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,” New York isn’t for many.
Rome, though it has not yet proven itself “The Eternal City,” celebrated its 2721st birthday this week without evidence of having the personality warp which seems to afflict many American cities.
Architect Astra Zarina-Haner, who has studied, worked and traveled in American and European cities, offers a reason for this:
‘Alarming Poverty of Experiences’
“I believe that an unhealthy separation of functions constituting the scope of human activities is largely and directly responsible for the negative aspects of architectural solutions to community living in America. I also believe that such separation bears a direct relationship to the alarming poverty of emotional and spiritual experiences in American daily life.”
She continues, “One of the phenomena of the American scene that has burdened my mind for the past years, and which I find unhealthy, is the increasing segregation of functions that constitute the total scope of human activities. I think that is accounts greatly for the desensitivatization, moral illiteracy, irresponsibility and emotional anemia which the American intellectual leaders see as a growing threat to the Twentieth r1entury man.
“Architecturally, one witnesses it in sprawling, dull suburbs, devitalized city cores, and failing civic and cultural centers, which, although often well- planned and pleasant within themselves, are isolated by stretches of wasteland, networks of frightening speedways, and surrounded by endless parking lots.
“All of it contributes,” she asserts, “to the split personality of the daily living mode for a vast majority of Americans today.”
Only Neighbors Drop By
Mrs. Zarina-Haner observes, “…most Americans residing in typical contemporary communities lack the incidental pleasures and inspiration they should find in going about their daily activities. Their lives consist of racing from one isolated point of destination to another.
“Neighborhoods are made up by people of similar age and income groups, and the acceptable type of human contact is made in one’s living room, and by invitation. Friends do not drop in by chance, only neighbors.
“Shopping has become a pre-planned operation. And entertainment has lost its spontaneity.
“Dark and lonely residential streets at night and deserted commercial and cultural centers after hours have made walking for pleasure a forgotten activity, regarded with suspicion by patrolling police and motorized passersby.”
The Bakery Downstairs
Then what should urban life be like? She suggests, “From my own experience during my childhood and early youth in Europe, I recall that an architectural environment…did provide a wealth of human contacts and many small pleasures of daily living.
“One could observe the living habits of people who came from different economic and national backgrounds. One could wake up in the morning, go downstairs and buy fresh rolls from the bakery. One could be walking along a busy crowded street when suddenly a narrow gap between the buildings or a gate left ajar would allow a short glimpse of a very green garden — quiet and mysterious.
“Friends could be met by chance,” she recalls, “and stopped for a chat or taken to a cafe. In short, there was so much to be seen and experienced just by going from one place to another.”
Then she contends, “I believe that with certain, entirely possible technical improvements, any old section of a number of Italian cities would represent an urban environment which, even in the worst case, would be almost ideal.”
The kind of living she describes, while at its fullest in the old sections, is not confined to them. The Nomentana area of Rome is a case in point.
Facing the Villa Paganini in the Nomentana area, low rent apartments (left) and middle-income apartments (right) provide homes for a variety of people and the mixture gives the neighborhood social, economic and educational range
Via Nomentana and Corso Trieste intersect two miles from the center of Rome. Until about 1900, the area was mostly rural with scattered villas and farms. The urban development that began early this century took place gradually and some of the buildings in the area are but a few years old.
The neighborhood blossoms around the Villa Paganini, formerly a private estate and now a public park of about two square blocks, facing on Via Nomentana. The park is a magnet for children, mothers walking their babies, young lovers; and the elderly who like to sit in the shaded spots and talk about things great and small.
Across from the park sits the stately neo-classic Villa Torlonia, home of the wealthy Prince Torlonia, with its gracious gardens and impressive mansion. (Mussolini once used it as a residence.) The villa covers an area more than six blocks in size.
Within a shout of the Villa is a block of old, low-rent apartment buildings, their ground floors devoted to commercial and craft shops. Carpenters occupy a number of the spaces, producing everything from modern kitchen cabinets to expensive antique furniture reproductions. A stroller can watch them at work.
