statement claims that city structure generally has tended to be static during a time of fundamental change in demands upon it, and further that excessive concentration in limited areas has multiplied problems faster than solutions could be applied.
The Institute comments further:
“Both faults can be corrected or ameliorated by channeling the growth and development of city structure into forms that will meet contemporary needs and that prevent over-concentrations of populations. These include: (l) The progressive redevelopment of large urban centers into clusters of communities and neighborhoods, each planned for its particular function in the metropolitan city; (2) well-planned extensions of existing small towns, into cities of moderate size, with permanent physical separation from other cities; and (3) well-planned new cities of limited size, both in suburban and rural locations”.
There are vigorous opponents of these views who propose other solutions. For example, in a recent essay, Frank Lloyd Wright says: “Man will either get out of the city or blow up with the city”. This is perhaps the ultimate in opposition to cities as they are presently. Wright advocates a solution more spacious and uncongested than anyone else. The British are courageously pioneering in dispersing the “overspill” of central area congestion to new towns. They are learning much to reward them for their daring. They have our respectful attention and deserve our gratitude. That planning on more open and spacious pattern, with due regard to home and work and transport is in itself sensible, and that it serves and benefits in times of peace or war, is a supportable thesis.

III - Objectives.

The objectives of the leading urbanists are not too dissimilar. Nor are the concepts to which they adher, at least insofar as the realities of an operating context permit. Within our limits of jurisdiction and capacity, allowing for historical and national differences, individually and in association, we attempt similar things. To broaden ourselves in our conceptual basis, we need more intimate working association with other specialists, the social scientists, and other fellow professionals in the physical sciences which are so conspicuous today. We must influence more effectively, we must work with, leaders in other significant fields to influence public policy at high levels in support of the community purposes we espouse. Eliel Saarinen believed, “the first half of the century has been the search for something to come, whereas the second half is going to be the bringing of the pioneering results into matured form-expression in the whole 20th Century”. The revolutionary phase that has not been consolidated, and the new revolutionary phase now compounded with it, are forcing reorientation of the conditions under which we all live. The conception, the techniques, the programs of urbanists must rest upon and must reflect “the main facts of our times”.

IV - Reorientation. A Broader Conceptual Base

The task of reorientation to which I have referred is not for urbanists alone to achieve. Integration of cities and urban regions within states and on a national plane, of our West, in a community of nations in which urbanization is so signal a fact, will have its clearest and most tangible symbolic forms in well-formed, well-ordered, and well-working cities and metropolitan communities, large or small. Appropriate integral association of urban centers and urbanization with rural communities and specialized function areas is an element of such reorientation. From the central city-metropolitan region vantage I see certain planning and operational “areas” wherein existing and developing interrelationships and interdependence clearly require and urgently dictate improved organization to achieve national, state and local conjoint objectives. These “planning and operational areas”, designating them in broad classifications, may be designated for our present purposes as:
l. The economic-fiscal area
2. The social-cultural area
3. The physical-functional area
4. The political-administrative area
Consider for the purposes of this discussion that all four areas comprise the community in its broadest sense, as the total area of thought and action. The “coin” of this community concept has two sides. On the one hand there exists in every circumstance the citizen or private side of these areas of thought and action, and on the other there is the government or public side. This assumption is implicit in the discussions of them below.

l. The Economic-Fiscal Area
A table of international comparisons of governmental expenditures, in the recently published volume “America’s Needs and Resources” will serve to initiate the discussion. It supplies figures on gross national product per capita for the Western nations, giving percentages of distribution of GNP for the listed countries measured in taxes, government expenditures, defense expenditures, government debt. The range, from highest to lowest, is obviously great. Each nation’s gross national product, and how it is divided up within these categories, may be traced hack to the kind of economy that country has, to its proportions of industry and agriculture, to the numbers and qualities of its people, to the character of its government and to the character and extent of its cities and urban regions. Urban concentration occupy the center of the stage economically in our Western countries. Upon them we depend for high levels of production and its efficient distribution. In all industrial countries these are determinants of the living standards attained by the nation and the local communities which comprise it. Security and well being in times of peace, capacity to maintain and defend national integrity in times of war alike depend upon this productiveness. “Levels of production” determine fiscal adequacy, support fiscal program - national, state, local for public purposes, modified by political policy.

