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CHICAGO'S CROSSTOWN EXPRESSWAY: THE TEAM CONCEPT IN ACTION MUton Pikarsky Can we have modern expressway transportation in the city-the kind we all need for jobs, business, shopping-without tearing up the city to put it there, and without displacing great numbers of residents and local enterprises? Can we weave it into the city so that it does not divide neighborhoods and separate neighbor from neighbor? Can we make the expressway a neighborhood asset, a linear community center that provides community facilities, stimulates community improvement, increases property values? Can we, in order to accomplish these things, enlist the active interest, support, and participation of local residents and communities, bearing in mind that without that local interest and participation, not only are we not going to have significant community improvement no matter how good our plans are, but we will not be constructing any of the sorely needed expressways in populous urban areas? These are the questions and reactions that seriously concern designers and builders of urban highways today. The questions are those we are going to have to be able to answer "Yes." Can it be done? We think it can, and we think Chicago is showing the way. The planning of the Chicago Crosstown Expressway, which is going on right now, is one of the first attempts in America to answer positively the questions I have raised. And the initial results of that effort offer some very promising answers. We will focus on the question of community participation, including public meetings, but first we will review the preliminary planning for the Crosstown. The reason for this will be obvious as we progress, but it bears stating here: Simply to undertake to provide modern highways that improve the adjoining urban communities requires some basic changes in highway planning before any official public hearings have been held at all. Community needs have to be studied and community responses anticipated; and these needs should be reflected in the initial planning for the expressway. In the case of the Crosstown route in Chicago, our planning efforts reflect our understanding of these needs. LOCATION OF THE CROSSTOWN A circumferential boulevard of monumental scale for Chicago was first envisioned in the broad concepts of the renowned Burnham Plan of 1909. At present, Chicago's transportation network contains a series of radial routes that converge slightly to the west of the central business district (Figure 1). The proposed highway, which in recent years has been termed the Crosstown Expressway, would start on the northwest side of the junction of the Kennedy and Edens Expressways and would run south to connect with the Eisenhower Expressway, then with the Stevenson Expressway, and then with Midway Airport. South of the Airport, the route would turn east to connect with the Dan Ryan Expressway and the Chicago Skyway on the south- east side. Its course, incidentally, would not be too different from that of the existing railroad bypass, an existing transportation corridor. The general location of this bypass is not arbitrary: it reflects a need. Figure 2 is a chart on which the Chicago Area Transportation Study matched street capacities against amount of travel along a line running west from the Loop. It shows a surplus of street trafficorrying ability near the Central Business District and out in the suburbs, and a deficit in between. The biggest deficit is between Kedzie and Harlem Avenues, an area that includes such major arterial streets as Pulaski Road, Cicero Avenue, and Central Avenue. Cicero Avenue alone, for example, has to handle more than 30,000 cars and trucks per day. THE CORRIDOR CONCEPT Providing an expressway for the corridor-any kind of expressway-would be an improvement. It would reduce the peak-hour expressway traffic jams downtown and it would reduce, by as much as 50 percent, the traffic burden 63
⢠⢠RECOMMENDED CROSSTOWN EXPRESSWAY m^m EXISTING EXPRESSWAY SYSTEM Figure 1. Crosstown route and existing radials. 64
Figure 2. Crosstown Expressway study corridors with roadway capacity-demand differential chart superimposed. on Cicero Avenue and on other major West Side streets- streets that otherwise would continue to show increases in traffic load every year. In Chicago, our philosophy requires the Crosstown Expressway to serve another function, namely, to be a community facility and a backbone for community im- provement. We shall concentrate on that purpose of the Crosstown in reviewing the plan for the Stevenson-Midway Segment. To start with, the following criteria or ground rules were established: ⢠Minimum disruption of communities ⢠Minimum displacement of homes and other struc- tures ⢠Accommodation within their own community of all displaced families, stores, industries that chose to stay ⢠Adequate compensation for those who did not choose to stay ⢠Provision of space for mass transit as part of corridor development ⢠Allowance of adequate space for joint develop- ment projects ⢠Provision of a secondary transportation system to integrate the expressway and the surrounding communities As a final ground rule, we set up a planning principle to answer the question, "What should an expressway be to a community?" We decided to initiate the Chicago Compre- hensive Plan's proposal to concentrate Chicago's growth along "corridors of high accessibility." In too many cases in Chicago, commerce, industry, and residences are intertwined as in Figure 3a. This results in confusion, traffic, noise, and even danger-with trucks cruising through residential blocks and with school children having to cross heavy-traffic streets. The corridor concept shown in Figure 3b proposes that we equip a few main transportation routes with a full range of transportation options, then concentrate our high-traffic activities along them: shopping centers, in- dustrial parks, high-rise apartment projects, and community centers. This is not only more convenient for these activities; it also means less traffic, less noise, less danger in the blocks of single-family homes and low-rise apartments away from the corridor. At the same time, the corridor can become a new kind of main street for those residential areas. To satisfy all the ground rules established actually required two plans: (a) an alignment plan that was a layout of the actual expressway, and (b) a development plan that suggested ways of using the new highway as a basis for community improvements. For a 22-mile expressway it was also necessary that we work by segments, developing and proposing a set of plans for each segment. Geography suggested four segments: (1) From the Kennedy-Edens Expressways to the Eisenhower Expressway (2) From the Eisenhower to the Stevenson Express- way (3) From the Stevenson to Midway Airport (4) From Midway Airport east to the Dan Ryan Expressway and the Chicago Skyway STEVENSON-MIDWAY AIRPORT SEGMENT In August 1968, we completed a preliminary study for the Stevenson-Midway segment and submitted it for con- sideration by local communities and public agencies. It received final approval in December 1968. In April 1969, we began a public discussion of preliminary planning for the east-west segment between Midway Airport and the Chicago Skyway, and we will soon be doing the same for the remaining segments. We will review for you the plan for the Stevenson- Midway Airport segment, where the outcome is known, and then conclude with a consideration of the Midway Airport to Chicago Skyway segment, where public consideration is still very much in process. THE RECOMMENDED ALIGNMENT First, the alignment plan: 65
In all, sixteen different alignments were considered for the 3 1/2-mile Stevenson-Midway segment. Most of them followed one of two main paths through the community: ⢠Cicero Avenue, which the City has been com- mitted to replace with something better, both as a traffic artery and as a shopping strip. ⢠A quarter-mile east of Cicero Avenue, there is an industrial belt, largely vacant, along the Belt Line Railway. But a modern expressway is big. With eight lanes, a median strip, a mass transit facility, and frontage roads alongside for access, it is more than a block wide-too big to fit in either plan without removing a lot of adjacent property. So the suggestion was made: Use both paths. Split the alignment, with one part going down Cicero Avenue, the other alongside the Belt Line. In this manner, neither path would be much wider than our existing major arterial streets. Another suggestion was made: Transpose the align- ments, so that the western one ran north, the eastern one south. This would put the frontage roads in between the major paths, giving the interior area the accessibility needed for a high-accessibility corridor and at the same time providing desirable landscaped buffers for the existing interior residential areas. We believe that this concept will become the national pattern for highways through densely populated urban centers. The divided alignment with interior access-the "reversed split" alignment-was the one recommended (Figure 4). It satisfied the ground rules. It provided a high-accessibility corridor. It displaced only 69 dwellings in 3 1/2 miles, and proposals were made to relocate those families, houses and all, on nearby vacant lots. And it protected and enhanced the existing residential areas both within and adjacent to the expressway corridor. The wavy lines at the top and bottom in Figure 5 represent this buffering effect in which the depressed roadways insulate the surrounding community from the impact of traffic on the interior frontage roads. Or, as indicated at the left of the diagram, similar protection can be provided to residential areas within the inter-roadway a Figure 3a. Disruptive land use. 66
island by means of landscaping and limited access between the frontage roads and residential streets. The reversed split alignment was also able to make maximum use of existing rights-of-way and adjacent under- used land. Figure 6, for example, is a view of the Belt Line Railway with its fringe of largely vacant industrial land. Figure 7 is the same view as proposed, showing the railroad, one leg of the divided alignment, and adjacent park development. Similarly, present-day Cicero Avenue, flanked by underused commercial strips, is used to accommodate a community play area, rapid transit line, expressway leg, and frontage road. Figure 8 illustrates another advantage of the split alignment. As most people know, it is easier to cross two creeks than one river. The split alignment made bridging much easier, and for the first time air-rights development over an expressway became really feasible. To put an air-rights structure over a conventional expressway 300 ft wide is quite a project; but air rights construction over the 100-ft and 150-ft channels of the Stevenson-Midway Alignment is not only practical-it is probable. THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PLAN The community development plan, shown in outline in Figure 9, went beyond the expressway to propose eighteen different projects for street improvement, new shopping centers, and other community facilities in a 2-mile width of city. Why? Because an expressway has an impact on the adjacent community, and it should, therefore, at the same time, provide new opportunities for improving the quality of the environment for the residents and workers in the area. One effect of an expressway is that traffic is reduced on parallel streets but increased on major cross streets leading to and from the highway. So the community plan proposed widening of those cross streets. It also proposed a whole new circulation scheme, with local streets protected from heavy traffic and with a pedestrian walkway system connecting shopping centers, parks, playgrounds, schools, and the expressway edge. The expressway edge, incidental- . ⢠s' ⢠Figure 3b. High-accessibility corridor concept. 67
Figure 4. Artist's view of Stevenson-Midway Airport segment. RESIDENTIAL AREA A*r~±>> ^ CR STH FRONTAGE ROAD v 1 FT INDUSTRIAL AREA T T T EXPKFSSWAY Figure 5. Buffering effect with "reverse split" alignment. IBB â¢U3M Figure 6. The Belt Line Railway industrial belt at present. 68
Figure 7. The Belt Line Railway roadway leg as proposed. a - _ Figure 8. Cross section of the divided alignment: (above) east roadway; (below) west roadway. Figure 9. Community improvement plan: StevensonâMidway Airport segment. 69
Figure 10. Proposed recreation hill-park. ly, should be worth walking to. It will be like the low bluff along a stream, this time a stream of traffic; and it will be a point of interest, a place to meet, even a playground and park. Parks, in fact, are one of the great needs of the Stevenson-Midway area, and the Crosstown Project can provide them through joint development. A new federal ruling allows acquisition of land remnants for nonexpress- way uses and the split-alignment plan was especially strong in joint development opportunities. Forty-eight acres of land would be acquired for parks and green spaces. At the north end of the expressway section, where it will interchange with the Stevenson, a hill-park was one of the proposals (Figure 10). It could be made of earth removed in building the highway, and the savings in earth-hauling would probably pay for it. In winter, it would provide a sled and toboggan slide half again as high as the highest one now available in the Chicago area. In addition to park space, the Crosstown Project would provide 43 acres of land for other purposes, private as well as public. Pointing out a few of these suggests some of the possibilities in the proposed high-accessibility cor- ridor. A new parking lot would be provided for Midway Airport, and it would run on an air-rights structure across the highway right to the terminal. Nearby would be a small industrial park and a small shopping center, both for airport-oriented activities. North of 47th Street would be a major shopping center, and along with other proposed centers it would give the Stevenson-Midway area modern shopping facilities in place of the old Cicero Avenue strip. At the foot of the hill-park mentioned is land for a proposed high school or college campus that the Board of Education is studying. 70
