Engineer and the City A Symposium Sponsored by the National Academy of Engineering at Its Fifth Autumn Meeting, October 22-23, 1969 (1969) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
OVERVIEWS
OVERVIEWS
Pages 9-30
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 9... ...
This comes after a century of preoccupation with individual rights of a kind that were seen as somehow opposed to and even threatened by group identities and anything so dubious in conception as group rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the culmination of the political energies generated by that earlier period.
|
From page 10... ...
The idea that there might be such is new. So also is the Urban Affairs Council, established by President Nixon on January 23, 1969, as the first official act of his administration, to "advise and assist" with respect to urban affairs, specifically "in the development of a national urban policy, having regard both to immediate and to long-range concerns, and to priorities among them." The central circumstance, as stated, is that America is an urban nation, and has been for half a century.
|
From page 11... ...
The question of method has become as salient as that of goals themselves. As yet, the federal government, no more than state or local government, has not found an effective incentive system-comparable to profit in private enterprise, prestige in intellectual activity, rank in military organization-whereby to shape the forces at work in urban areas in such a way that urban goals-whatever they may be-are in fact attained.
|
From page 12... ...
At least part of the relative ineffectiveness of the efforts of urban government to respond to urban problems derives from the fragmented and obsolescent structure of urban government itself. The federal government should constantly encourage and provide incentives for the reorganization of local government in response to the reality of metropolitan conditions.
|
From page 13... ...
4. A primary object of federal urban policy must be to restore the fiscal vitality of urban government, with the particular object of ensuring that local governments normally have enough resources on hand or available to make local initiative in public affairs a reality.
|
From page 14... ...
This means, among our very first priorities, an increase in the resources available to city governments. A clear opportunity exists for the federal government to adopt as a deliberate policy an increase in its aid to state and local governments in the aftermath of the Vietnam war.
|
From page 15... ...
In particular, it is increasingly agreed that federal aid should be given directly to the consumers of the programs concerned-individuals included-thus enabling them to choose among competing suppliers of the goods or services that the program is designed to provide. Probably no single development would more enliven and energize the role of government in urban affairs than a move from the monopoly service strategy of the grant-inaid programs to a market strategy of providing the most reward to those suppliers that survive competition.
|
From page 16... ...
It should also consider providing demographic and economic projections for political subdivisions as a routine service, much as the weather and the economy are forecast. (Thus, Karl Taueber has shown how seemingly unrelated policies of local governments can increase the degree of racial and economic differentiation between political jurisdictions, especially between central cities and suburbs.)
|
From page 17... ...
The federal establishment is showing signs that this cultural change is affecting its actions, and so do state and city governments. But the process needs to be raised to the level of a conscious pursuit of policy.
|
From page 18... ...
QUESTION: You mentioned two directions for national policy. One is to revitalize locally based community action in urban affairs, and the second is to 18
|
From page 19... ...
I speak in particular of a group in Boston called ABCD, which stands for Action for Boston Community Development and they have been quite hurt by the cut in federal aid because of the shift in responsibilities for welfare programs in the city to the state. The ABCD group has been particularly successful, because each office is located in a particular community where the aid is needed, so that personnel are very accessible to the people needing the aid, and the personnel themselves rise out of these groups and help the people in the community where they live.
|
From page 20... ...
We have been alerted to crises by such highly audible and visible symptoms of the ailing city as considering it to be a place assailed by crescendos of demands, threats, violence; a place abandoned at the ballot box by its most qualified citizens, spurned by taxpayers wearied of the heavy loads imposed by higher ranking governments; a place deserted for suburbia by its most able educated men and women; a place that spawns crime and harbors criminals; a place where the politically ambitious with little knowledge of management of complex affairs or of technology gain their training and experience for higher posts from self-seeking ward politicians whose entire philosophies are expressed in terms of quid pro quo; a place throttled by apathy, indifference, and inattention of others. Lacking are those willing to lead by molding public opinion -- not merely to respond to it.
|
From page 21... ...
Officials of local governments experience an unparalleled dwindling of the taxable values and income to support increasing costs for serving the growing numbers. Cancerous slums spread; the better equipped and better financed citizens who might assist in meeting and dealing with these problems flee from them in increasing numbers.
|
From page 22... ...
Forrester, author of the new book Urban Dynamics, will bring much light to that subject later. I readily assent to his view that our intuitive solutions for such pressing urban problems have been wrong almost always; we might have done better to listen for intuitive promptings than to proceed in just the opposite manner.
|
From page 23... ...
Will they ever wake up? Much more neglect, apathy, indifference, and they will have completed the job of letting local government fall into obsolescence and decay.
|
From page 24... ...
Secretary Romney is trying to get the cities to change these building codes and zoning regulations so that you can do a better job of this. Believe me, changing building codes will be fought by vested interests all over the lot.
|
From page 25... ...
We took about 35 people out of City Hall in responsible positions of management and we offered to teach them the techniques of goal setting and planning that Texas Instruments has. We have a tremendous response from the city employees to this.
|
From page 26... ...
Nevertheless, some observations are in order as to who speaks for engineering in urban affairs. In our form of government, public issues are resolved through the interplay of pressure groups.
|
From page 27... ...
We should not be unreservedly proud that engineering students are taking so small a part in today's liberal campus movements. No socially responsible person can condone the destructive and negative antics of the extremist student dissenters, but the positive side of the coin is the sincere searching by many students for a heightened sense of social values during unsettled times-issues in which an activist engineering participation is increasingly important for the future.
|
From page 29... ...
Session II METHODOLOGIES W Deming Lewis, Chairman
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.