2. The Social-Cultural Area
“Man does not live by bread alone”. The cities are the centers and conservers of our social and cultural inheritance. They contain the institutions which are its physical expression. The arts, the churches, the universities, the schools are there. Without proper integration of this broad area of human affairs into our thought and action all else will be sterile and meaningless.

3. The Physical-Functional Area.
The planner guides the development of the city in physical-functional terms. But he is concerned also with its economic-fiscal function, its social-cultural ones. He works in the context of the political-administrative area and is a part of its machinery. From the central city-metropolitan region, on the physical plane, economic-fiscal and social-cultural relationships extend outward both tangibly On the physical plane and in abstract terms to meet and join other components of the national community, also beyond the nation to these relationships internationally expressed. Land use relationships, urban with rural as well as urban to urban, the city’s or the urban region’s linkages to social, economic and administrative “areas” beyond the jurisdiction of a particular urbanist’s responsibilities as far as these have importance for his work; transportation (all forms), areas of production and trade, residence, recreation, utility service networks (all types), the comprehensive planning of location and extent, their well-coordinated projectioning, dimensioning, programming - this is the urbanist’s emphasis, this is his assignment. Policy - political policy -national, at the provincial or state level, and local policy, however - conditions and regulates his work.

4. The Political-Administrative Area.
“Politics is the art of the possible”. In this sense all citizens, including urbanists, are practitioners! The vocational emphasis and the techniques of politicians and planners are very different however. Certainly in the administrative area, where the planners’ work, technical methods and procedures are non-political. Political policy is high policy. In our democracies this is set by the community, or to be technical, by the majority of the voting electorate. Policy, including planning policy, is determined by “the elected representatives of the people”. The effective emphasis for better planning or for worse, on this phase of planning or that, however, derives from the general community. At the national government level the compass course is set. This is the area which is critical for decisions and programs. No state or locality deviates radically from a course desired by the nation and pursued through its highest and most strategic instrumentalities.

I believe that answers to the basic questions, and strategic leverage exerted in appropriate directions, affecting the form and function of cities and urban regions to fit them for present and emerging purposes, will be more readily and more surely found through a well-conceived national agency for urban purposes in each country, than in any other way. A national department of urbanism in the executive or administrative branch of government in each of the Western governments is a necessity if the challenge of urbanization is to be met in these times of great moment for all the nations of the earth. This would be the center for urban policy to be formulated and administered, for urban leadership to make its views known, for urban research to be conducted and also broadly coordinated, for urban data to be assembled and distributed, for urban services of many kinds to be developed and administered centrally, and made available in the field. The National Department of Urbanism should be staffed by the ablest administrative and technical personnel available to conduct its affairs. The Department might well be designed to exert its authority, in accepting responsibility, for example, of association of outstanding representatives of subject matter fields related to urbanism, which are to a considerable extent working in isolation. Broadening the conceptual base would be advanced by bringing all disciplines related to urban affairs into interdisciplinary association, focusing and converging their contributions of experience, of specialized techniques. The social sciences and especially the physical sciences belong in this frame of reference. The administrative heads and staff of the Department should be so organized also as to utilize, through advisory committees and through conferences, etc., resources available in the professional civic leadership of the nation’s communities, in commerce and
industry, in the universities and wherever available.

V - A New Energy Base.

Urbanization has been accompanied by an immense and astonishing increase in productivity, which has translated itself into rising living standards in all industrial countries. The standards have been proportional to technological advance, including those in management. Machinery powered by the various forms of energy available to our society has vastly increased man’s capacity for material advance. It is claimed that the tension of the present are due in major degree to our failure to date to adjust the traditional forms of our common life to the impact of the new technology needs. Even before this goal has been achieved we are confronted with the questions raised by a vastly improved way of expanding the energy base which supports our society - atomic energy. We are confronted with the necessity to analyze its implications. It is the largest unanswered question for those, including conspicuously ourselves, who deal with urbanization as a human problem. Our group needs no reminder that the problem is also an opportunity of outstanding interest and importance. It is also a challenge that should give us deep concern.

VI - Mobile People and Fluid Cities.