Figure 11. Standard design model of footbridge. To sum up the proposals in the Stevenson-Midway plan: ⢠A modern, fast transportation system will be provided for the area, thereby materially re- ducing through traffic on local streets. ⢠This will be done with minimum dislocation of families without exiling anyone, and without cutting a canyon through the community. ⢠Above the expressway and within its two paths will be a corridor that can become a center of community activities. This corridor will have easy access to the expressway without being strangled by through traffic. ⢠Much needed parks and recreation spaces will be provided, and with them a new local street system that will provide access to the expressway and peace and quiet on residential streets-both at the same time. THE DESIGN TEAM In the Stevenson-Midway design we see an expressway that is a real asset to the community it traverses, offering great opportunities for continuous community improve- ment. To achieve it, it was necessary that the responsible cooperating agencies develop a whole new method and organization of highway design, one that would include the range of skills needed in community planning, as well as highway design-in brief, a systems approach. Two interdisciplinary groups are involved. An inter- agency group, which includes city, county, state, and federal planning and transportation agencies, is responsible for coordinating the project and ensuring consideration in it of all urban development interests. This group is served by an interdisciplinary design staff assembled by four private architectural and engineering firms acting together in a joint venture, Crosstown Associates. The combined staffs include engineers, architects, landscape architects, urban designers, city planners, lawyers, sociologists, right-of-way specialists, marketing analysts, traffic analysts, and other transporta- tion specialists. CONSULTING THE COMMUNITY We gave our combined staff full freedom to try new ideas, asking only that they justify everything in detail and that they know the communities they were serving. Response to the Stevenson-Midway plan at public hearings indicates that the designers did do their homework and did know their community and in fact our public meeting process put them to a very thorough test. In summary, we discussed the plan at a series of local open meetings attended by some 2,000 residents. We displayed a model at Midway Airport and at Ford City Shopping Center that was viewed by more than 300,000 people. We asked for questions and suggestions and we received hundreds. We have answered more than 300 written queries and comments. Some of the suggestions were, in fact, very good and were adopted. But nowhere, to my knowledge, did people object to what we were trying to do or to our basic plans for doing it. These they liked. CROSSTOWN DESIGN STANDARDS Following approval of the Stevenson-Midway study 71
Figure 12. Standard design model of bridge and retaining walls. plan by the communities, the Bureau of Public Roads, and local agencies, we were able to advance into the second phase for that segment of highway. Detailed design standards and preliminary engineering plans and profiles were prepared. Specific urban development project designs and feasibility studies are also well under way. I would like to highlight some of the careful and thoughtful visual design standards for you. Uniformity was one principle. Design a fine structure and stay with it. We are considering both steel and concrete, but will avoid arbitrary shifts from one material to the other. One reason for this is that decoration can be distraction at high speeds. Openness was a related principle. We are proposing that bridges span the whole width of expressway to maintain an open feeling and avoid driver sight blockage. Using the split alignment, this can be done with spans of 150 ft or less. Continuous use of the New Jersey type of barrier as a highway edge and separator is another design feature, and the barriers are also designed to protect ground cover from salt spray. Concrete parapets will turn the corner and cross a bridge to avoid the mixture of fencing types found along many expressways. We are also considering a 6-ft mesh fence above bridge parapets to prevent littering onto the expressway. And although we have not yet developed our signing system, we are already giving careful attention to sign structures. For foot bridges, we are proposing a low rise-to-tread ratio of four to one, so it will be possible to push a bicycle up the stairs, or even a baby carriage. Hence, the easy double flights shown in Figure 11, instead of the usual steep stairs combined with ramps. Figure 13. Park Manor Neighborhood. Lighting was another concern, and light standards were designed to be simple in form. At the same time, we have worked closely with major lighting manufacturers to develop a mainline lighting system that will aim forward and be glare-free. The split alignment, of course, helps us in this. Landscaping is a vital design element to soften the severe lines of the expressway. Therefore, as shown in Figure 12, we are proposing vines along retaining walls, trees above retaining walls, and ground cover on slopes, rather than concrete. Landscaping, of course, is at least as important for urban communities along the expressway as it is for the motorist. In even a sketchy survey of these provisional design standards, one fact stands out above the others: There is no conflict between good aesthetics and good engineering design. The two reinforce one another. Visual standards can be grounded in construction and operational needs, and when they are, they can mean better highway performance, fewer distractions and obstructions for the driver, while permitting economies in materials and construction. Visual standards are also one of the principal means of really knitting an alignment into the urban community, as a positive community asset. MIDWAY AIRPORT-CHICAGO SKYWAY SEGMENT Neither design standards nor the success of the Stevenson-Midway study plan is likely to result in carbon copies as we move from segment to segment along the Crosstown. For this is not formula planning; this is planning to meet particular community needs, and needs differ, as our experience with the east-west segment demonstrates. The east-west, or Midway Airport to Chicago Skyway, segment differs in several ways from the Stevenson-Midway segment. The east-west segment is more than twice as long 72
Figure 14. Proposed alignment: Crosstown Expressway to Chicago Skyway (Photo courtesy of Limbaugh Engineers, Inc., Albuquerque, New Mexico). as the Stevenson-Midway segment with correspondingly more communities to cross, and with much wider social and economic variations between communities. We could anticipate greater difficulties this time in informing com- munities, enlisting their participation, and reaching a planning solution agreeable to all. On the positive side, the east-west segment does have an existing transportation facility, an existing railroad bypass, previously mentioned, for most of its length that is capable of accommodating an entire expressway. In a study of five alternative routes through the east-west segment, we have recommended a route that follows a rail-industrial corridor in which much of the land is vacant and much of the industry is deteriorated. The route offers an opportunity not only to avoid residential displacement, but also to employ joint development for industrial renewal as well as community improvement. East of the Dan Ryan Expressway, however, there was no transportation corridor and we were faced with the prospect of crossing a well-maintained community (Figure 13) through which there were no satisfactory paths. We met this problem by ending the Crosstown Expressway with an interchange with the Dan Ryan. Then we proposed, Figure 14, that the system of collector-dis- 73
Figure 15. Artist's view of Midway Airport-Chicago Skyway segment. tributor lanes, which flank the Dan Ryan express lanes between downtown Chicago and 65th Street (a mile and a quarter north of the Crosstown intersection), be extended south to the Crosstown and a mile beyond. Crosstown users would employ these collector-distributor lanes in reaching the Chicago Skyway-and, in addition, the Dan Ryan's through traffic movement would be improved. These route location decisions tended to determine highway cross-sections also. This is obvious in the case of the Dan Ryan improvement, but it was true also along the western part of the route. We considered, as alternatives, both split alignments and an elevated alignment. The existence of a corridor capable of accommodating a full expressway below grade led us to the combined alignment shown in Figure 15 as the one that would cause the least community disruption and dislocation. To the left in the illustration is the railroad; to the right are parcels of largely vacant industrial land that would be available for community development. In the center of the expressway is a public transportation facility that would initially be served by express buses. Major differences between the Stevenson-Midway and the east-west segments also required that we modify our public meeting procedures. In the Stevenson-Midway seg- ment, only 69 families would be dislocated and there would be good opportunities for major commercial and industrial development. The Midway Airport-Chicago Skyway seg- ment would displace more than 450 families while offering comparatively limited commercial and industrial oppor- tunities. We knew that we would encounter a more militant response along the racially changing east-west segment than in the more homogeneous Stevenson-Midway segment. We could anticipate that more meetings would be required, over a longer time span, to communicate the city's programs and goals. CONSULTING THE COMMUNITY We decided to begin with a series of public meetings in the local communities prior to the total completion of our study plan, but with our planning far enough advanced that we could not only outline the alternatives, but also express our own preferences. Although there are no guidelines for community involvement prior to official public hearings, we felt that we were observing the spirit of the U.S. Department of Transportation's policy and procedure memo of January 1969, on public hearings and location approval that encouraged local highway agencies to hold informal public meetings "whenever such action would further the objectives of this PPM, or otherwise serve the public interest." Our purpose at these preliminary meetings was not to conclude anything, but to start something-the necessary dialogue between communities and public agencies, without which no large-scale public project can succeed today. We emphasized that no decisions had been made. But we also made it a point to meet our professional obligations to make a proposal. We took considerable pains in developing a presentation and information materials, and we gave the meetings maximum publicity starting with an announce- ment by Mayor Daley at a preliminary meeting attended by local community leaders. Until our official public hearings have been held and 74
Figure 16. Waving protest signs. evaluated, it is too early to assess the results of this initial planning dialogue. But from meetings held, I can testify that the response was interested, massive, and concerned- as indicated at one meeting by signs such as those shown in Figure 16. There were plenty of questions to answer. And plenty of feedback, as shown in Figure 17 taken by the Chicago Today newspaper in which we are being told off. In one case there was a tumult when attendance exceeded capacity by two or more to one. We had to recess that meeting and have followed it up with a series of more than twenty smaller meetings. In general, we continued to meet until everyone had an opportunity to participate so that a workable basis on which to complete a plan would be in hand. We have modified our original recommendations to reflect several excellent suggestions received from interested community organizations. The official public hearings for this Midway Airport- Chicago Skyway segment will be held in January 1970. CONCLUSIONS TO DATE What can we say about our public meeting experience so far? First, we are engaged in a process of large-scale public decision-making, which requires exposure, time, and a trigger to set it off. Our trigger is community and public agency dialogue, based on an initial proposal that focuses public attention, stimulates public thinking, and prepares the ground for acceptance of a modified plan. Second, there are thiesholds against communication between planners and public, which we simply have to reckon with. One of these, which we are all aware of, is a Figure 17. Getting told off. bad image of urban expressway building, neither totally deserved nor totally undeserved. There is another threshold that we encountered as part of the price of becoming concerned with community improvement. This threshold appears as an initial reaction against urban change of any kind-good, bad, or indifferent. It reflects, probably, a lack of confidence in the possibility of significant urban improvements. Back of it, of course, is a long history of society's failure to meet certain essential needs. Housing, in particular, is a symbol. Our national inability to develop new inner-city housing on the scale required has made it that way, and we expressway builders are simply going to have to take this particular bull by the horns. It is not enough to provide sites for housing; we are going to have to cause it to get built. And we will do well to build it first-before the highway-to demonstrate that replacement housing will be provided. The long-term low-interest housing programs in Sec- tions 235 and 236 of the Federal Housing Act should be combined with the Highway Act's relocation bonuses to make an immediate start in housing, and adequate funding must be provided. In Chicago, we feel that special funds should be made available immediately for highway- connected housing development, and we intend to press for this for the Crosstown. In short, we have undertaken a big task in trying to use urban highways as avenues for urban development. We do not regret this, for it makes sense. We have had the pleasure of seeing the sense of it and the opportunities in it 75
