Selected writings on principles and practice by Frederick H. Bair, Jr edited by Virginia Curtis (Planners Press, Chicago, 1979)

Planning ahead

Any planner worth his salt in the years ahead is going to have to be aware that in large measure he won't know what he is planning for. Conditioned along these lines, he may be increasingly useful. Blind or stubborn, he will spend much of his time fighting to preserve, defend, and embellish the mistakes of the past.

Shortly Her 1900, Thomas Edison, a man with an alert and intelligent finger on the technical pulse of the nation, gave a reporter a forecast on what was coming in the years ahead. Although he was right about many things, he overlooked, underestimated, or misjudged many of the elements which were to mold the physical and economic form of the United States. He foresaw nuclear physics dimly, and was afraid of itÄbecause railroads could transmute base metals into cheap gold and pay off their gold bonds, ruining thousands of investors. He neglected gasoline and diesel engines on wheels (the automobile, the truck, the tractor) and improvements in the generation and transmission of electricity. He foresaw a factory-type farm and a businessman farmer, but the tractors were powered by storage batteries.

He was wrong about many of the predictions he made, wrong about many of the principles involved, wrong about many of the things to which the principles would be applied, wrong about which inventions would be important, and he failed entirely to grasp the earthshaking significance of technical developments shaping up around him at the time. He was weak on what was out ahead, strong on tackling the jobs at hand.

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The moral is not that Edison was shortsighted, but that long-range forecasting was a chancy business even in 1900.

Taken as a whole, Edison's predictions were far better than ours are likely to be now. In his time, technology was just breaking into a fast walk. It is now shifting into nuclear drive. In the past 10 years, we have seen breakthrough after breakthrough in fields Edison never dreamed of. Each multiplies potentialsÄpotential problems and potential solutions.

From technological necessities and inventions and principles only now emerging will come new needs and new answers. Since we do not know which among our present set of inventions and innovations is likely to do what to the shape of cities, it is probable that we should not try to plan too firmly far through the mounting complexities of the future. Before we go any great distance, we run into an impenetrable jungle of intertwined question marks.

Physical technology is only one facet. Social change accelerates as social mass grows, as the number of people moving to new environments increases, as mass communication intensifies, and as the educational level rises. Changes in the forms and functions of governments are so rapid that the wild-eyed radical of a generation ago would now be fairly comfortable on the far right. As Carr and Stermer said in Willow Run, "One who tries to predict specific events or even specific social conditions during a period of rapid and confusing social change has no means whatever except the violence of his language for carrying conviction to the minds of other people. There simply is no generally accepted framework or method for structuring the future in a situation of on-rushing social change."

This certainly does not mean that planning is going to run out of meaningful jobs. A great deal of planning is needed to catch up with where we are, and to move ahead on needs which are clearly foreseeable in the near distance or which, come what may, seem likely to endureÄas for instance the need for open space in cities.

If we aren't dealing intelligently and energetically with the problems which are upon us now, or threaten like an impending avalanche, little fruitful purpose is served time and money to long-range prognoses which are bound d to wide of the mark as to be useless and may even be harmful.

The planner who produces a working comprehensive plan for now and the short-range future has done a highly commendable job. Of course it will fade off at the edges five or six years ahead--and it should. As we ature our our kno dge and into the future we foresee so imperfect we should be quick to adjust our plans to new attitudes and values, new techniques, and new wisdom. We must advance planning to the point where we find out faster when we are planning for the wrong thing As it is, we have a tendency to hold to past solutions (which may or may not have been adequate for the problems of their time). Much of our planning applies the technological and economic and social patterns of yesterday to today's problems in l c hope of building a better tomorrow. Many of our planning controlszoning and subdivision regulation and tax structureÄare on the same basis. law, a great deal of planning clings to the past, instead of looking to the future.

We can sure that the future which we build will be vastly different from the past and the present. Planning's job should be 'to make desirable transitions as efficient, economical, painless, and free I from mistakes as possible t to impede or/delay needed change or ensure that revered but obsol te standards and principles are used in meeting new problems to whic applicable.

Planning must integrate with government (including politics) more than it has in the past. It must be far more effective as an intelligence function at the right hand of executives, elected officials, and candidates, keeping close track of what is going on and what seems to be ahead and appraising probable results of various courses of action and inaction. The growing importance of the intelligence function cannot be overstressed. In our times of accelerating change and increasing complexity, we must know what the score is now to plan effectively for today and tomorrow.

