Urban Planning Center Accepts Venezuela Pact

The Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies will begin work in its contract with the Venezuelan government as soon as a project director is agreed upon.

According to Lloyd Rodwin of MIT, chairman of the Center's faculty committee, the Center will not be able to announce the director for at least another month. The Venezuelan contract of close to $1 million will go into effect then.

The Joint Center, in cooperation with Venezuelan officials and experts, will analyze the economic structure and potential of the Guayana region as a basis for determining the requirements for housing, for industry and commerce, for public services including utilities and transportation, and for the pattern of urban and regional growth.

With the Venezuela Guayana Corporation, the Joint Center will prepare a development plan for the design of a new city, probably to be called Guayana City. The City will have a population of 200,000 or more when built. The Harvard-MIT work will last three years, and, according to an estimate by Rodwin, the city will be ready for habitation by 1970.

The Guayana region centers on the confluence of the Orinoco and Caronl Rivers in the southwest section of the country. In the area are rich deposits of iron and maganese ore, bauxite and petroleum. A steel mill is being built there and will be managed by Koppers, and the Reynolds Metal Company and the Venezuelan Government will build an aluminum plant.

An estimated 45,000 people have already moved into the region in anticipation of the industrial development.

Rodwin has made three trips to the region in the past year to complete negotiations and explore the area. He traveled last year with Adlai Stevenson through out the central region where Guayana City will be constructed.

The contract was worked out by the Center directly with the country through Col. Raphael Alfonso Ravard, an MIT alumnus and president of the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation.

Venezuela expects that internal development will reduce sharply its economic dependence upon petroleum and stimulate a new growing point in southwestern Venezuela that will relieve the congestion in the Caracas region.