dawn upon local residents-and on road designers and builders-once their initial concerns and suspicions were allayed. But we must not deceive ourselves; if we intend to build urban highways, we must plan for housing, com- munity improvements, economic development-and when we carry those plans to the public-we are making commitments, no matter how we may condition them. The delivery date on those commitments is now, not ten years from now, and we must provide the resources with which to deliver on them. In Chicago, we intend to deliver. In conclusion, with special reference to those who are in the road-building business, it is apparent that the time has run out when road builders could simply build roads to solve pressing traffic needs without giving adequate con- sideration to the social and economic impact of the road on adjacent communities. Today we must build roads plus. This means that we who design and build roads are also going to have to branch out and engage in the planning and coordination of collateral development-in the building of community facilities, parks, industrial centers, shopping centers-and above all housing. Unless we can manage to use our know-how in building low-priced and moderate- priced housing in the cities, we are not going to build urban expressways. There is nothing unreasonable then in asking highway designers and builders for new enterprise, and a new emphasis on city building, as well as road building. Urban highways must become urban opportunities. Urban high- ways must become instruments of urban improvement. This is our challenge. DISCUSSION QUESTION: In Los Angeles, we would ordinarily try not to put a park next to a freeway because of the air pollution problem. A good many noxious gases are still being emitted by automobiles. Would you have a comment on the idea of parks next to highways? ANSWER: The area involved has a deficiency of parks. The local streets with stop-and-go traffic create more pollution. We have a buffer strip of landscaping along the line. Certainly, there are no absolutes. QUESTION: I would like to ask about the facilities for financing the joint development and in particular the part that you would anticipate from the Department of Transportation. ANSWER: On joint-development projects, such as the parking lot, a park alongside using other land, and the building of the parks and the parking-lot structure: to what extent do we expect participation? The question is really the basic issue as to whether we are going to build urban expressways in populated areas. The present policy of the people in the Bureau of Public Roads is that these areas are nice and desirable, and funds are available for highways. But the funds are not sufficient to take care of the highway needs, and the Bureau is charged with stretching the dollars to get the most highways out of them. The difference in opinion is that perhaps we are going to have to set back some of the priorities on highways and stretch those funds to take care of these needs-funds that are not available from local or other federal sources. In this area, we in Chicago have an advantage politically, and Secretary Volpe of the Department of Transportation is wholly in accord to this. We have issued the statement to the Bureau of Public Roads that we expect 100 percent of the improvement as part of the highway development. Without that, I have no intention of going forward. At present, we are making those studies demonstrating why each individual joint-development project should, in our judgment, receive full federal funding. We will then pass it to the Bureau of Public Roads, to accept it or turn it down. If they turn it down, we are in a better position to bring it to Secretary Volpe. QUESTION: Your answer to the last question is interesting in that joint development implies the involve- ment of several governmental agencies that are not really structured to work together. The Department of Transportation will agree to support your joint-development efforts in Chicago, which has demonstrated political power to pull this off. What about the possibility of extending this to other cities? Can you indicate the kind of organization that might be required to pull it off in regional governments? ANSWER: If we insist on a policy of full participation of the Department of Transportation, are we overlooking other departments? We have involved every planning agency that is in the area, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the school districts, the regional planning agencies participating with us. The plans that are evolved are really a total planning effort with everyone that could be involved. Now, as to the intergovernmental cooperation that should be brought to bear on this problem (and in fact there should be funds from other federal agencies co- 76
operating with this), Secretary Volpe has told me that he himself is aware of this. He has been meeting with Secretary Romney (HUD) and with several of the other department heads. He has been the informal chairman of a little impromptu group to try to develop this concept and instill it in what he says is the bureaucratic morass challenging him and the other Secretaries. QUESTION: In going to the split alignment for the Stevenson-Midway section, what became of the plan for the mass transit facility? ANSWER: The part along Cicero Avenue has facilities for mass transit. Initially, we plan for express buses. When funds are available, we hope to convert to a rapid-rail transit system. There is volume and demand for that now, but we do not have the funds. So we are making provisions for it. The question of paving the lanes for buses is a joint-development issue we intend to pursue. QUESTION: Your comments indicate that you take a lot of variables into consideration. But as a citizen and as a driver in Chicago, I would like to know who is responsible for that unsafe S-curve on the Outer Drive, and the intersection, the connection to the northern expressway just west off the Loop. ANSWER: The S-curve to which you refer is one that was built in about World War I days. It hasn't been completed in that area. The Illinois Central Railroad was involved in it, and there were obligations at issue. Our plans for the next five years make provisions to correct it if funds are available. As far as the expressway congestion and interchanges, when we plan an expressway system, we plan it as a total system. We do not have all the elements in that system. This crosstown segment will help relieve the traffic not destined for the business area. Only 15 percent of the traffic going through the junction you mentioned goes to the business district. Eighty-five percent crosses beyond. QUESTION: In mentioning joint developments, there is a legal problem with regard to ownership and all of its implications. What consideration have you given to this? ANSWER: What we have done jointly with the public agencies involved has been effectively to give the state title, so that in that way we would have no specific problems. If you are talking about schools or public institutions having rights, we lease this property for $1.00 a year to these people and thus overcome that problem. QUESTION: First, who started this design team concept? Was it Baltimore, or was it Chicago? And a second historical question: as I recall, only recently the idea of two public hearings (a preliminary public hearing and a final public hearing) has been inaugurated. Do I understand that one of these sections of your expressway came under the old ruling where you had only a final hearing, while the other section, yet to be developed, comes under the ruling where you are going into preliminary hearings? Can you comment on the difference in your reception by the public in your two schemes? ANSWER: First, the team concept is one that I think many agencies in public and private business have used in the past. In Chicago we have been using it for some time. And Tom Kavanagh is aware that our approval of our design-concept team was one day ahead of the Baltimore one. However, we do not look at the Baltimore team as a proper approach, because they have a marriage of four firms with individuals working for each of the firms. We have imposed the requirement that the team rent separate space, and that the firms detach their professional person- nel on a full-time basis to this project only. They work shoulder-to-shoulder in the same room and have cross- fertilization of ideas. As far as the public hearings are concerned, we have always believed in Chicago that communicating more freely with the public has been helpful. We do not say that the public is the decision-maker. The elected officials are the only ones who have that responsibility, and they will have to suffer the responsibility for wrong decisions. Representa- tives of community groups are here today, and may be gone tomorrow. But it is important to explore and communicate all of the public's fears, reservations, and suggestions. Many suggestions from people living in the community are excellent, and some items had been overlooked, as normally would be done, so that this approach is certainly a desirable one. We believe that the dual public hearings (the corridor concept and the design-hearing concept) are applicable in urban areas. Our initial hearing is one in which we go down to actual taking lines-the lot lines that would normally be expected to be involved. Then we intend, before we go into construction, to have another public hearing, in which case we would show the aesthetic considerations to the com- munity-where the interchanges are, how they will be handled, etc.-and even on the Stevenson-Midway section, where only one hearing was required, we intend to have another official public hearing. On the other segments, we are following exactly the required procedure of having two public hearings. One of the strongest advocates we have for the welding of an expressway into the community is Secretary Volpe. His background as a highway man, tempered by his having been Governor of Massachusetts, has given us a tremendous ally. 77
HOUSING TRENDS AND STRATEGIES Joseph H. Newman Before I go into trends and strategies in housing, I feel I should briefly trace the course of events from the Second World War to the present time to set the stage for a look into the future. After World War II, there was a unanimity of purpose and a pervasiveness of common effort aimed at catching up with the pent-up demands. Through the late forties and the fifties, the number of builders grew rapidly. The capacity of building product manufacturers and the supply of tradesmen expanded likewise. The emphasis was on the use of new or improved forms, textures, and materials; and in upgrading comfort and convenience-improved air con- ditioning, lighting, appliances, surface finishes, and in- sulating materials. Government legislation and institutions expanded. The single-family home was the dominant residential unit. The city dweller fled to the suburbs. It was easy and relatively inexpensive to borrow money to buy or build. It was a seller's market. In the early sixties, signs of change were evident. The producer found out he couldn't just sell basic materials and products, but he had to market function and take into account the interdependency of his product with that of others. The multifamily structure started to take an ever- growing percentage of the market. Land and labor costs increased. Money became more costly. The emphasis shifted to luxury and middle-class housing. Red tape increased. Many more builders turned to industrial and com- mercial building because it was more lucrative. There was a reverse flow of people into the cities, but generally of a lower income bracket than those who left. No new or improved materials appeared and the emphasis shifted to how better to put together what we had, particularly in the light of growing labor shortages and longer time to get projects off the ground. Housing started to mean more than basic shelter. Its definition began to embrace education, style of life, community, transportation, and health services. The Housing and Home Finance Agency became the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Some states and cities set up miniature HUD's. A housing crisis became an urban crisis. Constraints that people had tolerated became deterrents. The mobile home industry mushroomed. Money became still more costly and tight. On October 14, 1969, only 55 percent of the FHA's regional offices reported an adequate supply of funds. People started to worry about poor environment. The behavioral scientist grew in stature. More and more housing became subsidized through a host of devices ranging from low interest rates to tax abatement to outright rent supplement. The rate of decay in older buildings increased. The talk and literature on housing and the cities, ecology, and poverty proliferated. As this symposium was held, another conference-on "A New Politics for Housing"-was held in New York City with sessions entitled "Impasse in the Kitchen: Which Cook Is Chef?" "Can Construction Really Be Industrialized?" "Help, Help, Help, for the Sick, Sick Building" with speakers and chairmen from institutions that did not exist in the early sixties. On the roster is the president of a state Urban Development Corporation; the executive vice president of a development company concentrating on inner city activities; the officer of a Citizens Housing and Planning Council; and the director of a Joint Center for Urban Studies. The stage is set for the seventies. Now, what about the plot? Our nation needs 26 million housing units in 10 years or about 10 million more than recent historic production for a similar period of time. If we look at this goal through the eyes of the cast of characters on stage, we see different things, but basically all-the builder, the occupant, the building product pro- ducer, the financier, government, labor, and others involved in the housing process-are concerned with the questions: "What does it mean for and to me?" and "How may I help beneficially?" 78
