olems plague today's cities
Area to benefit from urban planning
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or restored, says the committee, without an informed and aware citizenry.
"MAN'S INTERACTION with his environment, natural and man-produced, is the basis of all learning—the very origin and substance of education." the committee said.
A means of properly educating today's students has been provided, but the committee said that it had not been fully utilized.
No program or goal, however, can be met without the necessary funds. This is the factor which perhaps more than any other can inhibit research and implementation of programs.
Many outstanding programs have been established without the necessary funds to launch them. A striking example is water pollution control. Last year $700 million was authorized for sewage treatment, but appropriations totaled only $214 million.
This disparity in funding has hindered the development of state and local programs. Many states have postponed their programs waiting for the promised funds while others have accepted the promise on faith and began initiating their programs anyway.
As a result many promising programs have been abandoned because the federal government did not fulfill its promise of funds.
Because many programs never collected the funds they thought were forthcoming, they have been frustrated in their pursuit of restoring the excellence of the environment. The original intent was to stimulate and create solutions, not to stifle.
In the past decade the role of the urban planner has become more important as cities have become conscious of the importance of planning the environment for the well-being of their residents.
"City planning is no easy task," said Ron Short, Lawrence planning director. "A well-planned city should be beautiful in physical appearance and harmonious in the ways its various activities relate to each other," he said.
COMPREHENSIVE city planning is something new to Lawrence.. The first comprehensive city plan was adopted in 1964 and even now is not being fully observed. But with the hiring of a fulltime city planner and an assistant last summer, the Lawrence City Commission hopes to reach the goals established in 1964.
"Probably the greatest difficulty I face is the problem of developing techniques of working with landowners to assist them in developing their tracts to the greatest benefit of the city as a whole," said Short. "Often it is more lucrative to serve private interests that are detrimental to the rest of the city."
"Another major problem is to develop a program that centers on preliminary planning for whole neighborhoods rather than piecemeal planning for each parcel of land as it is developed," he said.
"In the past, Lawrence was planned and developed parcel by parcel. After enough parcels of land were grouped together, someone attempted to solve the problems created by lack of an overall plan," Short explained.
BY THAT TIME it was too late tor really sound planning. Planning could then only solve some of the problems that had been created, leaving others to permanently damage the city environment," he said.
"Lawrence, like about 95 per cent of all American cities, is to a large degree still being planned parcel by parcel," Short said. "Violations of basic planning principles are continuing to create insurmountable problems. Many cities like Lawrence are taking a closer look at overall city planning," he said.
"Ecologically, most cities are mixed up." Short said. Adjacent land uses such as commercial, industrial and residential, and even high and low density residential, clash because of poor planing."
SHORT CITED several examples in Lawrence of the effects of poor overall planning. In particular he criticized the commercial areas along 23rd Street between Louisiana and Iowa Streets.
The comprehensive plan designated 23rd Street as a major arterial. Major arterials are intended to move large volumes of traffic at relatively high speeds. The comprehensive plan stated that access should be limited.
Twenty-third Street, however, is zoned commercial. The result is a large number of closely spaced parking lot entrances.
According to a study made in December, 1969 by Vernon Prinzing, Cannon Falls, Minn. graduate student, and Carl Youngmann, Lawrence graduate student, the purpose of 23rd Street as a major arterial has been defeated. Instead of a limited access high speed trafficway, the street has become a 35 mile per hour commercial strip with a high accident rate.
IN 1969, THERE were more than 150 auto accidents along the one mile commercial strip. The study recommended reduction of the speed limit to 30 miles per hour or lower and the installation of traffic lights at two more intersections.
Planning director Short said he was
facing major challenges by property owners who want to build another commercial strip along Iowa Street south of 23rd Street. By forcing the owners to build service roads, Short hopes he can preserve Iowa Street as a major arterial.
Another problem facing Short is the control of urban sprawl. With the improvement of transportation, it has become possible to live many miles from place of work. This has vastly extended the feasible limits of city development, resulting in urban areas in which only a small portion of the land is actually developed.
SHORT SAID that Lawrence did not have a major sprawl problem, although he thought that a problem could develop in the absence of effective planning.
THE LAWRENCE City Commission has applied for Neighborhood Development Program funds from the federal government. These funds would pay for study and improvement already developed areas in east and north Lawrence and the downtown area.