And there must be planning for more than mere physical development. The techniques of planning--fact-finding, analysis, weighing of Alternatives, selection of goals--must be applied also to the evolution of suitable forms of government, suitable functions for government, and suitable areas for government. This job will require abilities beyond the present crop of urban planners. A merging effort with social and political scientists is long overdue. Weak as all three disciplines are in their present stage of development, they will achieve more and achieve it faster if they work together.

At this point, let us look at some errors of the past, and then look ahead to a few city-shaping elements which may be obvious when we look back on them in the years ahead, but which are now (so far as most of our planning is concerned) apparently unexpected.

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"Population prediction"

It is currently popular to refer to U.S. population growth since World War II as an explosion. In fact, however, there have been only four decades since 1564 (when the Spaniards established the first settlement in our country) during which population failed to grow at a more rapid r rate than from 1950 to 1960. We had an "explosion" only in terms of what our demographers had predicted on the basis of 1930-40 expe- rience. The theory exploded, not the population.

In 1938, the National Resources Planning Board issued a report which stated as one of its conclusions: "The transition from an increasing to a stationary or decreasing population may on the whole be beneficial to the life of the Nation. The gradual decrease in the proportion of children raises problems of major national interest. We sound a warning against the hasty projection of past trends into the future without taking into account new conditions."

Taking anticipated new conditions into account, the report states an optimistic view: "Even on the minimum assumption described above, the population of the United States in 1980 would be equal to that of today."

About the same time, Stuart Chase wrote a worried article about the empty schools and unemployed teachers to be expected in the late forties.

Came then the war, a revolution in the economy, and a flood of ; births. But the conditioning of the thirties continued to outweigh current facts at the Bureau of the Census, which in 1947 (when we were ~ outrunning the diaper supply) issued new population estimates. The highest estimates in the series indicated that in 1975 it was possible, but highly unlikely, that we would reach a figure of 185 million. (This total was passed early in 1962.)

"The outlook after 1950 is for a continuation of the long-term decline in population growth, both in absolute numbers and rate," says I Forecasts of the Population of the United States, 1945-1975. "More- l Over there is a strong possibility that within a few decades the population will reach its maximum size and will begin to decrease I unless heavy immigration is resumed."

The report treats implications of diminishing population growth in ~ considerable detail. "The foregoing effects of demographic changes on national life are fairly certain and simple..." It stresses quality of I population as opposed to mere numbers, and points out that although the U.S. had already passed the economic optimum population, even the larger population expected in 1975 (162 million) might be expected to have a higher level of living than in 1947. Although the study does not advocate a large increase in numbers, it suggests that such a goal could be attained: there is no immediate prospect that the United States will adopt a national program designed to maintain or increase the birth rate, and hence to affect the future growth of the population, it should be remembered that such programs are already in effect in Canada and several European countries."

Bear in mind that this report was prepared when the handwriting was bold and clear on the wall. Private enterprise, through unremitting efforts of our returning heroes, maintained and increased the birth rate without federal intervention.

The significant fact is that our most eminent demographers, distracted by squalls of mounting numbers of grandchildren, continued too long to revere the mistake that had been made in the thirties.

Are we doing better now? Not much. We do not know how to estimate current population with reasonable accuracy (witness frequent embarrassment when census counts become available for comparison with estimates). And we have not demonstrated ability to predict future population with reasonable accuracy, even for relatively short periods or for large areas.

On local forecasts, more difficult than national, regional, or state prognostications, accuracy is generally very bad, particularly when the time period is extended. A rough analysis of predictions by a random sdection of estimators (many of them highly qualified) indicates an average error far above 50 per cent in 20 years in amount of change predicted, without much choice in direction of error. Some of the estimates are high, some are low. The ones closest to actual performance were based either on no ascertainableformal method or on methods applied in the same study to other areas which turned out wide of the mark.

"Elements in population forecasts"

Deaths. Of the three principal elements in population forecastsÄ births, deaths, and migrationÄwe have been reasonably competent only in handling deaths. In areas where population mobility is minor, or of a

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nature that does not upset age distribution, we can predict with reasonable certainty how many deaths there are likely to be from - natural causes and accidentsÄprovided, of course, that disaster does not upset the computations.

Births. On births, we have certainly not distinguished ourselves on accuracy of predictions, even at the national level.

Demographers usually fail to give appropriate weight to the effects of social, economic, and political stimulations and inhibitions on the birth rate. It is not enough to know how many women of childbearing age will be in the population. The crucial question is: How many children will be born? Neither demographers nor any other specialists - are in a very good position to say. The equation has too many unknowns for even approximate solution.

Technological advances in contraceptives make social attitudes and values a prime determinant in number of births in this country.

