The Urban Renewal Administration has paid for its publication in book form with a demonstration grant. The Federal Housing Administration and the Urban Renewal Administration have since been consolidated into the Department of Housing and Urban Development, headed by Robert C. Weaver.

A flyleaf note states that "the report is the product of the University of Illinois and does not necessarily represent or coincide with the standards or policy of the Federal Housing Administration."

Mr. Weaver's comment on the release of the volume, however, endorses the study at the highest Government level.

"This book provides a much needed new perspective in design of the dwelling environment," he said. "It shows the numerous ways through which sensitive design can add substantially to the quality of housing in areas of multi-family housing."

The report focuses on the connection of design with livability in the American home. Its chief concern is the planning of the complete housing site, or the relationship of buildings to the land and to one another, measured by people's needs. Many experts believe that this is the most valid basis for judging housing design.

In addition to the charge of mediocrity, the report criticizes what it calls the national waste of land through poor open space planning, the low quality of spatial organization of the land that is found in a majority of housing developments, and the missed opportunities for a pleasanter visual and recreational environment.

LACK OF PRIVACY CITED

Unimaginative landscaping, failure to use open space well, poor relationship of interior to exterior, faulty circulation and inferior solutions for parking and car storage are also cited. Cheap materials, slapdash construction, incorrect placement and inadequate maintenance of buildings are scored.

According to the author, poor site planning also leads to a noticeable lack of privacy in American houses, as well as inadequate provision for differences in family size, type and tastes. Design attention is restricted largely to facade appearance. The result is physical monotony and a lack of focus for social activity. "Without doubt, there is a serious lack of quality in site planning in the United States today,"-Professor Katz says. "The challenge of working out a plan that fits the site, climate and special human needs is frequently ignored. The designer falls back on a convenient stack of 'samples.''

The results, he says, are "leftover space and cut-up little patches of grass, with trees cut down, hills leveled and streams filled to force a recalcitrant merger of building and land."

Where exceptions exist, good practice is attributed to a combination of skillful designers and developers who look beyond short-term profits for a better long-term formula.

The author cites the new town of Reston, Va., with its cluster housing and communal open space, and developments such as the housing for married students at Harvard University, for attractive building-type variety.

He cites mixed residential and commercial use of land as a desirable solution, as well as greater recreational use of rooftops. He also suggests building over highways, piers and parking fields, and more research in industrialized construction.

The report analyzes the causes behind substandard American housing. It states that the emphasis on the single family house, with the multi family house considered less desirable on the American scale of values, has motivated against the development of improved housing types. Building regulations reflect this single house bias. Rising densities and expanding communities, Professor Katz observes, make this a national disaster.

Controls such as zoning and building, housing and sanitary codes, dictated by custom and example, the author says, are rigidly restrictive and have not changed with changing conditions. They are so specific and often so antiquated that there is "virtually no room left for creative design."

He points to protection of property values as one factor promoting this rigidity. Both the Federal Housing Administration and private lending institutions have been hesitant to underwrite departures in housing design that might effect existing neighborhoods.

The housing agency, in its role as mortgage insurer, and the Veterans' Administration, are called the chief forces that have "helped shape suburban America." Neither the public agencies nor the private institutions have a record of encouraging innovation. The burden has been on the designer to "prove" that innovations are desirable.

In recent years, the F.H.A. has considerably liberalized its regulation and procedures. Lately it has introduced incentives to better design.

BROAD PLANNING URGED

It is still common practice, however, to think of building on a traditional blockby-block or lot-by-lot basis, although the reality today is that very large tracts are being developed, often in single ownership.

The more logical procedure, the report says, would be to begin with total, coordinated land or project planning, either by the private developer or by a public agency. An example of wasteful small plot development in the immediate metropolitan region is the whittling away of Staten Island's open land by conventional piecemeal building.

The study takes up one aspect of American housing that is generally ignored, in spite of its rapidly growing popularity. This is the trailer park, which, in its present form, is considered a blighting influence on most communities.

The "mobile home," as its promoters prefer to call it, seldom moves. Mobile home lots are now being sold instead of leased.

SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATION

The mobile home is the single most economical form of one-family housing being built today. Unlike most other housing, it is being industrially produced. It is cheap, because of its factory production and because building codes, which run up costs, do not apply to it. It also receives the least design assistance in terms of its contributions to the environment.

It is suggested that the mobile home be redesigned to look less like a cross between a car and a house, with an appearance closer to conventional housing. "If the full potential of compact design and flexibility were realized, the mobile home could be a great boon to the residential community," the report concludes.

The study makes these specific recommendations for the improvement of American housing:

The role of government should be to promote operational procedure that encourage good design, and to support innovation and research.

In urban renewal, which represents massive amounts of the country's new housing, "land is too difficult to secure and too expensive to develop for design to be a giveaway." Design review by qualified staff or consultants should be mandatory for all Federally aided programs.

A concerted effort must be made to attract talented designers to public service, where the level has been notoriously low. The F.H.A., the Public Housing Administration and the model cities programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development are cited as critical areas.

Sites should be examined before plans are approved, to insure better site development and design.

There should be less overriding concern with risks in financing, and more support of site-planning experiments.

Code and zoning revisions must be made in favor of "performance" standards. Performance codes set standards for noise, privacy, fireproofing, light and air without giving detailed specifications for setback distances, window openings, roof shapes, and other mandatory or prohibitory requirements. This gives maximum design flexibility.

The report concludes that responsibility for the quality of the American housing environment can be widely distributed among designers, developers, governmental agencies and the public.

It says that housing design has been held in too low professional esteem, developers have been too narrowly profit-oriented, and public expectations have been too low.

Senator BAKER. Mr. Chairman, that is all I have, and I thank you very much.

TECHNICIANS OFTEN OVERLOOKED IN URBAN PLANNING

Senator RIBICOFF. Thank you very much.

There seems to be very little participation on the part of planners and architects and engineers in the formative stages of urban design and urban development. Why do you think that your ideas have not been used and your voices have not been heard? You are the men with the technical skills. Why do you have such little influence?

Mr. ROGERS. I guess we would all want to answer this.

Senator RIBICOFF. Yes; on any of these questions, I would hope that each one would make whatever contribution he would like. I hope that you will interrupt one another and talk back and forth.

DESIGNERS SHOULD BE USED IN EARLY PLANNING STAGES

Mr. ROGERS. Well, I would like to answer it this way, Senator. It seems to me that the term "design" has become bastardized in our times. It is felt to be something which is called in after the practical deci sions are made without recognizing that the practical decisions, budget, program, site, funding, these sorts of things, in fact, carry within them an embryonic form which is thought to be design. I think the best answer is just one sentence from an editorial in the New York Times on February 13, which simply says, dealing with the design of the city:

"Urban design is the form given to the solution of the city's problems," which implies that when you start to make the decisions that lead to these solutions in the very beginning goalsetting, objectives and programs that is where design has to be and that is where the designer has to be to give image to these.

Senator RIBICOFF. I have a followup question on that. Would somebody else want to comment?

GOVERNMENTAL PROCESSES MUST MAKE PLANNING DECISIONS

Mr. WISE. I would like to, if I might, Senator.

I do not think that what you say is the whole truth. I think that designers and planners and engineers are in quite early in the game in many situations. I point to some very excellent, quite superior civic design on a project scale certainly in Boston, in New Haven, in Hartford, in Philadelphia. And I think that we have got a lot of good examples that we can look to around the country of some splendid things that are happening; in San Francisco, in Pittsburgh.

What I am concerned about is the scale in the metropolitan area where we do not have yet a governmental structure that is able to make these sorts of decisions. I think we are on to making the first steps. We are doing a study, design, or plan for planning in my office now for the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area that includes Dallas and Fort Worth and 10 counties and 130 cities and about 78.000 square miles. There is an official council of governments that will be doing the planning job there. Nobody has ever looked at the matter of regional form and what it might be like in another 10 or 15 years. And they are going to look at it very hard.

HUMANISTIC SCALE NEEDED IN METROPOLITAN PLANNING

We have got a lot of trouble with some, if you will excuse the term, "engineers" on the staff of the Trinity River Authority that are concerned more in using this as a sewage disposal area than a recreation area, but we have got to do both. We have got to look at them from a humanistic point of view of the metropolitan scale, and we have not been able to do it. And I think the Congress in passing title II has taken the first steps in these directions. It just added the urban design element to the planning requirements.

