Word: gruen
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Perhaps Mr. Gruen has had the good fortune of never experiencing even a 'natural' disaster, but those who have I feel sure resent his mockery of preparations to be made. '62, you said? You goddamn Harvard kids can laugh at a book like this now, but when such a war comes, you'll be the first in line to get food and clothing at public dispensaries. In the more severe cases, I feel that a Harvard Man will die of radiation just as soon as, if not sooner than any other American citizen...
...ever make New York truly livable until the streets are gardens and the traffic is subterranean, but the new plan offers a realistic promise of traffic-free isolation in at least one area. The scheme: transform the all but deserted Welfare Island into a development where, as Architect Victor Gruen says, "all that is disturbing in modern-day city life is placed underground...
20th Century City. Architect Gruen, famed for spacious shopping centers (Eastland in Detroit) and a well-publicized zeal for turning downtown areas into car-free malls (Kalamazoo, Mich.), designed the slab-shaped buildings slim and high to take advantage of the island's Manhattan view and allow for landscaping. The lower buildings, varying in height and snaking along the island's length, would be topped with gardens and windbreaks for recreational facilities. The air-conditioned pedestrian concourse below would be sunlit (through glassed holes in the roof) and undulating to kill the monotony of long straight corridors...
East Island has a long way to go toward city approval and financing. But says Gruen: "It's not just a big housing project, it's the first 20th century city. We would really integrate housing with other facilities, avoiding the intermingling of transportation. It would mean unscrambling the melee of flesh and machine...
Citing the "vast urban revolution" facing the United States, Weaver quoted sector Gruen's aphorism--"If we keep planning in our present direction, our cities will resemble doughnuts: all the dough in the suburbs and nothing in the middle at the hole. Will we accept without question patterns of life foisted upon us the accidents of growth?" Weaver asked...