The world picture of our contemporary age is characterized by the movements of large masses of people, within countries, between countries and from continent to continent. This has been an accelerating trend. Note for example the population shifts resulting in Europe and in Asia after World War II. Most mobile of all the countries internally in the United States, whose settlement in fact began with the unsettlement of Europe. Our people have been in continual flux and change, in ecological terms, from our beginnings to the present day. Perhaps the most conspicuous difference between us in North America and you in Europe is the intensity of dynamic change, affecting city form and structure, due to our exceptional mobility. Our migration, the pattern of which are perhaps too well known to require description here, have been exceptionally stimulated by the universal use of the automobile. An even greater force than the flexible new personal transportation unit associated with everyone’s picture of an American is the urge to live in the country, or at least in a suburb of a central city. There is no doubt that the automobile and other improvements in transportation have an important impact on urban change in North America as well as increasingly in Europe. Industrial decentralization is a third force in compelling change in city and metropolitan structure. The rate of these forces in combination has had a visible effect, with social and economic implications and repercussion throughout the United States, to refer in particular to that country. We have been forced to rebuild our urban communities, even while we continue to operate them, while we work and live within their physical limits, to meet the new conditions. This mobility, this human urge to avoid congestion and to enjoy space and openness, these new transportation developments, and a tremendous net increase in the numbers of our people -these urban condition justify the claim that ours at least may he called “fluid cities”. Your urban situation and ours certainly differ in degree. Do they differ basically in principle? That question will he discussed and perhaps answered during these seminars.

VII - A New Alphabet of City Form.

Our cities, our metropolitan areas, our regions, our states, and the nation taken as the totality of these, are covered with systems and networks for transportation and communication. These include highways, railways, airways, water ways, pipelines, power lines, telephone, telegraph, television and radio
systems and networks, binding the country together in a unity of modern services. We have systems of large area development units, private and public. These include private and public housing, industrial districts, regional shopping centers, universities, colleges, public health and public school site schemes and campuses. These include governmental and civic centers, cultural centers and many special institutionalized public and private units of design and integrated operation. The new modern freeways are spreading over the central cities and throughout metropolitan areas. Slum clearance schemes are completed or in construction stages in many communities of many states. Two new emerging phases of urban development are to be noted, significant on the one hand for the core areas of core cities and on the other for advancing metropolitanism in planning and development. Downtown modernization is one and the other is metropolitan rapid transit. These are principal elements of a new alphabet of city form, planning units which advance our programs toward clear expression functionally and toward more rapid execution, employing modern construction techniques and materials.

VIII - New Fiscal Dimensions and the Tax Problem.

The cost of government is a major political issue in the United States, at local, state and federal levels of government. Our great’ productivity can support a high level of public facilities and public services, and the people demand them. The question is how much should they cost, can they be more efficiently supplied and how are the costs to be distributed through the tax process? The dimensions of our fiscal requirements are huge. While there are two views of what is economy, one holding that real economy is sound public expenditure and wise investment in that which provides essential services and also stimulates the economy in healthy ways; the other expresses unwillingness to maintain taxes at their present high and expanding levels.
In summary I will repeat here a tax proposal which I made before the recent AIP annual meeting. The proposal is as follows: l) All buildings, commercial, industrial, residential, for example, should be given official life terms, according to their uses and qualities. Systematic elimination of obsolete structure would follow at the end of a stated term. 2) A system of rewards and penalties, reflected in the municipal property tax, for conformity with planning and related standards, would be administered by the local government. 3) The property tax would be modified in principle by a heavier tax rate on land than on improvements. To illustrate, the levy on land might be twice that of the one on improvements.
The proposal has a compound purpose, namely to induce systematic and equitable reduction of building obsolescence and land use obsolescence. It would free a substantial amount of property for new construction on better standards and would increase tax revenues from these. It would provide a means for more orderly and more expeditious effectuation of official urban plans. The proposal is of course intended only in part as a step toward solution of the tax problem. The resulting increased productivity in construction and related fields would also serve to provide greater magnitudes of wealth on private account which logically support increased public investment and public expenditure totals.

IX - New Openness, New Living Ways, Design and Urban Aesthetics.

