These are the objectives of the New Cities Research and Experimentation Act which Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced for consideration in the Senate. The bill will establish a New Cities Research and Experimentation Administration and authorize its expenditure of $1 billion over a three-year period for applied research and engineering leading to the design and development of new cities.

The rationale for this approach arises from the fact that the U.S. population is likely to have increased by upwards of 100 million people by the turn of the century. This is a population equivalent of 100 new cities of 1,000,000 persons each or 200 new cities of 500,000 each. To the extent that new cities are not built-and certainly it is highly improbable that so many new cities could be constructed over this period-this massive population increase will have to be absorbed in existing metropolitan areas.

Whether or not the country embarks on a new cities program, 100 million additional people will have to be provided with adequate housing and the full range of urban services. By building new cities which exemplify the striking benefits possible through the application of advanced technology, such a program could also have a major impact on improving conditions within existing urban

areas.

The New Cities Administration established by the Kennedy bill would award systems contracts for applied research and experimentation with urban service systems. Thus systems contracts, and subcontracts for various subsystems and components, would be awarded in the areas of mass transit, communications, housing, health care, public utilities, sanitation, education, public safety, and pollution control. Since the systems would be designed in a new cities context, engineers could give free rein to their creative impulses and experiment and innovate with all applicable forms of advanced technology, without undue concern for restrictive local ordinances, building codes, excessive labor restraints, and the like.

The cities could be designed with underground conduits for gas and electric utilities, telephones, closed circuit TV, waste disposal systems, materials transport, and so forth. Moreover, such systems could be designed for easy access for maintenance, so that streets, would not have to be continually ripped up and repaved.

The systems contracts would utilize performance standards which would conduce toward technological innovation responsive to the users' needs. Thus performance standards for mass transit systems could stipulate that each person living and working in particular areas must have access to transportation which would be within a fixed distance from his home, and which would be capable of delivering him to within a fixed distance of his place of work in a rapid, clean, comfortable manner. In addition, the standards could require that this objective be accomplished within certain minimum pollution levels.

Similarly, citywide computer networks could be designed so that all the units in a school system could readily utilize computer-assisted instruction, or that the various medical facilities in the city could make maximum use of com

the various medical facilities in the city could make maximum use of computer capablities for emergency medical care, diagnosis, and critical patient monitoring.

After such systems were designed, they would have to be subjected to extensive testing and systems evaluation, taking account of applicable social and economic considerations, as well as the strictly technical factors. The resulting systems would then be ready for demonstration projects which would illustrate the functioning of the systems and demonstrate their attendant benefits.

Thus the administration established under this legislation would carry the technology from applied research through systems demonstration. After the effectiveness of the system had been successfully demonstrated, the system would be available for incorporation in new cities.

As presently envisaged, the system would be brought into being in the new city context by means of new city development corporations which would serve as the transfer agents for the resulting technologies. These corporations would acquire rights to the system and would manage the complex transfer process whereby land is acquired, housing and urban systems are constructed, and public and industrial marketing is effected. Enabling legislation would provide the legal framework within which such cities could be constructed free of the inhibiting ordinances which apply in existing urban areas.

In his June 17 luncheon talk at NSPE's engineering employment conference, Senator Kennedy stated his belief that: "Engineering must become a vital and

integral a part of our civilian economy as it already has become in the areas of national defense and the conquest of space." To further this goal, he introduced in the 92nd Congress the Conversion Research, Education, and Assistance Act last January, and the Economic Conversion Loan Authorization Act last March. These two bills would a) establish a national policy framework to provide continuity, growth, and stability to Federal funding of science and technology; b) provide conversion assistance to communities, companies, and individual scientists and engineers; and c) provide long-term, low-interest loans to tide over unemployed technical personnel until the new jobs can be created. The New Cities Research and Experimentation Act would complete the basic package of conversion legislation by creating the civilian market for research and engineering, and by establishing dramatic national urban goals which could capture public imagination and support. The engineering profession is presently in a state of turmoil and transition. With enactment of this legislation, engineers will be free to turn their extraordinary talents to the true tasks confronting our nation.

[From the Boston Herald Traveler, Nov. 1, 1971]

RTE. 128 PICTURE STILL BLEAK

RANKS OF UNEMPLOYED UNDIMINISHED

(By Barbara Rabinovitz)

That famed golden semi-circle, Route 128, is still tarnished, as the ranks of unemployed engineers remain undiminished.

One year after their numbers appeared to have peaked, the prospect for these professionals is no brighter and some say the situation is deteriorating.

"If I had to point to a direction, I'd say it's looking worse," said Arthur S. Obermayer, a chemist and president of Moleculon Research Corporation in Cambridge.