Senator RIBICOFF. You are the leaders and the source of the technological information on what should be happening as the cities change and grow and needs have to be met. The three of you recognize in your statements that you have to be humanistic as well as technical; that you have to look at the social impact and the social results of what you do.

LACK OF CONTROVERSY IN PLANNING

Now, why is it that you people are not controversial in this respect? A politician, if he is worth his salt, does not worry about being controversial. He may lose; he may win; he may go to a draw. He comes back to fight another day. You are organizing groups. You are individual citizens of where you live. You see something happening in a community that you do not like or that you think is wrong. Can you get on your soapbox and try to do something about it or do you feel that your professional ethics prevents you from making your point of riew known?

Mr. ROGERS. I think more of this goes on than apparently you have heard about.

Senator RIBICOFF. I am interested in this because I do not read very much about this going on.

URBAN TECHNICIANS MUST WORK WITH SOCIAL SCIENTISTS

Mr. HAM. I think part of the problem is that we have grown up in a society where we have each been trained separately with a very rigid piece of the physical design of these cities as our bailiwick. Meanwhile, legislative bodies, in their desire to have something they can direct and understand, have created agencies which have followed operational guidelines similar to those of highway departments. As we move forward and observe the results of what has been created behind us, we are becoming more and more aware that none of us are sufficient without the other. And even the architect-engineer-planner team is not sufficient without legislators and economists and sociologists and others, providing a broader scope to this whole thing. And so there is more and more criticism by the planners and the architects and the engineers when any one of them, let alone others that ought to be involved, is left out.

DO TECHNICIANS TAKE PUBLIC STANDS?

Senator RIBICOFF. You may have arguments or you have a discussion within or among yourselves but what about the public point of

view? Here you are; you have your institutes; you have your groups. X city has a plan that you think is bad from the social, esthetic, or economic future of that city, and you are unhappy about it. Do you write letters to the editors? Do you make speeches? Do you write articles?

The average person does not have the competence to know whether a plan or a change for a city, is good or bad. He takes it on faith, and this is a very complex technical field. You are the experts. Do you just go along with what is being done, or do you really let the community know that, in your opinion, it is wrong?

Maybe your ideas are wrong, but at least do you make your position

known?

ARCHITECTS' APPEALS IN BALTIMORE WENT UNNOTICED

Mr. ROGERS. Let me illustrate the problem, Senator.

In Baltimore we have had the usual troubles with our expressway system, the Interstate System. Our chapter and myself, as an individual, did indeed raise an uproar. We succeeded in evolving what we call the concept team, which is a broad urban-design team to design the expressway, locations, and so forth. But what we found was we could raise our voices to the high heaven but there was no client, there was no sponsor, there was nobody who could respond to our voices.

Senator RIBICOFF. When you say there is no client you have the Baltimore Sun which is supposed to be an alert, crusading newspaper. Mr. ROGERS. Which it is; right.

Senator RIBICOFF. I am sure that the television stations once in a while would like something controversial. Did you go to them and tell them you wanted to make your point of view known? Did you go to the editor of the Baltimore Sun?

Mr. ROGERS. They have to pick us.

Senator RIBICOFF. But they express your point of view.
Mr. ROGERS. That is right.

USE MASS MEDIA TO MAKE VIEWS KNOWN

Senator RIBICOFF. Did you go to the Rotary Club or the League of Women Voters?

The point is, you believe you are competent. You have got integrity. You would much prefer a good job to a bad job because you have got pride, and you are professionals. I mean, how are the great professionals like yourselves making their views felt in preventing a community from doing the wrong thing?

Mr. ROGERS. We can only go through the mass media in the absence of a sponsor because the great work of the past was in almost a diatribe perhaps between the designer and his patron, and the patron does not exist any more.

Mr. WISE. Let me throw another 2-cents' worth in.
Senator RIBICOFF. Certainly.

PLANNING AND DESIGN ARE POLITICAL DECISIONS

Mr. WISE. We are all of us in this area working in the public arena, and these are political decisions that have to be made. I have six Gov