The AIA has an abiding concern for, and a long record of involvement in, the effort to assure proper and orderly growth of our Nation's Capital. Our support for the legislation being considered by your subcommittee is consistent with this important objective.

But beyond this immediate area of concern lies the broader involvement of the institute-and of the architectural profession it represents in achieving the imperative national solution to our urban problem. A malignant physical environment within our cities is an essential aspect of this urban problem. It is contributing directly to the alienation of large segments of our society and to the bloodshed and destruction that are the frightful symptoms of this alienation.

It must be our national purpose to replace this malignancy with a beneficent, humane, and beautiful civic fabric. The AIA and its urban design committee are deeply involved in programs to achieve this national purpose.

We believe that the logical point of departure for any such program of physical rebuilding is the circulation skeleton of the city. This is the publicly owned armature upon which the life of the city depends and to which are anchored its private architectural elements. We believe that the air rights bills before your subcommittee represent a body of creative and imaginative legislation that will enable and encourage a long overdue renewal of this fundamental urban system. The institute, therefore, supports this legislation not only because we believe it will benefit Washington, but because it represents an approach to solving a problem that besets every large city in our Nation today. The solution to this problem in our Nation's Capital, which becomes possible under the proposed legislation, will, we believe, be an effective demonstration encouraging comparable programs by other cities across the country.

In appraising our urban environment, it is clear that this public skeleton is the greatest contributor to its manifest chaos. Our streets. and thoroughfares including newly constructed urban expresswaysare disruptive in their function, wasteful in their preemption of land and constitute the prime source of the visual as well as the other pollutants that contaminate our cities. They are the dumping ground for every type of municipal paraphernalia most items of which are ugly in themselves, an ugliness which is compounded by the total disregard for urban design principles in their placement by separate municipal bureaus operating under separate criteria with no coordinating agency responsible for the streetscape as a whole. The circulation system in a city can occupy up to 40 percent of that essential and priceless commodity-the land beneath the city. Functionally, the streets have lost one of their most beneficial urbane attributes today. Except in the ghettos, where they still function as the "parks of the poor," our streets are no longer the gathering place for the city dweller. They are now accepted as single purpose conduits for the movement of vehicles.

This condition exists despite the fact that the streetscape is in the public domain requiring no extraordinary powers or investment to make them the functional and aesthetic touchstones for a beautiful urban environment that should be their proper role.

This negligence by local government of the stewardship of so large an area directly under its control is clear evidence of its incapacity to deal with those vastly more complicated and explosive problems in the social life of the city which they can only indirectly influence.

Against this background, we heartily endorse the air rights legislation introduced by you, Senator Tydings, because:

1. It makes possible the multipurpose and multilevel development of land within the city and its suburbs that would otherwise be withheld from productive use. Such development will create taxables where none exist today; will preserve the rapidly disappearing open spaces in and around our cities by channeling the development pressure toward the circulation skeleton, itself, which already preempts so much of this land. Finally, it will make for compact urban developments as the alternative to suburban sprawl.

2. It encourages the trend, that has been noted in many cities, toward the evolution of a multilevel downtown core. This trend is evident in older cities such as Cincinnati and Montreal. In new cities, built from the ground up, such as Cumbernauld in Scotland, the downtown core is designed as a single multilevel building or megastructure containing within it highways, pedestrian streets, parking and all the public and private uses normally associated with a downtown. The use of air rights development over existing streets as proposed in Senate bill 1246 is essential to accommodate this new trend.

3. Senate bill 1245 encourages the concept of new expressways as "linear renewal" projects to replace the single faceted, auto-oriented concept of the past. Expressways create opportunities and destroy values at differing points along their routes. In urban areas they displace vast numbers of residents and enterprises creating thereby a dynamic force of great potential for good or for harm. This force can be planned for in such a way as to benefit the growth of a city. Or, it can be left to its own resources, with no planning, to the detriment of the city. The concept of a broad corridor of renewal with the expressway as its spine and with rehabilitation, conservation and new construction strung upon this spine-over it, under it, and beside it gives recognition to the true function of the expressway which is far broader than its primary purpose of moving traffic. Those displaced by an expressway create an obvious market for its related developments. Housing, offices, commercial and light industrial uses are appropriate elements for inclusion in such a development. So are public facilities such as garages, plazas, community centers, schools, and even educational parks.

4. To capitalize on this type of "linear renewal" will force the use of an urban design team to replace the previous reliance on highway and traffic engineering alone. This approach is being tested for the first time in your State, Senator Tydings, as you mentioned in your opening remarks. This is done with the creation of the multidisciplined concept team to design the 20-mile interstate freeway system within the city of Baltimore. This Baltimore concept team has aroused national and international interest as it approaches its task of expressway planning from the point of view of linear renewal. While it includes highway and traffic engineers as important members of the team, it also includes architects, landscape architects, economists, sociologists, acoustical engineers, illuminating specialists, and graphic artists. This team holds out the hope that design decisions will be made after evaluating the full spectrum of costs and benefits. This spectrum includes social factors, real estate economics, preservation of historic and open space features, and aesthetics together with the more narrow spectrum of factors traditionally considered, such as functional efficiency, minimum first cost and maximum safety. Such

a team can not only develop broad urban design concepts capable of capitalizing the real benefits and minimizing the real costs of the entire corridor, but it can also create of the expressway system itself, a civic monument no less significant for our civilization than were the aqueducts for the Roman civilization. The public skeleton could thus become the pacesetter in the design of a new urban environment.

5. Of perhaps greater importance than the design team, and the design itself, is the fact that such a team will require the creation of a broadly representative public-private client such as was the working review committee which achieved such notable success in the planning of downtown Cincinnati.

Senator TYDINGS. What was that working review committee?