The villain of our play is the built-in conflicts among the diverse interests, the complexity of the tasks, and the institutional constraints. The preamble to this symposium stated that the engineer's technical expertise and knowledge of systems engineering make him one of the valuable forces in effecting meaningful urban change. Enter the hero. Before I incur the wrath of the scientist, the urbanist, the architect, and members of other disciplines, I must hasten to point out that when I refer to the engineer, I do not solely mean one formally trained in this discipline. "Engineer" means any qualified professional who practices the engineering discipline or who is on a multidisciplinary team that is guided largely by the principles of this applied science concerned with utilizing all our nation's resources effectively for supplying human needs in the form of physical things such as buildings. To help effect meaningful change, the engineer tries to express the complexities and different viewpoints as value variables that he can examine, arrange, rearrange, integrate, and ultimately optimize in an orderly way. The kind of thing I have in mind was expressed elegantly by Messrs. J. Van Ettinger, Sr. and Jr., of the Bouwcentrum, the building research institute of Holland, in their paper "Problems And Methods Of Low Cost Housing" when they were discussing the meaning of quality: The quality of a product is defined as the measure in which its properties are adapted to the needs of the user. In order to judge the quality of a product it becomes necessary, besides analyzing the characteristic properties of the product, to also analyze the actual situation of the user. Quality in this relative sense can be defined as a "fitness for purpose." In a purely functional sense, abstracted from economic considerations, quality is the use-value of a product to a given user, that is, the attuning of its properties to his needs. This quantity is called "abstract quality." By comparing the use-value to a given user with the importance to the same user of the necessary sacrifices and, in this way, including such economic quantities as the cost of the product and the financial capacity of the user, one arrives at the definition of "economic quality" as the difference between use-value and sacrifices. The Van Ettingers go on to talk of use-value and sacrifices not being functions that are stable in time, saying that the displacement of the use-value function is a result of social and technological changes while the displacement of the sacrifices function is the result of increased efficiency of design and production. These notions and others are familiar to the engineer and they help establish optimal or preferential strategies. They can help answer the kinds of questions that need answering: Do we want housing that lasts longer or that obsoletes sooner? Do we want low- or high-density housing? How much conformity or variety should we have? What degree of industrialization is best? There is full recognition that many options are available for achieving a given result and that the housing and urban situation is a dynamic one full of social and human variables requiring the attention of all kinds of engineers including social engineers. If we are going to be concerned about use-value and economic quality, let's briefly look at one variable in building that appears to be more significant in affecting costs than product or system innovation, i.e., dwelling unit size, particularly in light of the trend to the purchase of more mobile homes by the housing consumer. To illustrate what I have in mind, I will state an oversimplified case. Assume the following constants: abstract quality, amenities, family size, location, and building type. Suppose one was planning a 120,000-sq-ft housing project of say 100 dwelling units whose total projected cost was $2,400,000 and say the average unit area per dwelling unit was 1,200 sq ft. This means the average unit cost is $24,000 or $20.00 per square foot. By cutting the area of the average dwelling unit in half, to 600 sq ft, we could fit 200 units in a given cube at, say, an increased cost equivalent to the added cost of a kitchen, bathroom, related plumbing and mechanical work, and other needed items, or, say, another $650,000, for a total cost of $3,050,000, reducing the cost per apartment by about 24 percent to $15,250 and raising the cost per square foot to $25.42. If, in the real world, the potential occupant had a choice between the kinds of situations I described, what would he take? If he lived in dilapidated housing and he could afford only a $15,000 home and he had to sacrifice area for modern appliances, new fixtures, better recrea- tional facilities, and an environment .similar to that in the homes of his more financially comfortable friends, I believe he would sacrifice the 600 sq ft. It can't be coincidental that the mobile home population is growing. I have cited an extreme example. However, the principle applies at inter- mediate examples. What is "livability" and what price livability are the questions. What does all this have to do with trends and strategies for the seventies? In my opinion, the trends and strategies of the seventies will be determined from the systematic studies, analyses, dynamic modeling, experimentation, and other engineering methodology aimed at simplifying the understanding of complex problems that seem to defy simple solutions. Notwithstanding this, there are trends now identifiable that form the basis for my predictions and recommended strategies that will follow. 79
We are moving toward fashioning our home building industry more like a factory industry. Today companies can manufacture housing and bring it to the site as complete living units. Others can supply large factory fabricated modules that go together fast and simply in the field to form finished dwelling units. Still others produce a variety of factory fabricated components that go together ef- ficiently and effectively to provide housing. It is likely that each one of you have seen or heard about the preformed component systems, the stacked boxes, factory fabricated utility cores, stacked mobile homes, sectionalized homes, large-size panels, and other components that go together in a variety of ways. Not a month goes by without the popular press, and particularly the trade literature, publishing something on this. I would be wasting your time to give you example after example and then analyze each case history. You can read about them in reports and publications such as "the New Building Block," a report on the factory-produced dwelling module that is essentially a review of what is happening in the field of modular construction prepared by the Center for Housing and Environmental Studies of Cornell University; in "An Analysis of Twelve Experimental Housing Projects," a report by the MITRE Corporation to HUD; in the June 1968 issue of PROGRESSIVE ARCHITECTURE; and in countless other publications. Is the trend toward fashioning our housing industry more like a factory industry a clear one? Will it persist? Almost all industrialized housing experiments have shown that drastic savings in construction time are possible; a variety of architectural designs are possible; labor will cooperate in different ways, in different places; a variety of quality and installation problems exist that are of the type to be expected when any new approach is being tried for the first time. However, the questions of achieving real cost savings and meeting national goals must still be answered. In- dustrialized housing means mass production. Mass produc- tion implies significant cost savings. Except for the mobile home industry, which has become a major factor in housing production statistics, I know of no mass production housing operation in this country. I know of no indus- trialized housing system produced and built in a quantity that exceeded or came anywhere near the quantity of nonindustrialized housing in the same state or even county. Perhaps there is one, but I know of no single housing project that exceeded several hundred industrialized or partially industrialized units. There are only companies producing industrialized housing in small quantities or recently formed and ready to take custom orders. According to the MITRE report: "Up to this point, none of the new construction technologies examined has demonstrably cut direct construction costs below those of conventional methods." My own observation on a broad base has been similar. In effect, we are in the midst of a growing experiment in industrialized housing trying to find out on a small scale what large-scale housing is all about. I contend that this may be difficult to do. Let us examine some of the factors. (See Figure 1.) If curves A, B, and Crepresent different industrialized building systems, which one would you select? If you were an entrepreneur, it would depend upon your production capability, availability of money, and market and the like. If you were a public official concerned with short-range goals-e.g., what can be done between now and election day-you would be interested in systems BorC depending upon the time factor. If you were a young family wanting a new low-cost home now, only C would have meaning to you. If you were schooled in the engineering discipline, you would want to see the curve for conventional construction. In real life, constant abstract quality does not really exist and as a variable it clouds the issue. I have maintained it as a constant to make a point. The important thing is for the nature of mass production to be recognized. If our goal is 10,000,000 more dwelling units in the next decade than in the previous one, it would be more prudent to experiment on the far right of the curves. We have come to expect unrealistically that any industrialized housing experiment is really a demonstration and when the cost benefits are not apparent or are modest, cries of disbelief are heard and unwarranted pressures are put upon the entrepreneur. We must learn that several hundred or even several thousand dwelling units do not represent true industrialization and that, therefore, such endeavors cannot be expected to show the same economic benefits as true mass production. Also, we must not forget that different subsystems, components, or products that make up a dwelling unit, no matter how these pieces are put together, require different production quantity runs for optimum production. A bathroom fixture or a kitchen appliance's optimal cost happens in production runs of tens of thousands while kitchen cabinets or window frames at substantially less-in only the thousands. As we put together smaller pieces to make larger ones in a factory, we achieve certain obvious basic economies but we incur certain penalties, e.g., those relating to transportation, distribution, and logistics, not to mention increasing sensitivity to market demand. We must not overlook that given mass production, the market may not be able to absorb it in an orderly fashion. Intuitively, I believe the industrialized house or apartment of the seventies will ultimately fall somewhere 80
POL-Iâ /K^'S? LJHIT .©. DU1EUL-IMC UNITS Figure 1 between the fully factory-fabricated unit ready to move in and the conventional one of today. In addition to the factors already mentioned, we are dealing with conflicting forces-the technological forces that direct us to total conformity and rigidity in the pursuit of total industrializa- tion and the opposing social and institutional forces that direct us to flexibility in the interest of unlimited choice and accommodation of diverse interests. It is apparent to me-especially in the framework of the construction industry's fragmented character, today's social imperatives, the dynamics of the marketplace, and competitive requirements-that any strategy regarding in- dustrialization must strike some kind of a balance between these opposing forces. The emphasis logically belongs on factory construc- tion of the systems that now most critically effect the construction cycle and that have a relatively high field labor content, which cost is now rising at a faster rate than factory, fabricated material, viz., electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and wet systems. If a system can be built in the field more logically, it shoudl not be forced into the factory. Partial industrialization provides a prudent base from which to seek change because it gives some flexibility in negotiation among diverse interests. It offers a greater opportunity to provide style and functional options more readily and a greater degree of freedom in establishing fall-back or optional positions. It also provides an op- portunity to spread the development activity and the entrepreneurial carrot among a broader base of the building product producers' community. The enormity of the task and the time factor cannot ignore the need for widespread participation. I see readily and easily available new subsystems and products that can be used efficiently in field or factory or both, which can make housing more industrialized now while we find out what is the optimum degree of industrialization or the best "product" mix. Finally, we stand a better chance of ending up with subsystems capable of being used in low-, medium-, and high-rise housing than of finding a universal large module suitable for all types of housing. Getting any new subsystem or product into the mainstream in a quantity to be most effective to the user and preferable to the producer has been and is a time- consuming task suggesting we first look at the mechanism for introducing relatively simple available technology before we jump into a study of more complex systems. We cannot fully benefit from mass production unless we have a mechanism for getting the factory-fabricated subsystem placed where we need it, when we need it, and at the right price. What good is it to have a successful experiment in a given city with a new system if you have to repeat it again and again in different cities and with different contractors and subcontractors within each city before the public gets the full benefit of any innovation, and this assumes that the contractors are cooperative and without an opposing selfish 81