In an interview last week, S. Robert Salow, an unemployed electronic systems engineer from Newton who heads up the self-help Economic Action Group, commented that the reported drop in the unemployment figure is "statistically not significant and even less significant in terms of professional level unemployment. "The number of professional people unemployed in the greater Boston area at the present time is about 12,000," Salow said. “In the spring and summer months, the number I had heard was 10,000.”

At the 128 Professional Service Center in Waltham, a state employment office opened last January to find jobs for, retrain, and advise the unemployed with their problems, over 1,000 engineers out of a total of 6,679 registrants have been placed.

A spokesman for Raytheon noted that for the past six months the company's staff had remained steady at about 45,500, down from 51,000 in April, 1970.

And a personnel manager at Sylvania reported that while there had been no layoffs recently "there is nothing of the magnitude of the staff we had before. We haven't come near to restaffing at the same level of a year and a half or two years ago."

Those close to the problem say that the handwringing and promises of relief by the administration a year ago have not yielded tangible results.

U.S. Rep. Robert F. Drinan, whose district includes many of the Rte. 128 communities smarting under the effects of the layoffs and cutbacks, said last week: "It has not been for lack of congressional interest and drive that these people are not getting help. It's just that the administration hasn't put high priority on this.

"The Federal Government should provide for these unemployed," he continued. "Since 1955 when the defense-related industries first took hold, this group did the Federal Government's work. The Government has a special obligation to repay them for work done."

In the absence of any job offers, many of the engineers-in desperation-have taken on work in non-scientific and less professional fields. PhD holders are pumping gas or repairing televisions. Other are turning to hobbies, such as candle-making or model shipbuilding, as sources of income.

"It's a rather tragic situation for the engineer," said Gerald Wallick, former president of Economic Action Group. "I think the saving grace in terms of the

government is that the engineers are a rather docile group. They're conservative and middle-classy and don't like to talk about their problems."

Some solutions are being proposed, in particular, reconversion. But the scientists are skeptical that the transition to new industries and products can be accomplished quickly and smoothly.

According to Obermayer, “agencies like HUD or the departments of transportation and environmental protection have a limited staff of technical people to evaluate technical proposals.

"They are more likely to spend a large portion of their money on hardware," Obermayer said. "There is more of a risk in 'r and d' (research and development) where the engineers could be employed. And the agencies have not gotten the increased budgets for what really is 'r and d'."

State Division of employment Security Director Herman V. LaMark, who is also director of the Route 128 center, is planning a program that would bring those registering at the center in touch with bankers and investors who may be interested in financing a new product idea conceived by an unemployed person. LaMark said the emphasis now must be placed on the problem-solving abilities of the unemployed. "We don't call them engineers anymore. We call them problem-solvers," he said. "These men have orderly minds and think schematically and that talent can be put to use."

Salow sees the solution in both long-term projects and temporary relief measures. The former could be the planning of new cities which would create many jobs.

The latter, he noted, had been discussed in the form of reconversion loans. An unemployed engineer could be guaranteed up to 60 per cent of his former salary or a maximum of $12,000 to be paid back over a 10-pear period at low interest rates after he secures a job.

"The justification for these loans could be that the government failed to provide an orderly transition from one kind of economy to another," Salow said, "It would give the borrower an opportunity to look for a job, develop a product idea, and would let him relax without the pressure of driving a cab or sweeping a floor all day."

[From the Science Magazine, Nov. 5, 1971]

KENNEDY AND MCELROY DIFFER

(By Constance Holden)

Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has encountered stolid resistance from the National Science Foundation to his efforts to cast NSF in the central role in the elaborate and expensive scientific conversion program he has designed. Kennedy not only wants NSF to administer the bulk of the program, which would involve an expenditure of $1.7 billion over 3 years; he also thinks the foundation should consider becoming the main focus within government of a strong, centralized civilian effort at redirecting science and technology to social problems. Director of the NSF William D. McElroy, at hearings last week on the Kennedy bills, made it clear that he regarded the program as marginally relevant, and that in any case NSF was not the man for the job.

Kennedy's plan comes in three parts: the first provides temporary relief for unemployed scientists and engineers through low-interest loans; the second authorizes $500 million over 3 years to supply technical, educational, and financial help to companies, communities, and individuals engaged in converting to civilian work. Crowning these is the $1 billion New Cities Research and Experimentation Act, referred to by some as Kennedy's "urban NASA," which would set up an administration (hopefully within NSF) to mobilize the nation's scientific resources for the design and development of livable urban environments.

