David Meeker
- 1968
Fellowship Title:
- Urban Problems in Europe
Fellowship Year:
- 1968
Stockholm’s Underground: All It Needs is Love
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — “It’s a matter of identity,” said the small man, immaculate in a brown, Bond Street suit. “People must think of the system as something human, something they are a part of, rather than a kind of giant, distant, corporate thing.” A graphics expert, the Englishman was here to look over the public transportation system and help it put on a new public face. One of his concerns was the corporate symbol — a simple white circle ringed in blue bearing the letters “SL.” They stand for Storstockholms Lokaltrafik, or Greater Stockholm Local Transportation Co., not for something human. “People want to be part of things,” the slightly freckled Londoner enthused. “I remember the symbol I did for a London restaurant chain. We used a plate with a clever arrangement of knife and fork to make a smiling face. I like to give life to things.” The Stockholm transit system lacks personality, he suggested with deep concern. The SL representatives nodded across the table in polite agreement. It just doesn’t have that whatever-it-is
Polish Planning…and People
June 26, 1968 Warsaw, Poland — Urban planning in Poland begins with the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party. In some cases, it ends in a small, neat cooperative apartment or a convenient school or a large attractive park. In many others, it produces frustrating, 10-year waits for a flat, slow and crowded tramcars, and long lines at the bread store. Between the cause and the effect, the future of Polish cities is shaped much like the future of Polish steel production — as an investment, which must pay a dividend to the nation’s planned economic growth. Planning seems to be Poland’s major industry. The national economic plan is shaped by an estimated 300,000 people. This means, in simple terms, that one of every 26 working Poles is planning what the other 25 should be doing. The physical planners, their course plotted in large part by the economists, decide the “where.” Joining economic factors in shaping the quality of city life in People’s Poland is a complex mixture of politics, culture, history
Warsaw: Memories in Mortar
May 28, 1968 Warsaw, Poland — There are three Warsaws, blurred into one by bricks and mortar, ideology and memories. Living on in fond reminiscence is the city of Chopin and Madame Curie, which existed here before the Nazi invasion of 1939. The second Warsaw — a sea of rubble, which inspired Hitler to tell the Reichstag in 1945, “Warsaw is now no more than a geographical tem on the map of Europe.” — has nearly disappeared from view but pervades speech and thought. The visible city of 1968 — the third Warsaw — is a driving, sprawling town molded in the pattern of socialist man. This is a city with a new face on an old body and a new guiding force with old memories, seeking a new identity but unable to discard its past. Warsaw is a city with its eye on tomorrow and its mind on yesterday. ‘Heart, Brain and Treasury’ Warsaw was a latecomer among Polish cities, emerging during the thirteenth century. In 1596, it was designated as the
Urban Mix: Prescription For Diversity
April 25, 1968 ROME, ITALY — It has become fashionable to refer to the problems of the Cities in medical terms. Our urban centers are sick, explain the urbanists, with congestion, clogged arteries, acute respiratory infection, malformed growth and sundry other afflictions. Since the physical condition of the body often affects the mind, there is now growing concern for the mental state of the cities, as reflected in the city dweller’s attitude. In its recent report titled “The Threatened City,” the Mayor’s Task Force on the design of the City of New York observed, “…the dreary monotony of the physical city environment has deadened us, training us not to see architecture really and not to be aware of many other things, not to hear obscenities shouted in the streets, not to feel when jostled, not to anger when stepped upon, almost not to weep when dirt gets into our eyes — yet finally to explode in tabloid violence at the wrong provocation. Sometimes, we seem to fear our environment.” Despite its slogan of “Fun City,”
Urban Remedies: The International Search
Rome, Italy April 15, 1968 LJUBLJANA, YUGOSLAVIA – “As people live more together, they also depend more on each other. Mankind has built up a society in which man is carrier of all values, and on his life interests and his free conscience should not be imposed any monopoly interests.” Branislav Krstic, counselor for communal affairs of the Yugoslav Federal Assembly, addressed these words to planners from four nations who met here in 1966. He told them that society faces “a question of arranging the space and development of its most important points, which are cities.” The Yugoslav official then asserted, “Before the course of urbanization has accomplished its expensive and inhuman heritage, vie would like to find a remedy and answer some critical questions.” The 1966 conference was introduced to a new, still infant effort aimed at conducting a search for the urban remedy — the American-Yugoslav Project in Regional And Urban Planning Studies. Now, two years later, the American-Yugoslav Project has grown into a robust youngster using the Ljubjlana region, with 15 communes