Word: pala
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Roman Traffic Commissioner Antonio Pala's plan was simple enough: prohibit all private cars from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. and from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. from the 35-block, 25-acre heart of the city's shopping center (see map). Shoppers would thus have an "isola pedonale"-a pedestrian island-all to themselves during peak hours save for buses and taxis. All seemed bellissimo when the plan went into effect: children calmly played soccer at the foot of the Spanish steps, where autos once hurtled blithely by; grown-ups ambled wonderingly down the center...
...sniffed Gucci's sales manager: "A woman who wants a Gucci bag is not going to settle for something at her neighborhood store."). But by then, the uproar from the small shopkeepers was too loud to go unnoticed at city hall. Caving in, Traffic Commissioner Pala first reopened almost half the isola to private cars, put part of the Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Square) to use as a car park. Two days later he went further, agreeing to let the rest of the island sink under the sea of protest, and putting pedestrians back in their place-hugging...
...miracle been wrought? By a series of simple edicts, issued by Traffic Commissioner Antonio Pala. On 57 main streets in Rome's three-square-mile central area, all parking-even stopping-was banned. Everywhere else, parking was limited to an hour, and all parked cars were required to display cardboard disks showing the hour of arrival and the hour of expiration. Not even M.D.s were exempt. "A doctor can do almost anything in an hour," a traffic official declared. At the same time, a fleet of midget buses was launched to ferry people from parking areas on the edge...
...Pala plan's first fortnight, Rome was wondering whether it could possibly last. Other cities, including New York, have tried much the same measures, but they have usually foundered on the failure of the local patrolmen to enforce them (a $10 bill in the right hands from time to time works wonders in any town, in any country). Could the Roman cops-so much more noted for their ballet technique of directing traffic than for their enforcement of law-maintain the zeal that has them handing out more than 5,000 tickets a day? And how long would...
Huxley's Pala is at least as explorable as Herman Melville's Typee and more believable than Samuel Butler's Erewhon. But a novelist who writes about erewhon goes against his Serutan. which, as all the world knows, is nature's spelled backwards. Pie in the sky, however deep dish. is never as fascinating as the hard crust of the satirist...