A Programme for City Reconstruction
Walter Gropius - Martin Wagner
A PROGRAMME FOR CITY RECONSTRUCTION
1. Lot and block rehabilitation has not been successful. Sweeping 'square mile' rehabilitation has become a necessity since we have recognized the interrelationship of the town with its region.
2. Former suggestions such as 'The City Beautiful' and other pictorial schemes have proved to be incomplete. First, action should be started by preparing legal, financial and administrative instruments to enable the planners to conceive and work out reliable master plans.
3. Places of work and their relation to places of living should form the pivot of all reconstruction work.
4. First of all the existing cities should be relieved of congestion and high blood pressure by removing those who cannot be permanently employed. Resettled around small industries in new 'townships' these people would regain their productive capacity and purchasing power.
5. The new townships should settle along super-highways and be connected by fast feeder roads with the old city centre.
6. The size of the townships should be limited by the pedestrian range to keep them within a human scale.
7. The 'townships' must be surrounded by their own farm belts.
8. Speculation often promotes blight and obsolescence. Therefore the community should own the land. The dwelling lots should be rented, though the houses may be owned.
9. The administrative setup of a township should take the form of a self-contained unit with its independent local government. This will strengthen community spirit.
10. From five to ten – or more – neighbourhood townships may be combined into a 'countyship' with an administration governing activities beyond the reach of a single unit. Its size and administrative setup should also serve as a model for the basic neighbourhood units of the old towns to be reconstructed.
11. It is suggested that the size of a township remain stable. Flexibility within its boundaries must therefore be achieved by making the housing facilities elastic.
12. Parallel to the resettlement of idle labour in new towns hips, a second process must take place; acquisition of land by the community of the old city. For not until that process of pooling land has been completed can the next step – the redistribution of land – be taken, for the final reconstruction of the city.