Word: urbanic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...going to rise or fall together," says Walter Rybeck, associate director of the two-year urban problems study. The project's head: Paul Douglas, former Democratic Senator from Illinois. The 325,000-word report finds that the number of Americans below the poverty level ($3,000 annual income for an urban family of four) fell from 39 million to 26 million between 1958 and 1966. Even so, it notes, the gaps in U.S. society continued to grow. "The central cities increasingly are becoming white-collar employment centers," the report says, "while the suburbs are becoming the job-employment areas...
...cities are ever to become strong enough to reverse this trend toward polarization and cope with their other difficulties, the Douglas report argues, overlapping local governments must be simplified and streamlined. There is now an average of 90 separate units of government for each urban area in the U.S. with more than 50,000 people; metropolitan Chicago has a paralyzing total of 1,113. Building codes and zoning regulations are confusing, often contradictory. Adequate housing is still a chimera for most urban low-income families (and increasingly so for the middle class as well...
...President's Task Force on Suburban Problems made a separate but parallel report, with the aid of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In suburbia, it says, "the dullness of existence is acutely felt by many older suburbanites and is often tragically reflected in the behavior of their children. Suburban vandalism, drug offenses and larceny by the young are on the rise." The report makes clear that it is no longer justified, if it ever was, to think of suburbia only as a split-level heaven with neat picket fences. In fact, the term suburbia has become...
...report's recommendations: construction of some 6,000,000 housing units for lower-income families moved from the inner city; experimental Government-subsidized insurance for home owners against loss in property values caused by integration; establishment of an urban-development bank to aid cities and suburbs, much as the World Bank finances growth in underdeveloped nations overseas...
...American society that is dividing the nation into two classes, the poor and the not-poor. The division is especially sharp between the whites and the blacks. It may tear our country to pieces." To prevent this from happening, Richard Nixon has promised to create a Council on Urban Affairs with the same high White House priorities that only the National Security Council now commands. But it remains to be seen whether the council will wield sufficient power-or control sufficient funds-to make an impact on the problems of urbs and suburbs. The omens are not promising, particularly...