Something for the Planners
The city, as someone once said, is really a problem of human engineering. And the U.S. city is admittedly suffering from slow malaise. Its planners must cope with the problem of the decay of its center, the lure of suburbs, and study the housing needs of everyone from newly married couples to the aged who must live alone because their children's small homes or apartments have no room for them. As a group, planners are frustrated men: they know (or think they know) just what should be done; but they have a hard time getting anybody to do it. But last week the planners could chalk up action in three widely separated areas: > Tackling the problem of the old and lonely, the 2,300,000-member United Church of Christ announced plans to build a string of nonsectarian "retirement centers" in downtown areas of cities, in villages-and near resort communities. The projects, for which the church hopes to get longterm, low-interest federal loans, will be designed for oldsters over 62 whose incomes are as low as $1,800 a year. In Lorain County. Ohio, for example, the church will set up a $4,500,000 settlement for 500 people. The plans call for cottages and high-rise apartments that will rent from $60 to $90 a month. A "core unit" near the center of the housing clusters will provide inexpensive health services, community headquarters and living units for those who are disabled. Residents will rent their quarters, will not have to sign life-tenancy agreements, pay admission charges or provide guarantees that relatives will pledge support. By planting their houses in the middle of existing towns instead of constructing isolated institutions, the church hopes to create communities that will not make oldsters feel shunted off in a kind of ghetto for the aged.
>In Boston, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts cleared the way for construction of a $130 million business center to be built by the Prudential Insurance Co. Though the foundations were laid more than a year ago, construction has been stopped for a year while the courts settled the complicated disputes over title and tax problems. Located a mile away from the Boston Common on the site of the old car storage yard of the Boston & Albany Railroad, the 31-acre project will include a 52-story office building to house Prudential's Northeast headquarters, a 1,000-room hotel, a municipal auditorium and lesser structures, and last but not least, a tree-studded park where employees and passers-by can take their ease on a noonday stroll.
> In Manhattan, the International Business Machines Corp. disclosed plans for shifting its head office about 25 miles north to Armonk in Westchester County. There, on a 443-acre tract, IBM is building a sprawling headquarters that will house 1,000 employees.
The decision to move over the river and into the woods came after a threemonth experiment in suburban business living. President Thomas J. Watson Jr. and about 200 of his top aides resettled themselves last September in temporary headquarters at IBM's research center farther north at Kitchawan, and found that the advantages of performing administrative duties in the relatively quiet countryside far outweighed the advantages of central location in Manhattan.
Some planners, who talk not of cities any more but of "metropolitan areas" that include both core and satellite suburbs, consider such moves as IBM's a help toward relieving downtown congestion. But other urban planners are alarmed. If every business concluded that the city's conveniences are not worth the disadvantage of congestion, the death of the city is in sight.
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