Word: simon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...rare enough for a real estate developer, assured of huge profits from building rows of suburban matchbox houses, to show any interest in long-range planning. But Simon, an energetic, forthright businessman, is building the only "new town" in the country worthy of the name--and at a profit...
...depite his town's idyllic appearance, Simon's goals are not so different from those of his cities. And, in the course of completing his project, Simon may succeed in bringing the planning process closer to his and the academics' common cause--a realistic solution to the problems of urban sprawl...
Reston's simple arrangement is deceptive. An urban visitor is invariably struck by the amount of wooded land, while the suburban visitor first spots the houses clustered together near the lake, looking like an old world village. But such simplicity was not simple for Simon; it required converting Fairfax Country's zoning laws and convincing the Country that a preplanned city served its goals getter than piecemeal land-use planning. In fact, this little city in the country materialized only because Simon managed to revolutionize the country's thinking on its entire growth for the next 50 years...
What the new zoning ordinance that Simon got from the country called a residential planned community, city planners have historically called a "new town." Reston is planned to be a new town in the fullest definition of the term. A town is a complete entity: a little city with all income levels, commercial facilities, and an adequate number of available jobs...
...case of zoning, clustering residences and stores together was another battle for Simon. He got the idea for putting apartments over offices and shops from the British new towns, which date back to 1898. The financial community, says Simon, recoiled from this idea more than any other. Thinking in the United States has been that a shopping center is a shopping center, even if it looks like a maze of neon signs set in a huge field of asphalt. When Simon proposed that two-and three-story buildings, with commercial space and living units, would look better, and sell better...