Embassies and Public Housing
The north side of the park is lined with a row of neat condominium apartments constructed about 30 years ago and occupied by middle-class residents. Next to then is a new, modern apartment-office building. Mary large, finely made private homes are scattered throughout the neighborhood, occupied by wealthy families. Some feature small, exquisite private gardens.
The neighborhood is host to several diplomatic missions, among them the Mexican and Ivory Coast delegations to Italy and the Brazilian delegation to the Vatican. They are mainly in former large private homes but the Canadian consulate occupies a large new office building.
A few private homes have been converted to apartment use while some others house institutions — like the Thomas Edison Institute for training in electronics.
At the intersection of Via Nomentana and Corso Trieste are the large I.N.C.I.S. apartments, a public housing project built in the first quarter of the century for government clerks.
What Have You…
Within a four-block radius are located nearly all the requirements of urban living — a church and parochial elementary school, a public elementary school and public high school, and basic shops like the grocery, butcher, fruit and vegetable store, pharmacy and the traditional bars.
A casual stroll takes you past an amazing variety of additional shops. There are auto repair shops inconspicuously tucked into buildings, an auto supply store, a radio and television shop, a tailor, a beauty shop, a barber, clothing stores, a shoemaker, a wine store, a card shop and bookshop, a tapestry and yard goods store, a shop for toys and baby supplies and a florist.
Two gasoline stations serve neighborhood motorists. (The Italian gasoline station is a study in good sense. Rather than devouring an entire corner American-style, the stations simply have two or f our pumps at curbside and a small office.)
Professional offices are seen throughout the neighborhood, with those for doctors, lawyers and insurance predominating. At the same time, a building may house a small machine or metal workshop.
A hungry stroller can stop in at any of several restaurants or a pizzeria. Two newsstands help residents keep in touch with the world and two corner flower stands offer bouquets to brighten the home.
Rentals in the Nomentana area range from about 40,000 lire monthly ($64) to more than 200,000 lire monthly ($320). Apartments vary in size from two-room furnished efficiencies to suites occupying entire floors of buildings. The buildings -vary from one story to eight in height, with most having three or four floors, providing enough density for a vibrant neighborhood without choking it with people. Many of the apartments ‘ have large interior courtyards affording play space, for children.
A Window on Life
Walking in this neighborhood, as in most of Rome, is always pleasant, often exciting and never dull. The Romans seem to turn over the big sights of this city to the ever-flowing wave of tourists, while reserving the thousands of little sights — the real Rome — to themselves.
Neighborhoods here are seldom gray. They draw their color from everywhere — street posters (election banners and posters are in profusion as Italy’s election nears), flowers, piles of fruit, street side shrines, the grocery with red and yellow soap boxes stacked to defy gravity, the trattoria window with marvelous displays of the foods waiting inside, the pasticerria’s exquisite pastries and cakes, the wine bottles on a window shelf creating a mosaic of glass and labels.
The activities of the neighborhood are not hidden behind blank walls or meaningless cardboard window displays. Labor is shared visually. The stroller sees the drycleaner turning a neat crease, the auto mechanic purring an engine, the carpenter shaping a table leg, the metalworker applying his torch in a shower of sparks, the jeweler peering through an eyepiece into a-disabled watch, the barber whipping up lather.
An umbrella-shaded flower stand frames a street scene with people gathered next to a fruit wagon. In the background an apartment building with shops on the first floor.
Even the newer neighborhoods here, while suffering from uncontrolled development and land speculation, contain strong elements of diversity.
The neighborhood where this writer lives — in the Monte Mario area northwest of Vatican City — is a contemporary example of the mix. While not as diverse as Via Nomentana, it still affords opportunities unknown to most American suburbs. Within two blocks of home, my wife can buy groceries, meats, wine and pastries. She can drop the children at school a block away and around the corner get her hair done and buy a birthday gift. A casual walk from the apartment, I can find a newspaper, cigarettes, a wristwatch, a camera, a light fixture, draperies, an oil painting or a new car. A block in one direction takes you to a traditional outdoor market. A block in the other direction is a modern supermarket.