A recent estimate gave the United States 168 million people on January l, 1955, with predictions of 290 million people by the end of the century.
Our people have no reason to be crowded in their three million square miles of continental territory with an average gross population density of 55 persons per square mile, yet there is crowding. There are three governmental levels from whence derive the provisions of public open space. These are, of course, the national, state and local government and their appropriate agencies. The people from our fast growing cities and metropolitan regions have been crowding into our national parks at the rate of 50 million a year. The facilities they find were designed a generation ago for less than a tenth of their numbers. In addition to national parks, each of the states has a state park system. These are splendid facilities, steadily expanding, but they are also inadequate. At the urban level, to speak broadly, we have metropolitan park and recreation areas in substantial number, and widely varying in their adequacy. But the problem, while it includes the park and recreation aspect, is much broader. Openness and spaciousness relate to the standards of site and building design. This is a vast problem full of intricacies which cannot be discussed adequately here. A number of highlights and significant features of the question may be treated in outline and in summary.
Good design, we well know, has other permanent and enduring values. Your country attests this truth in superlative degree. The openness and spaciousness so earnestly desired by our mobile people of the United States will not be denied. We have been advancing in our quest for these important values, but full success is not yet in prospect. A means of attaining these goals is the planning process, applied at the city, metropolitan, state and national levels, in combination and with overall integration through administrative and technical coordination. It appears unlikely that radical theoretical approaches to urban form and structure, departures from long established custom and habit, as in the Case of the new towns and permanent greenbelts in classic expression, will do more than modify the urban situation. More openness, spaciousness and improved design in land and building development is possible in our urban center and urban regions now and in the years ahead by doing more planning and better planning, and especially more specific planning, and beyond that, planning with greater aesthetic emphasis based on new appropriate principles applied to urbanization.
The architects, the landscape architects, the sculptors and painters - in fact, the whole array of fine and graphic arts in concert is needed. Increased public understanding will bring public support and in turn will produce the impact on political and civic policy to achieve the important ends sought. How this is to be achieved is one of our common concerns in this seminar and beyond it. What form of organization, based on agreed conceptual fundamentals, will serve to achieve this objective, what organization and what program is required, these matters surely deserve high priority on our agenda. There can be no question regarding our positive agreement on the general proposition. Planning of the central city must proceed on the basis of an understanding of and against the background of main factors and trends in metropolitan growth and change. Generally these trends are universally present and evident. While general knowledge is necessary to urbanists, specific applications must be made in the local program of planning for the central city. Principal growth data employed would usually include, in the studies of the planning office, population and demographic information, land use data and patterns, traffic and transportation factors, economic and fiscal factors, social and cultural patterns. In brief, we know that the central city residential population is increasing at a declining rate, while the outlying and suburban population and land absorption is increasing. For our planning we are required to measure these factors. We know that rural population is going down, and urban is steadily climbing, proportionally and quantitatively. The changing age composition of the population influence our work. The planning of housing, recreation, health services, to mention a few aspects of the situation, requires adjustment in emphasis to meet the changing situation. There is present decentralization and diffusion within the metropolitan concentrations of offices, factories, retail services. Some of this movement is from a central city to its suburbs. Some of it takes place within the central city, as in the case of medical and dental offices locating outside of the downtown area. Some of it starts de novo in the suburbs or in open country. We have to understand and describe accurately, within our lights, what is logical about these changes, which of these activities can and should stay in the center with benefit to all concerned, and which are undesirable in the center or may as well be one place as another. Our technical studies and our general knowledge should be sufficient to provide guidance to us and to others in the community, lay groups and officials alike.

Not only the cities and urban regions, but the entire nation is covered and interconnected today by transportation networks, of highways, railroads, airways, and water routes. Within metropolitan areas there are also networks of rapid transit and local surface transit. As changes affecting population and area development take place, the planners of the central city and of the suburban cities and counties are required to take account of the character of these networks, their specific type and the scope and quantity of their present and future patterns, and to influence by their plans, their locations their present and prospective extent, and their coordinated development. In the central city we should not plan as if we were an island. We are integral part of an evolving, changing urban region, with innumerable integral relationships, economic, social and physical within and beyond the region while we are, of course, in the United States at least, politically separate. The difficult problem which this integrated regional actuality combined with political separateness presents, has been approached by various methods and with differing degrees of success in the metropolitan regions of the United States. For the most part the problem remains unsolved. The San Francisco metropolitan region, with its central city San Francisco involves 9 country governments and nearly so municipal governments. Past attempts at regional planning for the San Francisco Bay Area have not been successful. There is reason, however, to believe present organized efforts to achieve the desired unity of planning will be productive of tangible results. In the oral presentation which has been assigned to me for the seminar in Rome, I propose with the aid of graphic material, to describe the problems peculiar to the San Francisco Region, and to outline, against the preceding background of general theory and practice, the specific measures and the general program which have been developed there.