McElroy, who pointed out that the Administration is already busy implementing schemes to tide over jobless professionals, insisted that NSF was already doing its social thing through its new RANN (Research Applied to National Needs) program. He held to the view that the way to help the unemployed in the long run was through the creation of jobs, not through retraining or loan programs. To improve the long-term situation, he said, what is needed is a bigger investment in basic research and development.

McElroy also explained that, in order to prevent a recurrence of the present situation, people and institutions must learn flexibility and adaptability so they can readily reorient their work as new technologies and national goals roll

around. "We have no choice but to 'teach old dogs new tricks,'" he concluded. Suggested Kennedy: "Maybe we should see if we can get NSF to be an old dog that learns a new trick too." But McElroy seemed to think this was too indiscriminate an application of the metaphor. ". . . [T]he sheer magnitude of this total problem is such that . . . NSF's contribution would be limited by the modest resources available to NSF and the nature of our experience, which has been primarily with academic institutions," he testified. If Kennedy's mammoth project gets off the ground, it may well trigger a difficult reevaluation of the role of NSF. McElroy, at any rate, will not have to worry about it. He has announced plans to quit at the end of next January and become chancellor of the University of California at San Diego.

[From the Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1971]

THE NEW POOR OF SEATTLE

It has been known for some time that hard days have come to Seattle and surrounding areas in Washington state. The unemployment rate for Seattle has reached over 13 per cent, now the highest in the nation. As is commonly known, this economic plunge has been largely caused by the declining activity of the aerospace industry over the past several years; it is said that from January 1970 through August 1971, unemployment went from 43,900 to 106,400.

A unique situation exists for many of the families who are new getting by on unemployment insurance, public assistance, food stamps, school lunches or neighborhood generosity: they are both poor and not poor. The newly unemployed area, in large part, well educated and highly skilled. They possess houses, cars, life insurance policies, belong to clubs, go on vacations and are generally accustomed to a comfortable life. Yet they are barely able to get by. A report of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, issued earlier this week, calls this group "the new poor." The irony of their situation, said the report, is that the accumulated assets of the family "have only bargain-sale value on the open market, and therefore, could only be sold at staggering losses. Yet these assets render many of the new poor ineligible for the benefits of the state's public assistance program and for the federal food stamp program.”

An immediate and increasingly desperate problem for many of the newly unemployed is food. A well-run food stamp program has been operating, along with school lunches; both are federal programs and both have been rapidly expanded for the crisis. In addition, some 34 church-sponsored food banks have been helping out. But city, county and state officials have stated that these efforts-federal and private--are not enough. One serious problem, as Rep. Thomas Foley (DWash.) has noted, is that a family receiving unemployment insurance must use that money for such things as mortgage payments, utilities, medical expenses, transportation (to seek a new job); thus, little or no money is left over to buy food stamps.

Congress foresaw such emergencies and wrote provisions into the law in 1970 for the Department of Agriculture to run a direct food distribution program concurrently with a food stamp program. An advantage of the former is that although the food is less varied, it is free. In normal conditions, the law prohibits the two programs in one area, but an exception may be made when the state or local government believes it has an emergency and is willing to pay for the administrative costs. This willingness has been expressed. To date, however, the Department of Agriculture has refused to establish the second program of free food distribution. A department official says that the government has no "hard evidence" of a grave food problem in Seattle. This is odd; staff members of the Senate Nutrition Committee had no trouble finding hard evidence, nor have city and state officials. What are the 34 emergency food banks in business for?

Since no area has yet to have these two programs running concurrently, the Agriculture Department is apparently reluctant to set a precedent. If Seattle is allowed two programs, other places will soon be in line for the same request. But what does this argument-and the one of "no hard evidence"-mean to a community where many have little or no food. Regarding its current stance, an official in the Department of Agriculture said there is “a chance we'll change.” If so, the department has little time to waste; the reasons for change are strong and growing.

PART IV-STATEMENTS

Statement from John P. Eberhard, Dean of the School of Architecture and Environmental Design, State University of New York at Buffalo, and formerly Director of the Institute for Applied Technology of the National Bureau of Standards

I would like to address myself to technological questions with respect to the New Cities Research and Experimentation Act.

Before 1870 it was not possible to build a building any higher than six to eight floors. For thousands of years cities had been built with limited density due to this restriction. With the invention of the Bessemer process and the subsequent development of steel structural members for buildings, it became possible to build the sky scraper that now dominates the cityscape of all large metropolitan areas around the world. Thus the development of steel had a greater impact on the organization of big business (making possible Manhatten's financial district or Chicago's Loop) than organizational theory being developed at the turn of the contury by business scholars.

Vertical transportation inside of buildings for all of history had depended on stairways and climbing. The elevator was an invention that made it convenient to move vertically in tall buildings, and we would probably agree that tall