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 and 240,000 people, as a living laboratory for urban planning research.
The project was jointly launched by Cornell University and the Urbanisticni Institut of Slovenia. Funds for the program are being provided by the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Department of State, and the Yugoslav Federal Council for the Coordination of Scientific Research.
The project’s American staff of six is headed by Professor Jack C. Fisher of Cornell, while the Yugoslav staff of 12 is under the direction of Vladimir Music of the Urbanisticni Institut. Consultants and lecturers from Yugoslavia and the United States are supplemented by others from elsewhere in Europe.
It Could Have Been Milwaukee
Ljubljana (Americanized as “lube-lee-ona”) seems a most unlikely place to grapple with the problems of urbanization. With the picturesque River Ljubljanica winding through a city center dominated by a hilltop medieval castle, much of the city seems to cling to a past far removed from the mega polis of this century. But the abundance of tall, modern buildings overlooking the old orange-roofed structr1res reminds the visitor that this is the economic, political and cultural center of the Republic of Slovenia, the northernmost republic in Yugoslavia.
Professor Myer Wolfe, head of the planning department of the University of Washington and a project staff member, explained, “We are not going to make plans for Ljubljana. The local planning agency is certainly capable of that. Instead, we’re using it as an experimental lab where we wish to test certain premises, certain conventional wisdoms. We wish to be method oriented. Whether it’s Ljubljana or Milwaukee, we are concerned with a network of cities.”
Yugoslav team director Music was asked how planning for a region the size of Ljubljana could be applied to much larger regions. He replied, “We are not convinced that size makes much difference. It’s more important to have similar kinds of functions.” As a regional center, Ljubjlana has most functions of larger regional centers.
THE BIG PICTURE
The regional approach to planning being made in the project recognizes that the destiny of urban areas is not decided solely within the boundaries of the center city. Physical planning, regional economics, sociology, demography and analysis of the use of urban space are combined.
Methodology is one of the favorite words among the American-Yugoslav Project staff. It’s become obvious that the methods used in developing urban plans determine the value of the plans. So the project is seeking to devise new methods which can be used in approaching the same kinds of problems — housing, transportation, and the like — in any urban region, a little bit like the way a physician diagnoses and prescribes for a certain illness based on certain symptoms.
Ljubliana: A gathering place for Europe’s planners
What kinds of answers should the planners search out? Professor John W. Dyckman, director of the Center for Planning and Development Research at the University of California, Berkeley, listed a few of the most pressing questions at the inception of the project. Here, paraphrased, are a few of them:
- How do regional plans fit into national plans and what affect do national plans have on the region?
- How is the regional unit chosen? Dyckman explained, “The efficient region for one function (like water pollution control) may be radically different than the efficient region for another (like transportation.)
- What is the affect of federal and regional investments in the so-called non-productive services (like health, welfare, etc.) and is there an ideal way for these investments to be made?
- Is there a pattern of physical development for communities and between communities that is the best for conserving tax dollars, making the most of individual opportunities, and minimizing problems like air and water pollution and transportation?
- What savings can be realized through economies of scale in public investments? How can these savings be economically and politically realized (Fooling of services? Purchase from central suppliers?)
- How can regional growth be stabilized without impairing it? How can you measure the social cost of regional change?
Since these and many other questions face planners throughout the world, the participants in the American-Yugoslav Project are convinced that their work must eventually assume an even broader international character.
Krstic endorsed this idea in 1966, saying, ”A group of us have been of the opinion from the beginning that only such (international) concepts give this work its full meaning. Because the science is nobody’s property. And in here there are no bilateral worlds. A man must live with everybody-because we are all here.”
Four nations were represented at that conference — Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and the United States. As spring blossomed in the Slovenian countryside this year, the project brought together planners from 12 nations.
The Czechs, Poles, Yugoslavs and American planners were joined here by colleagues from Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, West Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland.
Indicative of the cordiality that attended the diverse assembly was the official language for the conference — “Broken English.”
Building Bridges
The conference mixed reviews of the American-Yugoslav Project and its progress with a broad discussion of international cooperation among planners. Fisher explained that the conference was the first step toward creation of an international training and research center in urban planning here.
Next Fall, Fisher will move from Cornell to join the faculty of Wayne State University (Detroit) which is establishing the first international study program in urban planning. WSU President William R. Keast outlined the university’s plans to the conference; Wayne State has been one of the leaders promoting a greater academic role in urban problem solving.
Despite their varied economic, political and philosophical backgrounds, the planners unanimously endorsed the idea of increased cooperation as not only necessary but also possible.