Using the Plant
The result here, as in all of Rome, is that people get out of their houses, walk for enjoyment, meet others for conversation and generally participate in the world around them. There are few areas here, which close down at the end of the workday. Since, the commercial center is also a residential area and the residential areas have commercial activities, both are alive with use throughout the day and evening.
Charles P. Farnsley, former congressman and mayor of Louisville, Ky., feels that this kind of use is vitally needed in American cities. He told me, “We need more night life in our cities. What we do now doesn’t make sense — when people get out of work and are ready to shop, the shops close. We need to use the factory (the city) 24 hours a day. It seems that we don’t let anything work as well as it might.”
This integration of activities was taken to the United States by the European immigrants but fostered in only a few places. It drew the admiration of E.B. White in 1949 when he wrote, “Every block or two, in most residential sections of New York is a little Main Street. A man starts for work in the morning and before he has gone two hundred yards he has completed half a dozen missions, bought a paper, left a pair of shoes to be soled, picked up a pack of cigarettes, ordered a bottle of whiskey to be dispatched in the opposite direction against his homecoming … and notified the dry cleaner that a pair of trousers awaits call … So complete is each neighborhood, and so strong the sense of neighborhood, that many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village.”
It can be suggested that the gradual dissolution of these kinds of neighborhoods in New York and other American cities has been accompanied by the “fear” of environment observed growing in them.
Side Affects
The integration of functions carries with it social and economic integration, bringing all kinds of people together in the neighborhood. In Via Nomentana, the wealthy live alongside those with moderate incomes. Their children attend the excellent public school together and get to know each other. (As Andrea Reichlin, University of Rome architecture student, explained to me, “Status doesn’t depend on where you live. It depends on who you are.”)
In Nomentana, the large firms share *the same block with the small -merchant. Government offices function alongside private firms. The neighborhood is home for both young and old and provides jobs for both residents and non-residents.
The diversity found in Nomentana would not be permitted under the strict zoning standards of most American urban areas. Rome’s standards are much more flexible, permitting mixed uses throughout most of the city if they do not radically alter the neighborhood — as a department store or factory obviously would — or require construction out of scale with the neighborhood.
Going By the Telephone Book
Professor Gabriele Scimeni, architect and city planner of the University of Rome faculty, argues that zoning by rigid American standards “makes no more sense than putting all the listings in the telephone book under ISO in the same location.”
Zoning, he contends, should be flexible enough to allow the inclusion in a neighborhood of all the things that function well together.
“I really question whether any zoning is good but I suppose that some is needed,” Scimemi says. “But it shou-1d be aimed more at functions than categories.”
It can be argued that the mix of functions should be limited in parts of the urban area. There is a need for some areas without the bustle that so many busy people produce. Other areas are best suited for major commercial or industrial uses.
But some sense of the fullness of city life should be available to all those who want it, and many more would if they once tasted it. The cities cannot be allowed to exist only as concrete suburbs.
The New York Task Force recognized this when it urged new design controls for urban renewal projects: “The developments should start with the idea of a neighborhood: tall buildings, small ones, some old ones, local institutions, stores, loft spaces, a. genuine characterization drawn from the neighborhoods which already exist there, made with the active participation Of the residents.”
If city life is to be fun instead of fear, it seems that the concept of segregating manes activities — a kind of physical apartheid — must be reconsidered.
Beautiful homes of the wealthy like those shown here (upper left and lower right) blend with middle-income and low-rent apartments in the Nomentana neighborhood. Shops of all kinds add to the mix, like the auto repair shop (upper right with mechanic in doorway) and the woodworking shop (lower left), and give the neighborhood continuing color and life. These four scenes exist within a block or so of each other.
Received in New York April 29, 1968.
Mr. Meeker is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner, on leave from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This article may be published, with credit to David A. Meeker, the Post-Dispatch, and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