TWO HOUP- SHAFT UJ/\l_l_ Figure 2 interest. As the automobile manufacturer needs a dealer delivery system, so does the national system or subsystem manufacturer. I will try to point up the nature of the gestation problem with a successful case history of a simple system with which I am personally familiar, viz., a gypsum board steel stud shaftwall of a 2- or 3-hour time-temperature rating developed to replace time-consuming, job-delaying masonry work in high-rise construction. See Figure 2. The approach was conceived about five years ago. Mock-ups, development of all the details, performance testing, and the first full-scale field evaluation took about three years to complete in a cooperative climate. Then the slower steps of getting approvals from several building departments in cities where owners agreed to use the system. Then the orientation of different architects who never detailed such a system before. Finally, and perhaps the most agonizing process, the persuasion of subcon- tractors to put in the system at its optimum cost, and getting enough installers to have competition. The man- hours, the aggravation, and the costs expended to bring on stream this relatively simple subsystem that is partially factory-fabricated point up the magnitude of getting more complex systems off the ground in a way that full benefits are achieved nationally. The engineer can predict the cost of getting innova- tions off the ground as well as study the mechanism to achieve it all with a view to optimizing the process. Another trend, the percentage of units in the multifamily category is growing and may well reach as high as 65 percent by the end of the seventies. When you couple this with the likelihood of more factory fabrication, this suggests less small home builders and more large home builders. To the building product commodity manufacturer this means a new breed of customer. The new purchaser will be the systems manufacturer, the large project builder, the mobile home manufacturer, all of whom will want to bypass traditional distribution channels that developed around the small builder. The new breed of customer will want his product shaped and shipped differently, or both, will demand a different kind and level of service, and will seek new purchasing arrangements. The commodity manufacturers will have to develop two distinct in-house organizations to service their big customers, who will be able to exert a, major influence upon them as well as their small ones. Many will find it unprofitable to service the small customer. To a large degree the innovations of the 1970's will spring from cooperative endeavors while solving the problems and meeting the needs of the new builders and these innovations will be the commodities of the 1980's. As components and subsystems are put together in new and improved ways and as experimental activities increase, a whole spectrum of new knowledge and informa- tion will be needed to establish evaluative procedures to determine compliance with performance, safety, and value requirements, to provide the technical expertise for making judgments in lieu of or for pending establishment of evaluative procedures, to aid in studying subjective human response to environment, to evaluate alternative methods and types of buildings, and to permit objective evaluation of experiments. An authoritative national institution of some kind concerned with the building sciences will be needed to advise the public and private sectors on the challenges of the seventies. We can no longer afford to leave complex interdisciplinary technical decisions and judgments to people who are not qualified to make them or are concerned with parochial interests-at the expense of the consumer. Not only will the builder of the seventies build more 82
units, he will likely have greater financial resources than his historic counterpart and have on his team professionals representing all the disciplines. More often than not, he will produce one or more of the products of subsystems in the "house" he builds and he will build more than just the house, the total community. Project management in the sense of the aircraft and space industry will become commonplace. The signs of this are all around us; ALCOA, Boise Cascade, Westinghouse, ITT are but four examples of companies that are moving in this direction. There will be no general contractor as we know him today. The general contractor will act as agent for the owner whether he be a government authority or agency or a private entrepreneur (unless of course the owner has such in-house competence.) He will perform all the functions of a general contractor at actual cost, but in a professional role, receiving a fee for his work. Savings resulting from his good management will accrue to the owner. In the nonresidential field, such is now commonplace on major projects; witness the John Hancock Building, the World Trade Center, the library at the University of Chicago. The utilities may join the list of housing developers and they seem particularly well suited for such a role because, in the words of a spokesman for Niagra Mohawk (which recently agreed to build 134 low- and moderate- income apartments in Troy, New York), "their own prospects are bound up with the conditions of their regions." They can't pick up and leave if they get bad. Two frequently asked questions are: "Will the private sector invest in housing in the seventies as he did in the fifties?" and "Why have they generally shyed away from investing in housing in the sixties, particularly the late sixties? When you ask the private entrepreneur, his answer usually is: "Housing is becoming less and less profitable and more and more risky than other alternatives." If this is indeed true-and it must be, because the number of dwelling units built, as an investment, by the private sector, continues to decrease (e.g., in Brooklyn, a county with more than 2 million people and an intense housing shortage, not a single permit for private apartment construction was issued in the first six months of 1969)^then why does the public official build up a bureaucratic system predicated upon the assumption that the private entrepreneur is going to become rich at the public's expense? The controls and red tape assume windfall profits, on the part of the private investor. If it were really so good, private entrepreneurs wouldn't be leaving the housing market. What I have in mind is epitomized by the public employee arguing over a $200,000 contingency figure requested by a sponsor of a $50,000,000 project while costs due to inflation rise at 1/2 percent or $250,000 per month. Three months later the sponsor gives in and the official has served the public by saving $200,000 but at a cost of $750,000. An examination of the magnitude of the housing task will also aid in understanding. If our goals are to increase the housing output by a million units per year, on a mass production basis this means that 100 entities will have to produce at least 10,000 units annually or 50 entities, at least 20,000 units annually. I have been told that the largest housing producer in the United States does not produce more than 6,000 units per year, and he is among a select small number, which means that we need to start again from scratch. This raises the questions of how do you get set up to do this; how do you get existing companies to increase their sales by $200,000,000 or $400,000,000 per year or new companies to reach that volume; are there that many companies who can undertake the task and, if so, under what ground rules. The tasks that lie ahead are so great that the only way we can make any substantial progress is to divide the housing pie among the qualified and to train more companies to become qualified-on a negotiated basis and in accordance with established rules. The so-called public protectors delude themselves by defending the competitive bidding process whether it takes the form of requests for proposals, sealed bids against an inflexible set of bid documents, or any other device. In the past, when there were more resources than work, this had its place, but today and in the coming decade when we will have more construction and urban building than the resources to do it, this doesn't make sense. Under the present-day circumstances, the best resources, given the alternative, gravitate toward the more lucrative projects, which are seldom housing for low- and middle-income families. As scientists and engineers we must insist that any mass production experiment have a control. To really find out if 25,000 units of a new system are better by any cost-benefit measure established, one needs to build 25,000 conventionally produced units on a similar basis. Finding the answers and solutions to the kinds of questions I raised regarding our housing goals will occupy the time of many professionals including the engineering fraternity in the coming decade and we are fortunate as a nation to have the mechanism of the National Academies and professional societies and a growing number of serious professionals in the private, public, and academic sectors. The trends of urban change are clear and so must be our strategy. In the seventies, we must change the housing industry into more of a factory industry, but not to the point of sacrificing flexibility of choice and the accommodation of 83
diverse interests. We must establish a prudent base from which to seek further change. We must make it an era when the engineering disciplines will optimize the "economic quality" of housing and the process for achieving it, as well as learn how best to combine our technological and management resources to meet housing needs. It must be a decade when we take steps as an interdisciplinary professional community to organize a National Institute of Building Sciences to cope with the problems and questions arising from putting things together in new and improved ways and to address the full spectrum of needs on housing and the related environment. It must be a time when we experiment on a large scale to answer large-scale needs. Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "The country needs, and unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." Our role in the professional community is to tell our country what methods and strategy they should choose because we have the tools to raise the probability of success as we strive to make the city an example of the American spirit. DISCUSSION QUESTION: To achieve your prediction for the 70's, how do you evision the role of the building-trades craftsman vis-a-vis the industrial worker? ANSWER: I have perhaps more optimistic faith in our ability to solve this problem. I see some trends behind the scenes, and I think we will get down to serious horsetrading in the next eighteen months or so. Perhaps I am overly optimistic, but I see the signs. QUESTION: Building 50,000 housing units is sort of a monumental task. A big part of that problem is financing, as I see it. Do you have recommendations on proposed changes in tax laws? ANSWER: As engineers, I think we realize housing is one part of a total picture. Engineers in this country will not make the decision. Perhaps they should make it, but they will not make the decision on our priorities in the coming decade. Housing has a value in the social scheme of things, and so has war. So have some of the other elements. This will be decided on the political scene. 84
TOWARD AN INTEGRATIVE PROCESS FOR URBAN PROBLEM SOLVING James B. Reswick Sherman K. Grinnell More and more people live in urban areas; rates of both environmental growth and decay increase; the challenge of providing human urban environments for humans grows. Urban planners and designers are faced with more complex problems: the need to deal with human needs in a human way, the need to collaborate with more people and organizations in order to accomplish results, the opportunity to use a wider variety of tools and materials in generating creative solutions. But how can this challenge be met effectively? Most growth and development on the urban scale is not planned; it just happens. Much of what is planned stays in the files and is never implemented. Cleveland has had at least six separate sets of plans for a downtown subway ready to go during the last twenty years but today there is no downtown subway, and no plan to implement one. Most planning is piecemeal-for one building, one development, one transportation mode, or one subsystem of an urban environment. Consequently, the overall scheme of things is not an integrated plan but a resultant; the sum of many small plans and actions. These conditions lead us to ask: What is the planning- design-implementation process on the urban scale? How does it happen? Who is involved? What makes it work? What makes it fail? What is the role of the professional engineer? THE PLANNDMG-DESIGN-IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS Four major elements are involved in the planning- design-implementation process that leads to solutions for problems on the urban scale. Those elements are (1) a problem area or focus, such as transportation; (2) the people and organizations that have money, knowledge, skills, or power that is relevant to problem solutions in the area of interest; (3) a series of problem-solving steps and cycles that, hopefully, lead to problem solutions; and (4) a linking process by which the first three elements are joined to accomplish the desired results. Sociotechnical Problem Area We have a growing list of sociotechnical urban problems with which those who live in urban areas are all too familar. Every list would include housing, environ- mental pollution, transportation, water resources, and environmental decay as significant areas for which problem solutions on a scale not yet achieved are urgently needed. People and Organizations with Relevant Skills, Knowledge, Money, and Power A factor that makes solutions to urban problems so difficult is the great diversity of widely dispersed skills, knowledge, and power that must be mobilized to produce significant solutions. At least three major categories of people and organizations have primary stakes in the solution of urban problems: (1) Professional Experts- have the role of providing expertise in the many technical areas that are needed. Professional planners, designers, engi- neers, social scientists, architects comprise this group. Planning agencies, consulting organiza- tions, nonprofit corporations, and universities are the kinds of organizations that tend to house these technical specialists and to take the pro- fessional expert role. (2) Decision-makers and Implementers- have the role of setting criteria for the planning activity, of selecting among planning alternatives, and for setting implementation of plans into action. The leaders of public and private power groups tend to assume these roles. The organizations that have a stake include (a) government at the city, county, state, and federal levels, (b) the Chamber of Commerce, (c) foundations, (d) business, and (e) industry. (3) Citizens- all those who comprise the affected community have the role of endorsing plans and 85