At the present time, however, no thorough studies have been conducted of the residential areas.
"We're just beginning to really get into the overall planning function." Short said. "These neighborhoods will be studied and undoubtedly some action will be taken."
SHORT SAID he saw a number of problems in the areas surrounding the KU campus. "One of the greatest problems I see is the lack of convenient commercial services for the pedestrian student market," he said. "Most large universities have at least a small commercial area adjacent to campus."
Traffic circulation, parking and population density are other problems that need to be studied, he said.
Transportation problems arise
On April 1, 1898, the first sale of an automobile, a one-cylinder Winton, took place in the United States. Today, almost 72 years later, more than eight of every 10 American families own at least one car, and more than 2.6 million miles of hard-surface roads have been built to accommodate them, enough to circle the earth more than 100 times.
What does this huge increase in private transportation mean to the individual American? It depends first upon where he lives. To an Easternner, or to a resident of Chicago or Los Angeles, it may mean traffic jams, miles and miles of ugly expressways, endless parking lots and suburbs that grow farther and farther outward until they meet one another.
To a native Kansan, the ever-increasing number of cars on the road may mean better highways to travel the distances between cities. It may also mean, however, that a favorite fishing pond has been polluted by drainage from raw embankments cut into the earth for a nearby road project.
IN LAWRENCE, a KU student can test the negative effects of the automobile easily after any home basketball game by standing at the intersection of 15th and Naismith. The traffic congestion and a few whiffs of acrid burnt gasoline fumes may convince him that, even at the local level, automobiles have become a problem.
Today the automobile is basic to the life of a modern urban community. Because of the car's flexibility, cities no longer need to depend on the location of waterways and railways for the movement of their people and their goods. Many small cities owe their entire existence to the automobile. Other small cities have become linked ecologically to their larger neighbors by the automobile.
THIS IMPORTANCE of the auto has so provoked a comparatively small amount of planning in proportion to the inevitable problems it has created. In his book, "The Metropolis: Its People, Politics and Economic Life," John C. Bollens said present-day communities have been unprepared for the advent of modern traffic conditions.
Freeways, Bollens said, have so far been the response to metropolitan congestion, though freeways themselves can bring problems, such as the tearing down of historic buildings to make room for asphalt paving.
Even this, however, is only a temporary measure. According to a study by the American Chemical Society, auto pollution will again begin to rise in the mid-1970's as the number of cars continues to increase.
ANOTHER ASPECT of auto problems is the familiar one of auto junk heaps. Fifteen million tons of cars are scraped annually in the United States. A coordinated and efficient system to eliminate the junk heaps and to reclaim scrapped steel is needed.
In all of these problems, the inability of local government to come to terms with the issues has resulted in a shift of responsibility for management and financing to the higher levels of government.
As in the cases of city planning, housing and urban renewal, and beginning with such measures as the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964, the national government has been gradually taking over the problems.
In Lawrence, supervisory problems currently center around proposed transportation routes leading to what will eventually become a large recreation area around the new Clinton Dam and Reservoir being constructed southwest of town.
PAUL HILPMAN, section chief for environmental geology at the State Geological Survey, said the problem is one of private interest against public interest. Local topography favors the expansion of Lawrence in a southwest-erly direction, said Hilman. Because of this, and also because of Lawrence's nearness to the Clinton recreation area, in the near future there will be a great increase in traffic in that direction.
What is needed, Hilman said, is a high-speed throughway between Lawrence and Clinton. But there are many private interests arguing for rezoning rules which would allow roadside businesses to be built along the highway.
The greatest controversy, however, has centered around the question of whether public or private transportation should be favored in government programs. For years, the increasing use of the auto, rather than some form of public transportation, such as the bus or train, has put financial strain on public transport. The many mergers of railroad systems, are symptoms of this problem.
THIS CIRCULAR pattern has led many traffic experts to advocate a return to public transport for Americans.
While voters have been willing to spend huge sums for facilities for private transport, they have resisted subsidization for public transport. Yet in experiments in which service to passengers has been brought up to modern standards, as in Boston's newly created Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and on a commuter line from Skokie, Illinois, to Chicago, financed partially by the federal government, public transport has been highly successful in luring drivers away from their cars.