New Suburbs Can Serve As Models, Weaver Says

Robert C. Weaver '29, administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, last night declared that integrally planned new communities will provide useful demonstrations of what can be done "in creating a new pattern for suburbia," but he warned that such communities "will not solve our problems of future suburban development."

Speaking in the first of his three Godkin Lectures, Weaver told a Sanders audience of 400 that planned communities represent important examples of "orderly growth."

But most suburban growth in the next few years will not occur in such planned communities, Weaver emphasized. "Projected new communities represent feasible examples of an extremely attractive life style for the middle- and upper-income family," he said. But he noted that lower-income families, more than a third of the total population, are usually excluded from the plans.

What is needed, Weaver went on, are direct inducements to suburbs "to welcome the less affluent," and financial assistance to make it profitable for private developers to build for low-income families. In addition, there should be more effective enforcement of the Executive Order for Equal Opportunity in Housing he said.

Weaver noted that restrictions limiting government financial assistance in suburbia to communities which meet economic diversity, planning, and open occupancy requirements would begin to antsy many critics of existing suburbs. But, he declared, such legislation will not be enacted in the near future.

For meeting the problems of urban growth in the immediate future, Weaver suggested comprehensive policies "discouraging the bulldozing away of contours and trees, and revitalizing mass transportation."

We must take immediate action, he concluded, that recognizes the need for metropolitan planning. "But, alas, there is no magic in planning," he said. Planning has little significance unless there is wide spread citizen participation, as well as local political involvement.

Weaver stated that in the next thirty-five or forty years we will have to build as much housing as we have in our entire history, and that land incorporated in cities will more than double. There is a need for a theoretical basis for our action, he said, but we cannot wait until the base is complete to begin experimenting.

The second Godkin Lecture will be given tonight at 8:00 p.m. in Sanders The topic of the lecture is "Urban Renewal." "Dilemmas of Racial Policy" will be the subject of the third Godkin Lecture, to be given Wednesday night.