actions (usually through a more or less indirect process) and living with the results of the problem-solving activity. There is both an in- dividual role and a collective one; the latter may be exercised through such organizations as the American Legion and the League of Women Voters. Problem-solving Steps and Cycles Every engineer, planner, or designer has his own set of concepts and terms for describing the sequence of steps that he goes through in accomplishing problem-solutions. The set of steps that lead to solutions to urban problems can be described in many ways1 and comprise a very complex picture. For purposes of analyzing the overall planning-design-implementation process in this paper, a simplified set of steps are used as follows: (1) Recognition of Problem. Recognize the existence of a high-priority problem focus or area. (2) Initiation of Work. Put up money and criteria for initial work on the problem area. (3) Identification of Planning and Design Alterna- tives. Identify the large amount of study and research work that is needed for potential action alternatives. (4) Selection of Best Alternatives. The task of making choices based on value judgments about which ideas and plans should be implemented. (5) Endorsement of Plans. In the case of very large projects, the community usually has an op- portunity to endorse or make possible the ex- penditure of large sums of money. (6) Detailed Design. After the approval of general plans, the detailed design of specific structures, hardware, and places occurs. (7) Construction and Operation. The system is built and operated for the benefit of the community. (8) Use of Avoidance of System. The community either benefits from, makes use of, avoids, or is unaware of the system. (9) Evaluation. Sometimes, but not always, there is a process of assessing the effectiveness of the problem-solving job. Effective solutions to major problem areas usually require several cycles through these steps with an escalation to larger-scope systems and solutions after some initial pilot-scale and demonstration or learning cycles. Linking Processes Although our effectiveness in relation to need for solutions to urban problems has slipped in recent years, we have a wealth of experience and an analysis of our current situation to use in considering how to improve the processes by which we link problem area, relevant people, and problem-solving steps to achieve better solutions. In the balance of this paper, we consider two such linking processes. The first process is the one that is usually used to solve urban problems-the fragmentive process suggests some important qualities for an ideal process. Secondly, an idealized process-the integrative process-is proposed and analyzed as the basis for improved urban problem-solving. The Fragmentive Process The fragmentive process, which consists of a series of problemsolving steps, each of which is the responsibility of the experts, the decision-makers, or the citizens, is depicted in Figure 1. This process is characteristic of most of our present urban problem-solving situations. Characteristics of the Fragmentive Process Characteristics of the Fragmentive process include: 1. The process is discontinuous. It consists of a series of discrete steps, each of which is in the hands of one group-the experts, the decision-makers, or the citizens. 2. Each step is under almost total control and responsibility of the group responsible for that step. 3. No one is responsible for or involved in the total process needed. 4. The sell followed by accept or reject processes by which successive steps are linked tends to produce dis- tortions and distance rather than trust and joining between the groups responsible for adjacent steps. 5. As a result of the above, there are major pitfalls to be overcome in completing the process. Some of them are: (a) Since the steps are separated in time and space, each responsible group uses its own concepts, language, attitudes, myths, and techniques in taking the inputs from the previous step, operating on them, and preparing the outputs for the next step. (b) The "baton passing" between steps is loaded with communications gaps and commitment vacuums. (c) Each group tends to support its own concepts and meet its own needs during the accomplish- ment of the steps for which it is responsible, but no one group seems satisfied with its limited role and influence in the total process. (d) Brief inaction or minimal resistance will usually stop the process at any step, whereas major energy and continuous effort are required to keep it going. 6. Almost all the real problem-solving activity is conducted by the professional experts with little more than 86
[EXPERTS] Figure 1. The fragmentive process. choice-making, approval or rejection options left for the decision-makers and citizens. 7. The experts try, with increasing sophistication, to "psyche out" and anticipate the needs and problems to be faced by each of the other groups at each step. They try to produce a product by the end of the study and plan step that will carry the project all the way to the use step. So far, they have not generally been able to produce this kind of all-purpose plan. 8. There is almost no collective learning from the unsatisfactory experience of the total process that can be applied to the improvement of the next effort. 9. Assuming completion of the cycle and full-scale implementation of a housing, recreational, or transporta- tion system, the ultimate nonuse or disuse of the resultant facilities can and does defeat the intent and utility of the whole fragmentive planning-design-implementation process. 10. In an area such as transportation planning, there is general dissatisfaction with the overall patchwork solution. People do not like the masses of concrete roadways cutting across their living spaces, and they suffer through traffic jams and parking problems; but neither do they choose to ride buses or rapid transit. 11. Not surprisingly, few major planning efforts make it through all the steps. Almost all undergo several cycles of sell and reject before acceptance at one or more steps. All Figure 2. The integrative process. experience major modifications to the initial thinking in going from start to finish. The Integrative Process Limitations in the fragmentive process suggest a number of characteristics for an idealized process that we have designated an integrative process. The integrative process has been the conceptual basis for the linking processes that have been developed in the Cleveland urban transportation projects designated Project DATA^ (see Appendix A) and Project CTAP.^ The integrative process is depicted in Figure 2. The integrative process, which links the same problem- solving steps and groups described in the fragmentive process, emphasizes three key notions: (1) Collaborative Activities- engage all three groups of people and organizations at each step of the problem-solving process provide the essential continuity, development, and growing processes for integration.4 (2) The Master Planning Concept which is oriented to the development of a blueprint that will direct design work for decades, is supplanted by the notion of a master working process that will facilitate rapid, flexible problem-solving cycles that are geared to meeting changing needs of citizens. 87
(3) Rapid Complete Cycles- of the planning-design- implementation process, which can be the basis for learning how to achieve effective collabora- tion, are emphasized. Characteristics of the Integrative Process Some of the key characteristics of the integrative process are: 1. All of the major groups are involved in each of the nine major steps. 2. Collaborative problem-solving activities that involve the participation of all of the groups are the vehicles for maintaining continuity of the process. 3. The linkage between problem-solving steps is of a different nature. Instead of sell, accept, and reject pro- cesses, the linking activity is one of organizing and deploying resources for the next step. 4. The collaborative activities provide vehicles for the two-way flow of resources and information needed to keep the process going. 5. The process is continuous rather than discon- tinuous. Each step is linked through people and continuing activity with the preceding and the next step. 6. Rather than divided responsibilities for separated steps, every group collaborates and is involved in each step of the process. 7. Selling and rejection are continuous and shared processes rather than discrete ones that each group does to the others. 8. Because of the continuous involvement and com- munication through all the steps in the process, com- munications gaps and commitment vacuums are minimized and can be dealt with as they occur as part of the total process. 9. Since the goal for all groups is not the completion of its own steps, but rather the completion of the total process, maximum energy and commitment can be focused on and mobilized to accomplish the end goal. 10. The product of each innovative problem-solving cycle is not an end in itself. It is the vehicle for proceeding to the next problem-solving cycle and expanding both the participation in and scope of the process. Problems in the Development of the Integrative Process The development of the integrative process in a community is hindered by several significant issues in- cluding: 1. Action models for this process do not exist. They must be invented, explored, and learned. 2. A redistribution of political power to a wider base of participation is involved. This can be viewed as a threat to "normal" political processes, to high-power people, and to those who are focused primarily on their own self- interests. 3. The success of the process depends heavily on the effectiveness of the collaborative problem-solving activities. 4. The effective involvement of the user and other individuals in the community represents a serious challenge.^ New methods, processes, attitudes, and role definitions that facilitate the effective participation of community members in collaborative problem-solving teams are needed. Engineers and the Integrative Process Engineering know-how is essential in the solution of most sociotechnical urban problems. As a consequence, many engineers have the opportunity to take leadership in the development of integrative planning-design-implementa- tion processes. Engineers, along with other professionals, in planning agencies, business firms, government agencies at all levels, and universities can join forces to initiate collabora- tive efforts that bridge jurisdictional gaps and conflict. Some current examples of such efforts are the DOT Central Cities Program, Urban America, Inc. Programs, and the Cleveland Transportation Action Program and Project DATA (Appendix A). The pivotal issues that determine the extent to which these efforts can become visible models of the integrative planning-design-implementation process are their ability (a) to achieve sustained collaborative effort that is stronger than the devisive and fragmentive forces; (b) to gain active participation of large enough segments of the expert, decision-maker, and citizen groups to make a significant difference on the problem area; and (c) to accomplish early results through initial complete cycles of the problem- solving process. These cycles are the basis for learning how to collaborate together and generate the momentum for subsequent larger accomplishments. Engineers and other professionals will be able to play significant roles in the development of these collaborative efforts to the extent that they and their organizations are: (1) Free of the personal status and power needs that give a "my perspective" orientation to work rather than a "solution" orientation that is fundamental to good engineering practice. (2) Equipped with collaborative skills and with knowledge of the social-psychological processes through which attitude, concept, and value dif- ferences can be bridged. (3) Committed to achieving an overall integrative planning-design-implementation process and not just to the elegant study, planning, and design 88