Mr. ROGERS. This, Senator, was a special committee representing the city council. All of its functions and private interests were involved in the downtown area, and it was in fact, the appointed client. Its decisions were made on the basis of alternative objectives down to the level of detail of street width; sidewalk treatment; and so forth, and fascinating was the fact that its decisions became city council ordinances. I know of no place in the world that this has happened. So that in Cincinnati, the planning existed in the form of 250 city council ordinances before it was ever public.

Senator TYDINGS. Was it very large, numerically?

Mr. ROGERS. It had approximately 20 members, but it traditionally— and, I think, importantly-held its decisionmaking sessions in public. Anyone who was not a member was privileged to come and address the committee, and the most interesting outcome of all of this was the Fountain Square, which for Cincinnati is what Mount Vernon Place is for Baltimore, a sacred symbol. At the beginning, we were told, "Do not touch this sacred place." In the end, there is a new square being built with the complete support of the public and it was a very interesting experiment in decisionmaking, where all of the interests were involved and the public was involved, and it is this pattern which I believe would be required to undertake linear renewal under a concept-team approach.

This new client is the only mechanism available for making the comprehensive decisions upon the urban design alternatives that are proposed by the concept team. Many programs, local, State, and Federal, public and private, are involved in the development ideas put forward by the concept team. To decide upon these design ideas will require the client, as decisionmaker, to include a representative plenipotentiary for each such program. This means:

(a) That such a client teams become the logical mechanism for coordinating the Federal programs involved in linear renewal. Representatives from DOT, HUD, HEW, and the Department of the Interior on such a team, with power to act, brings coordination to the local and meaningful development project level to replace or to supplement the top-level coordination that seems so difficult to achieve in Washington.

(b) That, in like fashion, the typically autonomous municipal bureaus will have to work together, perhaps for the very first time, under the coordination of such a client team responsible for the implementation of the whole. Their separate programs, isolated bureaucracies and conflicting standards will have to be reconciled to achieve the whole. The end result could well be the long-overdue streamlining and restructuring of municipal government so that it becomes capable

82-435 0-67-4

of a coherent response to the urban explosion it faces. This, I submit, is an objective of at least equal importance with the physical goal itself of linear renewal made possible by the legislation being considered.

There are of course, problems to be solved in the exploitation of the great potential of these air-right bills.

The technical problems of noise, fumes, glare, and vibration will require solution in air-rights design proposals, although no one appears to have paid much attention to these irritants thus far in the design of urban thoroughfares without air rights.

Indeed, it is arguable that these can be better solved precisely by developments over and under an expressway than by developments abutting expressways. Our technological know-how is clearly capable of meeting this challenge.

Economics, too, will require consideration. The slabbing over an expressway may cost as much as $15 per square foot which for airrights development becomes, in effect, the cost of land. For some uses in some areas of the expressway corridor, this will seem excessive. For other uses at other points, it may represent a bargain.

In any case, these are not the kinds of disadvantages to discourage the air-rights proposal itself. They are simply problems that attend this proposal, as other problems attend other proposals, and to be recognized and solved in the great urban design that we feel becomes possible under this enlightened legislation.

I have selected several samples of the use of air rights to illustrate the potential of the legislation under consideration. There are nine in number attached to the statement. I will simply cite these for the record, the first being an example from the new town of Vallingby, outside of Stockholm, in Sweden, which shows the development of an office building over the rapid transit, surrounded by new apartment buildings. (fig. 1)

The second is the tunnel between an old section of a city which I believe to be Poznam, in Poland. This is the use of air rights to preserve the historic area. (Fig. 2.)

The third indicates the new construction of a restaurant over a depressed ground in Stockholm, Sweden. (Fig. 3.)

The fourth is a grade entrance. This is in Tokyo and it indicates the development of a four-lane expressway over a number of shops and offices in a very large city, Tokyo, Japan. (Fig. 4.)

The fifth indicates, really, there is nothing new under the sun. This is an engraving of Fourth Avenue in old New York showing the development of parks and ventilation areas over the railroad tracks beneath the street. (Fig. 5.)

No. 6 is a new proposal for a city hall in Fall River, Mass. After evaluating six alternative sites, it was found that the most logical site from a functional point of view-and interestingly enough-from an economic point of view, was over a new interstate expressway running through the middle of Fall River, Mass. (Fig. 6.)

No. 7 is an illustration which has been proposed for Washington. The proposal is by Tibbits, Abbott & McCarthy just north of Massachusetts Avenue on Fourth Street, indicating the air-rights-development potential over a new eight-lane cut. At the upper right-hand corner of this picture, it proposes the development of two 21(d)3 housing, townhouses, and the tying in of the new slab development over the expressway with existing features that abut this. (Fig. 7.) No. 8 is an illustration indicating the possibility of a cross-Brooklyn

expressway in New York City being developed across, along the Long Island Railroad cut from one end of Brooklyn to the other. This indicates the bottommost level; the railroad itself, still functioning. At the intermediate level, a new expressway which will be part of the interstate program, we believe, and above the expressway, a slabbing over and development of multiple-use private and public facilities. (Fig. 8.)

This, incidentally, is to include a major educational park proposed by the city board of education.

The last and ninth illustration indicates the existing development on the approach to the Washington Bridge in Manhattan. This picture is a view to the west, showing apartment towers over the expressway cuts as it approaches the George Washington Bridge, at the top of the picture, and behind the four apartment towers is a new transportation terminal designed by the Italian engineer, Mr. Narry. (Fig. 9.)

These are illustrative of the opportunities that we believe can come from such legislation, Mr. Chairman. (The nine illustrations are as follows:)

FIGURE 1.-The New Town of Vallingby, Sweden. Modern apartment houses and a

large seven story commercial building engulf the subway right-of-way in this newly built suburban satellite of Stockholm.