Evening star., 1946-07-07
Washington's City Planning
Faces an Uncertain Future
National Capital Park and Planning Commission
Bess Funds While District Government
Is Busy With Its Own Problems
By Rudolph Kaufman II

Washington community OF 100000
people, stand today at crossroads OF
the first magnitude.
One the one hand, the Nations Capt.
tai is faced with the question: Shall we
carry on to its logical conclusion the
physical development we know is neces-
sary if We are to become what we know
we ought to be-the most beautiful, i'm
pressive, inspiring. yet efficient and liv-
able city in the world?"
Or, speaking AS a community of work
ing, taxpaying people: Should We look
like bum because we're treated like
one?"
In 1926 Washingtonians, Congress
and groups who were civic-minded in
the broad, national sense of the word
sought and obtained tool to lift the
community out of more than a century
of "TopSy like" growth and piecemeal
planning, more than a century during
which both residents and Federal Gov
ernment seem to have lost sight of the
guiding star to which Washington, Jef-
ferson, L'Enfant and others of the Fed
eral City's early planners pointed.
The tool they got was and continues
to be the National Capital Park and
Planning Commission.
They charged this cOmmiSsion-four
lay members, all prominent in the
planning field, and the six Government
officials most closely connected with
the physical development of the Capital
With:
The duty of preparing, developing
nd maintaining comprehensive, con-
istent and co-ordinated plan for the
National Capital and its environs."
Where Is the Plan?
Today, what has happened to this
,nnission' Where is the plan? Why
ant 1t been published so that the
public can look it over. Where are the
colorful and challenging brochures and
studies which other city-plannlng
groups are using to sell their city gov
ernments and fellow citizens on the
advantages of co-ordinated foresight
IN building for the future?
Why is it that relations between the
commission and the District govern
ment in particular Federal agencies
usually look to the group for gudancep
seem alwa Is to be charged with antago-
nism as if an undercover fight were
taking place to see who will make the
plans?
At time when cities large and small
throughout the United States and in
war-torn Europe are paying good money
to planning experts, it is becoming
increasingly apparent that Washing
tons planners aren't fulfilling their
mission.
In the last several months the Public
Buildings Administration has brought
forth its huge postwar building blue
print, entailing eventual expenditure of
nearly 5000 900 900 in and near Wash
ngton alone. The Army engineers
have laid before the public the ground
work for a master plan for the city S
water front, and in conjunction with the
District Water Department, proposals
tUl WdGcl -SupPiS SS->
ing to the year 1000.
Expensive consultants, the most recent
the famed Bob" Moses of New York
have been invited to tell Washington
how to solve its transportation, high
way, parking and traffic problems. The
District government has announced
preliminary six-year program of capital
improvements to cost 1928 1000 900.
Every ones come out with a postwar
plan except the one agency which
is charged with the responsibility for
doing so.
Yet nothing has happened to the
commission 1t does business, after a
fashion, at the same old stand. But il
is staggering along just barely able
10 keep abreast of its correspondence
telephone calls and monthly meetings
Master Plan Exists.
The master plan is there, but 1t is
several thousand maps and individual
studies and a lot of ideas in the heads
of the commissions meager staff. The
public gets glimpses of it from occasional
speeches by Mai. Gen. U. S. Grant III
chairman of the commission, and from
reports of monthly meetings obtained
second hand from members of the staff
by the press.
One reason for this is that the
District government, which controls the
commissions annual budget, has denied
it the funds to hire staff large enough
to bring its plan together in published
form. But what is of far deeper con-
Germ, the District government is con-
ducting a successful campaign to keer
The plan unpublished and is by-paSsing
he commission on an ever increasing
eale.
The bypass is not hard to arrange
ince the commissions authority te
dvise on the shape of things to come
patchwork proposition.
Two years ago the Bureau of the
Budget made report, designed tt
become the basis for legislation straight
ening out the present inconsistent Sys.
tenn of planning control with which
the commission tries to operate, without
depriving executive agencies concerned
with a final veto over the commission:
views. The report said:
1T Ohe commission) is not in a posi-.
ton to be the central planning agency
which the act of 1926 indicates it wa:
intended to be. The extent to which
it has maintained planning Leadership
is largely due to its own efforts te
overcome statutory handicaps and secure
the cooperation of other agencies"
This report has met with opposition
rather than the support of the Dis.