results that are the usual focus of engineering effort. (4) Able to creatively use their broad engineering problem-solving concepts as a framework for the development of an integrative process without imposing prespecified engineering structures and language on others to whom it is foreign. (5) Able to join in an interorgamzational and inter- disciplinary task group to build some initial solutions to major urban problems. SUMMARY Problem areas, people, and organizations with relevant skills, knowledge, money, and power, plus problem-solving steps must be linked effectively in order to build solutions to our major urban problems. In this paper, we have analyzed the usual linking mechanism for planning, design, and implementation-the fragmentive process-and have described its limitations. We have used those limitations as a background for proposing an idealized approach-the in- tegrative planning-design-implementation process. The characteristics of the integrative process and some notions about how to develop it have been outlined. In conclusion, we have listed some of the conditions and orientations that will enable engineers and other professionals to participate effectively in the development of integrative processes. REFERENCES 1. Catanese, A. J. and A. W. Steiss, "Systematic Planning-The Challenge of the New Generation of Planners," Elastics, August 1968. 2. Project DATA-HUD Final Report, May 1969 (OHIO MTD-2, to be made available by the System Research and Development Division, Office of Utilities Tech- nology, Department of Housing and Urban Develop- ment in late 1969 - Vol. I, Summary Report, 60 pp; Vol. II, Development of Project DATA Model, 350 pp; Vol. Ill, Computer Printouts). 3. Mayor's Commission for Urban Transportation Report, March 1969, Cleveland, Ohio. 4. GrinneD, S. K., "The Development of Creative Inter- professional Collaboration: A Social-Psychological Theory," Engineering Design Center Report No. 4-67-18, Case Institute of Technology, 1968. 5. Spiegel, H. B. C. (editor), Citizen Participation in Urban Development, Vol I - Concepts and Issues and Vol. II - Cases and Programs, Washington, D. C., NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, 1968. 6. Goss, D. N. and D. J. Rinehart, "An Approach for Evaluating the Suitability of Transportation Design Concepts to Meet the Needs of Major Activity Centers," Society of Automotive Engineers, New York, 1969. 7. Goss, D. N., "Reexamination of the Urban Transports tion Problem," Battelle Urban Studies Center, Cleveland, Ohio. APPENDIX A: PROJECT DATA-SUMMARY DESCRIPTION Project DATA was a collaborative approach for developing a continuous process for improving the high- density movement of people and goods within downtown Cleveland. The project was conceived as a three phase study. The following relates to Phase I, which was accomplished during 1967-1968. A computer modeling approach for simultaneously simulating various user decisions related to selection of mode, route of travel, and destination to satisfy specific trip purposes within downtown areas was formulated during Project DATA. The model can be used to assist in identifying realistic downtown transportation system design concepts that are compatible with the environment of a downtown area and that serve the transportation needs of the users of the area. As part of the model development process, four major data collection activities were undertaken to obtain better understanding of the transportation environment in down- town Cleveland: (1) Downtown Origin-and-destination Survey. First large-scale effort in the United States to provide the detailed data required for describing who, how many, how, where, when, and why people move to, from, and within a major activity center (downtown Cleveland). (2) Pedestrian-movement Survey. Provided data describing the types and numbers of pedestrians moving along arterial streets in downtown Cleveland as well as identifying major pedestrian attractors along the streets. (3) Loop Bus Survey. Identified user-perceived attributes of an existing downtown distribution system plus relevant socioeconomic and trip- making characteristics of the loop bus system users. (4) Visual Place Survey. Provided data describing the environmental as well as the physical character- istics of downtown Cleveland. A conceptual framework for achieving improved collaboration among the various agencies and people in a community that must work together to develop effective solutions to complex sociotechnical urban problems, such as downtown transportation, was developed and tested as 89
part of the project-the integrative planning-design- implementation process. This process was used as the basis for developing a client (owner) for the Phase II and Phase III concepts of Project DATA plus a continuous transporta- tion action program for the City of Cleveland as part of the Mayor's Commission for Urban Transportation. In effect, this Commission provided a mechanism for making a transition from a locus of action in Project DATA to a locus of action in the community. An immediate action program-Action '70-for im- proving the transportation system in downtown Cleveland was also formulated. The action program is presently being implemented as part of the comprehensive transportation action program developed by the Mayor's Commission.-* A comprehensive description of Project DATA may be found in the Project DATA Final Report. Further details on the model building process may be found in references 6 and 7. DISCUSSION QUESTION: One of the areas that was not discussed but only mentioned was evaluation. How do you evaluate and how do you set up your criteria? Have you gone through any of that exercise yet? ANSWER: In the new CTAP program, there is a "sensing evaluation." It is important to get some money, and it is important to try to get money to pay people to do it. It is not enough to show that the loop bus attracted twice as many riders after we put the information signs up. It is a much more subtle business about the effect on other lanes, the effect on people patterns, and so on. All I can say in reply is that you try a number of approaches, the best ones that people can come up with, fill them in in the beginning, and establish criteria by which the system will be evaluated. Priority is important, and it must be understood by the federal government and the people who are doing the work. QUESTION: You didn't mention the Cleveland rapid transit program in connection with the buses. Is this a part of it? ANSWER: The Cleveland Transit System operates a rapid transit line, which I understand is still the fastest such line in the country. It innovated the airport extension, which not only has been an exciting thing, but has turned out to be at least twice as effective as originally predicted. It operates all the buses, and the management and the board of the Cleveland Transit System have been deeply involved in Project DATA. This has been a long time in building, because the transit system for years has had to operate out of the fare box. This in turn means that it has been sorely limited in its ability to meet what might be called social needs as distinct from being able to make every route pay for itself. They have been under constant criticism, and it has been difficult for them to dare to reach out into innovative areas. QUESTION: Obviously, all of us are primarily inter- ested in anticipating new problems, in finding a process to avoid future problems instead of just solving the ones we have at the moment. How could you use the model to anticipate similar problems or to characterize your results so that they can be used that way? ANSWER: The model is not yet operationally com- plete as a tool for planners. When it is (and it is going to take a lot more data collection before it can be), I think it will be a tool that will anticipate problems. In other words, a new system proposed at a certain place and in a certain concept can be tested, and this will create dislocations or changes elsewhere in the system, which then can be observed. Most of the present activities, except for building a planning process for the future, havy been concerned with quite obvious needs, such as getting people from the inner city to jobs or servicing a hospital. Until some of these things are done in the context of a broad framework, we cannot get much interest and support from the merchants and businessmen and the power sources to support long- range planning and the like. 90
DETROIT'S METROPOLITAN WATER POLLUTION CONTROL PROGRAM-IN ACTION Gerald J. Remus Today, man is living in the city of tomorrow with the government of yesterday. It has ever been so, that the average man changes before the institutions that govern him change. This government-gap puts another dimension on those engineers who deal with establishing proper basic patterns of service for humanity ahead of the institutions that govern. It is to this premise that I am basing my address, and on two basic services-water supply and the protection thereof, or pollution control. My principal emphasis in this discussion is on pollution control, but the two services are so economically and politically entwined that it is impossible to talk about the administration and development of one without dwelling on both services. Today the Detroit water systems, supply and pollution control, serve Detroit and 71 adjacent communities-more than 40 percent of the State of Michigan's population. Political leaders are not ready to organize metropolitan government; and before they will become ready, considerable development will have taken place. To serve this development, there must be constructed (if priorities for construction mean anything at all) basic water transmission mains and sewage interceptors that can be gradually augmented, and they must be orderly and soundly engineered so that the ever-expanding demand for the service can be satisfied. For years Detroit has provided service to those communities directly on its political border. In the last fifteen years we have embarked on programs of water supply and pollution control on a utility basis. Water mains have been built to provide water to communities more than 50 miles from Detroit; and we are today, in counties in the surrounding watershed, constructing sewage interceptors that are more than 12 ft in diameter and 33 miles in length. The work is performed by the Detroit Water Board (or Detroit Metropolitan Water Services) on a contract basis and with revenue bond financing. Service for other than Detroiters is on a wholesale basis; that is, each community does its own water distribution and sewage collection, takes care of its own business operations, and pays the central city Water Board on a master meter basis. The formal contracts have minimum-bill guarantees to the Water Board that are large enough to cover the debt service on the facility constructed for the area. This guaranteed revenue is added to the already existent revenue base and is used as collateral for the issuance of revenue bonds for the system. The community served may pledge revenues, taxes, or any income to satisfy the guarantee. Local tax money is not available to the Water Board. Federal and state grant money is available. GAINING ACCEPTANCE The adoption of a metropolitan area program requires a great deal of educational work. Obviously, just presenting a program by the central city will not gain approval. Any plan, even though it may not be perfect, is preferable if it can get construction underway. The shelves are full of plans that approach the ideal but cannot be put into action, be it for financial or administrative reasons. Acceptance of the Detroit Metropolitan Programs was gained by involving the interest of the Board of Supervisors of the six counties of the Detroit metropolitan area. In 1957 the Detroit Metropolitan Water Services presented a master plan for water supply and for sewage treatment, but these programs did not gain acceptance. To create interest, an organization identified as the National Sanitation Foundation agreed to underwrite a review of all aspects of the two programs. In 1959, after many meetings and reviews, the area Master Water Program was consolidated under the Board of Water Commissioners of Detroit. This gave impetus to the sewage problem. In 1964, the National Sanitation Foundation reported on the sewage disposal problems of the six-county metropolitan area of southeastern Michigan. Members of the board of consultants were Abel Wolman of Baltimore, 91
Louis Howson of Chicago, and George E. Hubbell of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-all nationally known and respected. The board established what the sewage interceptor construction and the treatment standards for the area should be, estimated costs, and recommended administrative procedures. The conclusions were reached after reviewing all factors and after many meetings with regulatory agencies, business organizations, and county officials. The cost of this study, underwritten jointly by government of the area and business organizations, was $256,000. During the time the board of consultants was preparing the final recommendations, in 1964, the federal government embarked on a study of pollution of the Detroit River and Lake Erie, and in 1965 made recom- mendations on quality standards of receiving water. These were evaluated, and on May 19, 1966, the City of Detroit signed a formal contract with the Michigan Water Resources Commission, in cooperation with the federal government. The contract stipulated that further improved treatment would be provided. Activated sludge was being touted as the "patent medicine" answer, but we had already established that this method of treatment alone would not remove phosphates consistently. We also had reservations about its ability to remove inorganic chemical wastes, although we really did not know what was coming into our sewage plant. Service is a prime requisite, if prompt and proper service is given to all. No political leader can or should be able to interfere with the normal development and expansion of a program. PILOT PLANT-TEST FACILITY In order to get the most results for the dollar on the hundreds of millions of dollars we knew it would take to protect the receiving waters of the Detroit River and Lake Erie, in accordance with the accepted water quality standards, it was necessary for us to do much research. A pilot station, with equivalent capacity of a community of 2,700 people, was built in one year's time, costing $484,000. Construction on the test facility was started in October of 1966, and it went into service in September 1967. After more than 50,000 laboratory determinations, and operating expenses of $320,000, it was concluded that our treatment process would be a combination of the activated sludge process, step feed modifications, supple- mented with chemical precipitation of the phosphate using steel pickle liquor (ferrous chloride), and pretreatment with polymer for improved suspended solids removal. Post- chlorination will also continue to be used for bacterial kill. The final design