During the mild recession in 1958, the marriage rate dropped to the lowest point since 1932, when there was a real depression. It picked up again rapidly as the economy moved forward in 1959. Does this mean that the attitude toward marriage and childbearing is increasingly sensitive to economic conditions? If so, we must temper our estimates on births in the years ahead by estimates as to the number and severity of economic slumps. How many will there be? How long will they last?

Longer education for growing proportions of the young population seems inevitable. Job opportunities for the unskilled and poorly edu cated are diminishing. Social attitudes favor increased education. Will added time in school raise the median age for marriage? Will raising the median age decrease births? Will a rise in the educational level encourage larger or smaller families?

In the face of prolonged international uncertainty--will young parents decide to have more or fewer children?

There is a very real explosion of world population and growing strain on world resources. If present trends continue, widespread catastrophe is only a couple of generations away. Campaigns for limitation of population growth are mounting. To what extent, and how soon, are they likely to be effective in the U.S.? An educated population should not have to begin to starve before it sees the point, and an enlightened government must do what it can to put on the brakes. All of these things, and more, influence individual decisions which V determine the number of births. We can compute how many children a

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population with given age-sex distribution could be expected to have on the basis of past experience and current trends, but this is a futile exercise. The one thing that past experience should have taught us is that in the future, the same factors, in the same balance, will not be present to affect birth rates in the same way.

Migration. Natural increase, the balance of births over deaths, is obviously not easy to predict with accuracy even if the population involved stays in the area for which predictions are being made. To complicate matters, population does not stay in the same place. At the state level, a recent Bureau of the Census report, Preliminary Estimates of the Components of Population Change, by States: 1950 to 1960, indicates: "Between 1950 and 1960, all States had an excess of births over deaths, but many States (27) and the District of Columbia lost population through net out-migration.... There was relatively little variation from State to State in decennial rate of natural increase.... The range of net migration was much greater--from a net outmigration of 22.7% of 1950 population for Arkansas to a net inmigration of 58.3% for Florida."

When the area involved drops to the metropolitan level, the range in the 1950's is much greater, from 266 per cent migration gain to 18 per cent migration loss among the 211 metropolitan areas reported by the Bureau. The migration pattern in many of these metropolitan areas changed radically from the forties to the fifties. In some cases migration gains in the fifties more than doubled those in the forties, in others the gains were halved, and in a number of instances migration gains in the forties changed to migration losses in the fifties and vice versa.

Below the metropolitan level, the range in migration shifts increases again, and the inconsistency in pattern from decade to decade becomes even more pronounced.

Unless the causes of migration into and out of areas are clearly understood (including the effect or lack of effect of government efforts to shift the "natural" balance of economic opportunity), it is certainly unlikely that we can produce meaningful forecasts even if we improve our techniques for predicting natural increase.

What we can do, and must do to the extent that knowledge about population is important inshort-range planning, is to improve our techniques for keeping abreast of the current situation. If we know what happened in our cities last year and this year, and where it happened and why it happened, we will know a great deal more about what we ould be doing about pre ent and short-range future problems. Until

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we can deal more effectively with these matters, perhaps we do not need to be unduly alarmed about our inability to predict into the long range future with greater precision.

Then there is the question of planning objectives. To what extent may it be assumed that long-range goals set under present conditions will be appropriate to future physical technology operating in a changed set of social attitudes? Again, an examination of past performance is instructive.

"Planning objectives we might-have had"

Had there been organized planning in 1905, what kind of cities would we have planned for? Looking ahead, we would have seen rapid population growth, with a substantial part of it on farms. From 1890 to 1900, five persons were added to the rural population for each eight added to urban areas, and in that era more than a third of the labor l force was in agriculture.

For cities, we would have projected high population densities with minimum walking distances to work and to shopping facilities. This would have meant a close intermingling of residences, industries, and stores in the core city. The trolley lines would have foreshadowed shoe string development out into the country. The automobile would have been considered a rich man's toy which frightened horses and was unlikely to amount to anything entirely too complicated and expensive ever to be common.

As lovers of beauty in theory, we would have planned showpiece boulevards and parksÄwell away from the most densely populated areas. These would have been for decorative rather than recreational purposes. In those days, play was considered so frivolous as to be wellnigh sinful, and everybody (except the rich) was expected to be constructively occupied about 72 hours a week. It had not been discovered that the pedestrian powers of children were limited to a quarter of a mile, nor that schools required substantial acreage.

On the basis of our knowledge, attitudes, and values in 1905, it is fairly obvious that we were poorly equipped to plan for what was ahead of us. If a 20-year master plan had been developed in 1905 and "appropriately implemented"Äand if we had not been alert to the fast breaking need for radical changeÄwe would probably have developed a worse mess than actually came about without planning.