As a first small step in that direction, they agreed to submit material of general interest to the American-Yugoslav Project, which will incorporate it into a newsletter for circulation throughout Europe. More than 500 project newsletters are currently mailed each edition. Other types of cooperation, which might eventually result, are training programs, personnel exchanges and team projects.
The Dialogue
In formal discussions and leisurely conversations, the planners took a hard look at the state of their art.
Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, editor of “Ekistics” magazine for the reputed and controversial firm of Doxiadis Associates of Athens, explained her firm’s approach to the problems of the Detroit region.
“The planner is obliged to set the criteria for what makes a good life,” she asserted, “This is a dangerous but necessary function. There are two ways to do it. One is by showing how you may modify the present situation. The second is by showing new alternatives. In the past, the diagnosis has seldom been available when the answers were needed.
“Now we have a new friend — the computer,” she said. Using the electronic brain, Doxiadis was able to examine 49,000,000 alternative development patterns for Detroit, she said. These were finally narrowed down to seven, price tags were attached, and they were presented to the decision makers for consideration.
Alternatives — Not Plans
Alternatives seem to have replaced plans as the end product of planning. Professor Wolfe explained, “We must furnish the decision makers with a core of intelligence. We must answer the question, ‘What will happen if…’” Karl Otto Schmid of Zurich warned his colleagues, “We must never have THE plan. But rather we must have several alternative plans.”
There is a drawback to this, however. Austria’s Dr. Fritz Kastner explained, “To accept a plan means to decide between alternatives and to select what project and where it should be developed. A number of politicians have an aversion to take this decision…What many officials want to handle is projects with fixed directions what to do.”
As Schmid observed, “Our plans are as good as fresh buns. They are old the next day.” This may explain why planners more and more are casting themselves in the role of guides, leading the decision makers through uncharted areas. While the planners don’t profess to know the exact route the future will take, they are better prepared to read the signs along the trail than the untrained.
Because of this, they are frustrated by having to implement ideas through political systems where pressure often means more than knowledge. “It has taken us centuries to learn that we must deal in strategies,” Professor Wolfe said. “We know what to do but we don’t know how to get it accomplished.”
In The Middle
The planners seem still trying to throw off the image that they are men who sit at brightly colored maps deciding where mankind will live, work and spend his free time. They now refer to citizens as “clients.” Yugoslav Miro Mihovilovic of the University of Zagreb reminded his colleagues, “Through the man arrives the plan. It’s not the plan that puts the man. We must always put the man in the middle.”
It might be suggested that the planners lack the ability to put “the man” in the middle or anywhere else, but rather they are facing the fact that the man has been there all the time. Denmark’s John Allpass observed, “We can put in grids and other kinds of systems but most human beings still live their lives the way they want.”
It was Allpass who raised the obvious question about the American-Yugoslav Project and the approach, which underlies it: Whether theoretical planning has practical application. He suggested that if the programs devised by the project staff are not applied then their work is “like playing in the sandbox.” Allpass asserted, “We should let the ideas sift through the political process.” (Fisher explained that some of the ideas devised in the project will probably be put to use by Ljubjlana’s official planning agency.)
‘Curious Things Are Happening’
Elaborating on his criticism, Allpass said, “Planning is something we hone will be executed. Planning is a program for action. Curious things are happening in planning.
“We must make a greater distinction between theory and practice,” the Copenhagen planner asserted. “Otherwise we will continue to develop antagonism. Ninety-nine per cent of our theories are more confusing than helping us.
“To find a solution in a regional plan is sheer nonsense. We should be humble. A 15-to-20 year plan can only be a perspective…I don’t think we can direct forces. We can only channelize them to our benefit. No politician is willing to accept plans for 20 years forward.”
In a related vein, Polish planner Adolf Ciborowski stressed, “The computer must support and protect us but not replace our brain or our creative imagination. There is a tendency to overemphasize the tools given to us, as we say to practice art for art’s sake.”
The Realization
These exchanges, and many others which took place here; indicate that the planners realize they have been unable to utilize their talents to the best advantage of urban society.
If, as Meyer Wolfe claimed, the planners “know what to do,” then society seems obligated to devote greater efforts to “get it accomplished.”
And if the planners don’t have all the answers, the American-Yugoslav project and the internation cooperation, which is growing around it, may help find some of them.
Philosophized Switzerland’s Schmid, “It isn’t because things are difficult that we don’t dare to tackle them, but it is because we don’t dare to tackle them that they are difficult.”
Received in New York April 15, 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 ST.LOUIS POST-DISPATCH and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
