WAR & CITIES

Grey River Argus, 8 January 1944, Page 7

WAR & CITIES

AN AMERICAN PICTURE INDUSTRIAL MIGRATION. The war has caused a great industrial migration to American cities, said a colonel of the United States Marine Corps in an address to members of the Town, Planning Institute and guests of the institute at a luncheon in Wellington. Farms Were suffering as ships, planes, and guns were being built, he said. Cities ot 300,000 population in 1940 were struggling with a population of naif a million; cities that adequately cared for half a million were now trying to keep a million fed, clothed, and happy. ••Tim winning of the war is oui predominant thought, but if we can gain, or at least hold, the culture and social achievements we have without hindering the war effort we have a possibility of further progress without the customary postwar retrogression,” he said it, while we are passing through thio crisis, sufficient attention is paid to our personal living, we may be able to save years of past and future work. In other words, we cannot lose sight of , the things for which we are fighting while we are light ing. Perhaps one .of the things for which we are fighting is a stable or der, but that alone is not enough, there must be a satisfaction foe the purposes that are inherent in human lifp _ .

Housing shortages he referred to as a “glaring problem caused by violent social dislocations. To-day America was in need of nearly two million additional housing units, necessitated m the last two years. Of shims and slum elimination, the colonel remarked that England had got rid of some of her slums the hard way—through bombing, America now had the chance to eliminate part of its slum problems by finding lobs for the war workers immediately after the war and be tor? they had. in some cases necessarily, returned to their tenements. ‘■‘The objections, particularly ftoni a standpoint of finance, will P«> fill many books, he said, but a i? «n Xm? gS: C S„ nS l la slY‘stX too SKnecessity to make city councils slum Co “Cm? U failure to provide real homes tor the neonle of our nation is the wea&t llnkjn our tern,” he said later m his address “Large-scale planning is surely necessary. but we must be careful that we do not submerge individuals• Tb ® average family has to where or how it is to live, on y the rich have ever been to design and create . their own homes. Very few Americans would care to work 'under the . system, which tells the individual where he must work and where he must live. . . All are concerned lest we fall into that type of living, yet in a degree we already have it- “ To-day we begin to see that th improvement of cities is mauei for small one-sided reform; the tasK of citv design involves the vast task of rebuilding our civilisation. ine problem is to co-ordinate, on the basis of the more essential human values I than the Will to power and the will i to profits, a host of social functions ; and processes that we have hither--1 to misused in the buildmg of cities - and politics, or of which we have never rationally taken advantage.”