of the aeration tanks will incorporate the flexibility of the pilot plant so that efficiency and economy can be obtained through the full range of quality and quantity variations that will occur in the area's system. STORMFLOW-SANITARY SEWAGE SYSTEM The operation of the combined stormflow-sanitary sewage system has been improved considerably by the use of remote controls, automatic alarms, data loggers, and computer recording of all troubles, including the records of how a storm crosses a metropolitan area. This improve- ment, though just started, has reduced the stormflow dirt deposit to the Detroit River by at least 15 percent, and better protection will be provided against the flooding of our activated sludge process at the plant. INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION PREVENTION The pollution prevention aspect of this problem has been worked out with all industry on a person-to-person basis. In the Detroit regional service area all wastes- industrial (where compatible) and residential-are dis- charged into the public sewerage system for treatment at the central plant. By this method, uniformity occurs on all treatment practices of an area, and benefits occur to all, because there are not enough technicians for each industry to have its own. Even if there were enough technicians, confusion would exist in the multiple interpretations of the rules. TRAINING All technical effort goes for naught unless an organiza- tion is trained with the will to do this job better, and with the knowledge of how to do the job. This requires that approximately 300 of our 1,800 employes take part in some type of instructional development at all times. WHAT ARE THE COSTS OF DOING THIS JOB? System expansion and improved treatment will cost $159 million in the next two years, with $208 million additional by 1975. A breakdown on contracts is shown in Table 1. WHAT MOTIVATED THE CENTRAL CITY TO UNDERTAKE THIS PROJECT The central city was motivated by the lower unit costs of a large-scale operation, the elimination of sewage plant effluent above our water intakes, and acceptance of the fact that no other practical method existed to get uniform results. Particular emphasis is being placed on the clean-up of the Clinton River, a tributary of the Detroit River discharging above Detroit's two large water intake tunnels. WHERE ARE WE NOW $17 million worth of work has been completed since 92
1966. Twenty-seven acres of land have been cleared adjacent to our sewage treatment plant for plant expansion. Three hundred families were moved. Total cost was $3,000,000. We have $12 million worth of work under contract, and S68 million more must be contracted for construction in 1969, in order to be able to get 55 percent financing from state and federal grants. Designs are com- pleted and bids are now being taken. In the next calendar year, 1970, $79 million worth of work will be constructed. Plans are 75 percent completed. Design work has cost $1,540,000. We estimate that $208 million additional will have been spent by 1975 for improved treatment and for expansion and improvement of the regional interceptor system. HOW IS IT PAID FOR The $159 million will be paid for as follows-by the Detroit System: Cash Revenue bonds State grant, 25 percent of total Federal grant, prefinanced by the state Federal grant, direct (estimated) Total $ 12,000,000 60,000,000 40,000,000 40,000,000 7,000,000 $159,000,000 A rate increase for treating sewage of 32 1/2 cents per thousand cubic feet was formally approved on October 16, 1969, to pay for the extra operating costs and the revenue bond financing. This increase applies to all on the sewage disposal system, Detroiters and suburbanites alike. This increases the total cost of treatment to 65 cents per thousand cubic feet. < The $208 million expenditure for the years 1971 to 1975 is not yet financed. RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Determine the ecology of the receiving waters, in our case Lake Erie. Today there does not exist a clear-cut definition on what our goals are for Lake Erie. 2. Train technicians in our pilot and processing plants so that better operating efficiencies will occur. 3. Do more constructive reporting to the public, lest this eternal sermon on "how bad and dirty things are" will create a no-progress image and thereby lose the support of the public; then, of course, progress will cease. 4. Find use for waste products, for example, utilizing pickling acids in our treatment process or cin- derizing of sludge cake from the sewage plant filters in conjunction with power plant fly ash to create a desirable concrete aggregate. 5. Emphasize pollution prevention. Look at the treatment savings that could be made if the phosphate content of detergents could be reduced by one-half. 6. Work more effectively with industry, so as waste products are known, they can be provided for as new plants and processes develop, rather than wait until messes occur and then try to clean them up. 7. Develop and gain acceptance of better methods for organizing the administration and financing of an areawide sewage system. 8. Develop better and more efficient treatment methods, such as using oxygen instead of air for aeration purposes. Better treatment, settling basins, aeration tanks, and improved sludge handling are desirable for large-scale processing. 9. Build ahead of development in such a way that uneconomical paralleling will not have to occur after initial build-up is reached; and thereafter gradually expand capacity in step with development. 10. Do more in all professional organizations to effectuate the proposition that water supply and the protection thereof (pollution control) is one economic problem. 11. Establish in the minds of the public the premise that water supply and sewage treatment are a utility to be efficiently operated with ever-expanding programs as the service dictates, and that these services are not political playthings. A strong recommendation is made against trying to adopt a master program in its entirety, totally financed (an impossibility) and constructed, before the demand for service develops. It is with equal emphasis that I recom- mend that a program be adopted in principle, and then systematically developed as demand dictates. Thus financing can be accomplished with lower rates and better acceptance. It would have been impossible to get either formal approval of Detroit's program in the financing, administration, and construction, or formal contracts with the suburban communities that we serve if all commitments would have had to have been made at one time. The character of the organization responsible for executing these master programs is of prime and basic importance. If the organization is trusted and provides proper service, then the program gets good public support. IN CONCLUSION This outline of the Detroit programs is not presented as a cure-all for a metropolitan service in other areas, but these things that we do may help others. It is the best we could develop for our area, taking cognizance of all the conditions that control. There is ample evidence that the existence of the basic services (or the probability thereof) when they are needed 93
will control metropolitan developments more than any other force. If properly done with the other essential humanity services, such as solid waste disposal, control of storm waters, air pollution abatement, and metropolitan administrative improvements, then it can only follow as the day follows the night that the engineer then fulfills his proper destiny of being the principal technician that molds our society. DISCUSSION QUESTION: Please comment on the relationship of your pollution-control program to the metropolitan urban growth policy and, specifically, whether the system is supporting and extending the normal and undesirable urban sprawl that is occurring in that area now. Does this system feed that type of growth, or does it try to control it? ANSWER: We have completed a study costing $4,500,000. We have had many discussions, and were asked (and refused) to run our system to expand to take care of urban development. But through the requirements that exist on grants that the regional planning commission approve what we are doing in order to get federal grants and state grants, some order is being brought to the process. I would like to point out, however, that we have had so many studies in Detroit that there are enough studies on the shelves to prove anybody wrong or right. It doesn't make any difference anymore if you have another study. The answer is that if there is a reasonable amount of intent on the part of the country or city that may be involved (townships are usually very ineffective) to follow some type of zoning laws, then they come out in fairly orderly development. We have now developed several semi-central-city com- plexes of factories, with the accompanying shopping centers, and the end product of this is that you take the work to the people rather than the people coming to the work. There is decentralization in this effort. QUESTION: First, do you think the boundaries of states and counties have become obsolete and should we start thinking in terms of urban centers? (Particularly in the Detroit area, you might think of Detroit and Flint or Detroit and Toledo). Second, what do you think of a water-filtering and recycling system installed in the homes? ANSWER: Regarding the first question, I think I have already answered it in part, But, if you will, examine what is happening at Port Huron and Flint; I will use as an example a city that is there now but was a piece of naked ground five years ago-Woodhaven. It is 26 miles removed from our central city. Ford Motor Company said, "If you will provide the water and make arrangements for sewage treatments, we will put a plant in that township that will employ 3,000 people." That has been done, and the area is all built up. Another area where there is a project of a similar nature is the City of Flat Rock. Flat Rock officials were told by the Ford Motor Company: "We will build a plant adjacent to your community," a type of foundry, "providing you get Detroit water." Flat Rock had its own water plant and its own sewage plant, but factory officials, building on the scale that they do, are wise to the fact that when they get the factories in there, they then can get nailed for the cost of the development of the township. These people don't bite on that anymore. There is no doubt from the utility standpoint of water supply and pollution control that political borders must be ignored when looking for the lowest common denominator as far as costs are concerned. As to your question about the local recycling process, that is technically possible but financially impractical. It is very expensive.
Table 1 Sewage Disposal System Estimated Cost - Program Phase I Construction Starting 1968 Through 1970 Tabulated below is the estimated total cost of work under the first phase of the construction program. The items are listed by priority. Also tabulated are the cumulative total costs of Phase I. The costs include the estimated construction, engineering, contingencies, legal, and fiscal costs. Based on current cost index projections, the costs are estimated to be valid only until January 1970. Item Facility Cost (Total) Total Cost (Cumulative) 1. Outfall diffuser and sampling station (PC-212) $ 480,000 S 480,000 2. Railroad improvements (PC-213) 100,000 580,000 3. 15 Mile Road interceptor (PCM 5 & ISA) 4,030,000 4,610,000 4. Pickle liquor facilities (PC-228) 450,000 5,060,000 5. Steam generating units (PC-225) 280,000 5,340,000 6. Steam generating unit auxiliary (PC-226) 160,000 5,500,000 7. Northeast Sewage Pumping Station (PC-216) 5,500,000 1 1 ,000,000 8. N.E.S.P S -pumping units (PC-227) 540,000 1 1 ,540,000 9. Oakland Arm-section I (PCI-8) 5,600,000 17,140,000 10. Corridor Interceptor-section I (PCI-5) 8,180,000 25,320,000 11. Corridor Interceptor-section II (PCI-6) 7,590,000 32,910,000 1Z Corridor Interceptor-section III (PCI-7) 8,110,000 41,020,000 13. Oakland Arm-section II (PCI-9) 5,770,000 46,790,000 14. Plant tunnels (PC-2 15) 5,450,000 52,240,000 15. Primary tanks (PC-2 19) 7,500,000 59,740,000 16. Primary effluent conduit (PC-220) 3,030,000 62,770,000 17. N.E.S.P.S.-outlet (PCM) 3 830 000 f-f. zoo nnn J jOJ \Jj\J\J\J \j\j j\j\j\j j\j\j\j 18. Railroad relocation-phase I (PC-238) 400,000 67,000,000 19. Metering installation-I 730,000 67,730,000 20. Oakland Arm-section III (PCI- 10) 5,250,000 72,980,000 21. Polymer system 1,210,000 74,190,000 22. Blower units (PC-235) 1 ,820,000 76,010,000 23. Four vacuum sludge filters (PC-223) 1,200,000 77,210,000 24. Incinerator improvements (PC-224) 2,780,000 79,990,000 25. Chlorine contact chamber (PC-221) 10,300,000 90,290,000 26. Romeo Arm-section I (PCI- 12) 5,860,000 96,150,000 27. Romeo Arm-section II (PCI-16) 3,940,000 100,090,000 28. Harper- 15 Sewage Pumping Station (PC-2 18) 2,640,000 102,730,000 29. Metering installations - II 300,000 103,030,000 30. First aeration module, including blower and electrical building (PC-233) 24,100,000 127,130,000 31. Intermediate pumping units (PC-234) 970,000 128,100,000 32. Transformers (PC-236) 400,000 128,500,000 33. Switchgear (PC-237) 650,000 129,150,000 34. Four final tanks (PC-222) 12,100,000 141,250,000 35. Existing electrical system improvements-Phase I 500,000 141,750,000 95
36. Fairview Pumping Station (discharge modifications) 37. Conner regulator improvements 38. Primary sludge disposal facilities 39. Scum disposal facilities 40. Secondary sludge thickening facilities 41. Secondary sludge disposal facilities 42. Secondary sludge electrical facilities 43. Process water 44. Control building, laboratory, and sampling system 45. Additions to system monitoring and remote control Subtotal Land acquisition Total program phase I cost (Construction starting 1968 through 1970) 200,000 200,000 12,900,000 2,420,000 3,630,000 10,900,000 1,810,000 1,450,000 3,440,000 141,950,000 142,150,000 155,050,000 157,470,000 161,100,000 172,000,000 173,810,000 175,260,000 178,700,000 500,000 179,200,000 $179,200,000 3,400,000 $182,600,000 $182,600,000 96
Session IV PROPOSALS FOR ACTION Philip Spom, Chairman
