Progress of a Sort

In the name of progress, London, Paris and Venice were proposing such radical changes that visitors might have a hard time recognizing the old places:

London. To make way for a new road junction, London's urban planners recently decreed the destruction of The Elephant and Castle, a fabled 200-year-old pub, which lent something of the raffish, robust flavor of 18th century England to the whole London district of Southwark.

Last week the London County Council approved a radical plan for the reconstruction of Piccadilly Circus, the proud "hub of the universe." The hub has become a traffic block. To solve this problem, the circus (or circle) will be made into a rectangle, and the Edwardian buildings now surrounding it will be replaced by boxlike modern structures on which advertising signs will be part of the design, instead of being grafted on, as at present. The famed center statue of Eros, god of love, which makes the traffic go round, will still be there but no longer the center of things. Sentimentalists wonder whether the new, streamlined circus will still appeal to London's lonely lads and lasses (including streetwalkers) as a rendezvous.

Paris has a law limiting the height of its buildings to 121 ft. (exceptions: monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame), and its famed rows of low roofs are part of its serene charm. But last week, plans were under way for a 52-story skyscraper on the site of the old railroad station, Gare Montparnasse. As a gesture to the bohemians of Montparnasse, the promoters promised, in addition to a 1,000-room hotel, a shopping center and three floors of parking space, to erect 25 acres of artists' studios. The only question was what kind of art could be produced in the atmosphere of a Left Bank Rockefeller Center. General de Gaulle's artistic czar, Andre Malraux, Minister of State in charge of cultural affairs, gave his approval to the skyscraper. "If we accept the skyscraper, modern architecture will penetrate into Paris," he said. "If modern architecture does not penetrate into Paris, it will not penetrate into France."

Venice, the lagoon city that once "held the gorgeous East in fee," is now down to glass blowing, lacemaking, and putting up tourists. As its ancient islands and handsome buildings sink ever deeper into the waters of the lagoon, Venetians and their businesses have been migrating to the booming towns of Mestre and Porto Marghera on the mainland near by, while the population of Venice itself has dwindled to about the same number of citizens (170,000) as it held in 1500. To halt their city's decline, Venetian "progressives" propose to build a "little Manhattan" on an artificial island at the western end of Venice, well away from the famed Grand Canal. Among radical changes proposed: i) some buildings would be small skyscrapers; 2) streets would be open to automobiles. The planners' slogan: "A city that is only a museum is already becoming a cemetery." Catchy as the slogan is, and eager as they, are to make the city prosper, Venice's city councilors last week were still resisting both automobiles and skyscrapers.

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