We are concerned here with urban space as a resource for more than seven-tenths of the American people—those who live in cities, towns, and suburbs. How to plan urban space so that we and future generations will reap the best, and not the worst, from the forces that are at work today—high-speed transportation and communication, shorter working hours, higher family incomes—is a problem that is engrossing the attention not only of those who are in the mainstream of urban planning, but of others whose professional training gives them special insights into the complex problems involved.
The Papers presented at RFF's fourth Forum, held in the spring of 1962, were notable for their diversity of viewpoint and included some aspects not always considered to be part and parcel of urban planning as such—city design, social welfare, land use law, and economic tools for policy-making, among others. This issue of Resources presents extracts from some of the papers, the full collection of which will be published this month by The Johns Hopkins Press (Lowdon Wingo, Jr., ed., Cities and Space). Because they are extracts, not summaries, they are shorn of modifications or counter arguments that the authors may have included in developing their theses.
A version of this article appeared in print in the September 1963 issue of Resources magazine.
