Evening star., 1962-01-07
Cities
and People
Bistros and
Flower Murts
BY ROBERT ]. LEWIS

retail stores, to residences
and to government buildings.
Going to the Opera, or
leaving it, you enjoy window
shopping, and you have a
choice of visiting hundreds
of restaurants and cafes.
"A few steps from the
Opera, you find large depart
ment stores and hundreds
of speciality stores, from lux
ury shops to 5-and-10-cent
stores.
"Above the stores and
shops are residences of all
types: Luxury apartments,
small apartments, hotel
rooms. Dozens of other the
aters, office buildings, gov
ernment buildings, are Sprin-
kled all over the urban en-
vironment.
THE Presidents Palais
fronts one of the busiest
shopping streets =.
1.-THE Academy of Fine Arts
Is surrounded by buildings
which contain living quar-
ters on the upper floors, and
bistroS, cafes and antique
shops on the ground floor.
Whenever I visited the Of
fices of friends in Paris, I
found, right around the cor
ner, a wide selection of places
where you could have a cup
of coffee or a meal.
Around the Church of the
Madeleine there is a flower
market, apartment houses
and, on their ground floor,
again, stores of every de-
scription, including the most
mountaineering delicatessen
stores.
Some of the buildings con-
tain elegant apartments;
others cheap ones. The effect
of this intimate intermin-
Cling Is vibrant urban life,
admired by hundreds of
thousands of American tour
lists who cross the ocean at
great cost and walk their feet
off in order to participate
is an urban experience which
has become a rarity in our
country"
X II
IN SKETCHING this pic
ture, as you might suspect,
Mr.. Gruen had Washington
in mind. He was taking aim
on a number of targets, in
Guiding ideas on zoning,
planning, expressway con-
struction that would "open
up" the heart of cities so
they're more like suburbs.
Instead, cities need to be
as compact and diverse as
possible, Mr.. Gruen believes.
But they're not being re-
planned that way, in his
opinion. He said:
1--WE are separating retail
areas from residential areas,
though it is people who buy
things.
eve are separating build
ings serving cultural and ar
tistic pursuits from residen-
tial and retail areas, though
it is obvious that people
would visit these places more
often if they weren't so far
away.
1--WE are separating gov
ernment workers from other
workers, putting them in
ghettos called civic centers,
where they are removed from
the life of the normal citizen.
"We are further separat-
ing, by careful compartment
talization, the rich from the
middle class, and all of them
from the least successful.
"We are separating the
aters and places serving cul-
tural and recreational needs
from all other categories, and
by doing so are isolating
them from urban life and
impoverishing the city"
y Il
EVEN WORSE is our un-
willingness to halt the flood
of cars into the downtown
areas, Mr.. Gruen told a Met
ropolitan Washington Board
of Trade conference on the
city's appearance.
In his view, automobiles
are as incompatible with
downtown life as a railroad
traversing the Mall-as one
did in the pastor as down.
town landing fields for air.
planes.
Though early airports
were close to the city, pretty
soon we moved them to the
outskirts" he said.
wherever we have made
the attempt to provide suf-
ficient space for the insati-
able appetite of the automo-
bile, we have converted our
downtown areas into places
which, seen from the air,
resemble bombed out cities
after World War TT0