PLANNING AHEAD/ 1 1

In 1935, our planning objectives would have been conditioned by the assurance that we were planning ahead for a mature economy in which population was approaching its peak. We would have given due consideration to a high proportion of old people, a lower proportion of children. Many of our cities were in the process of replacing obsolete installations or were getting ready to provide certain improvements for the first time. As planners, we would have been concerned about building to appropriate scaleÄavoiding overextension of municipal facilities and utilities even though WPA and other federal funds might tempt us.

In 1935, we were becoming aware of the error of our past ways. Jamming people into cities produced unhealthy concentrationsÄthe logical outgrowth of what we would have planned for in 1905. Newly awakened social conscience introduced new facets into planning. There I was a striving to get people out into the sunny suburbs and beyond to I greenbelt towns, out to subsistence farms where they could piece out small incomes. There was a feeling that new lots should be at least large enough to permit kitchen gardens (which may in part account for the magical 6,000 square feet as a minimum lot size).

During that same period, consternation reigned because we had permitted commercial and industrial and residential uses to mix (a solution which was both practical and accepted in earlier times). Zoning devoted itself to protecting residential areas from new commer- cial and industrial intrusions, but we did not have courage enough to keep new residences out of commercial and industrial districts.

Most of the mistakes we would have planned for in 1935 happened. We laid the ideological foundation for urban sprawl and we got urban sprawl. We developed fixations concerning large lots which have added immeasurably to the costs of providing urban facilities and services and augmented the spread. Certainly we did not overbuild urban facilities and utilities, did not provide too many schools or train too many school teachers, did not lay out highways on too expansive a scale, did not go overboard on providing parks or parking space.

In these examples, we see a great deal of evidence against planning too rigidly too far ahead. And we see--or should see--that we need to be far more alert to emerging change and to the need for making corresponding changes in our plans. In the years ahead, the changes are coming faster, and are likely to have a far more massive impact.

The future future not be a straight-line projection of the past. It will follow interesting and unexpected curves. Planners are unlikely to get

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ahead of it. The least they can do is to turn as closely behind it as possible. Otherwise they will be carried into the ditch by their own momentumÄand being planners, will call for the world to fallow.

Our past mistakes did little damage, fortunately, since they were made while planning was having little effect on cities. In balance, planning has probably done more good than harm, but there is nothing in the scale or quality of the results to encourage complacency.

In the future, planning may be more effective, which is excellent reason for being more careful how we go about it. By "careful" I do not mean conservative or timid or unimaginative. I mean that within limitations which we should recognize (and have not, generally) we should examine a broader range of objectives and means for reaching them, and should be more alert to changes affecting both objectives and means.

One of our principal mistakes in the past has been that we have been insensitive to potential effects of technology developing around us both in terms of what it is doing and in terms of what it makes possible. Looking to the future, let us consider elements already here or on the way which might well change the shape and physical, social, and economic organization of cities.

"Technology which may shape things to come"

(In this section, which originally appeared in 1962, the author wrote at some length on possible future technologies. Included were discussions of windowless buildings, increased urban sprawl, modular housing, mass transportation, and automation in manufacturing. While most of the author's speculations and predictions have come to pass, some of the discussion is now out of date. The following includes those parts of the original article that are still current.--Ed. )

In spite of generous use of jargon and numerology as a substitute for ideas, there has been some advance in social and economic technology, although our ability to work with our natural environment far outstrips our ability to work with our fellows.

In economics, we are learning to measure and understand and control somewhat better than in the past. In law, we are slowly improving old tools and devising new ones. In governmental finance, the obsolescence, inadequacies, and inequities of our revenue collection and distribution methods become painfully apparent. Failure to produce or

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allocate governmental income in the right amounts at the right levels s strong and damaging side effects on the character and quality of urban development. This is forcing some reconsideration.

In the field of taxation, responsible voices are raised against forms of real estate taxes which encourage decay and penalize sound development, which result in misuse of planning controls to inhibit good lowcost housing, and which otherwise contradict common sense.

Legal advances, with accessory administrative improvements, are coming slowly: better public control of land use and timing of developmeet; better devices for acquiring land for public purposes (with excess condemnation powers to protect public interest in public improvements and improved means for clearance and redevelopment of residential, commercial, and industrial slums.

There must be better ways to assure that land developers are neither subsidized by the public or unduly penalized. Present law and administration errs in both directions on occasion. Certainly it is not good sense to force developers to adopt obsolescent patterns of development simply because planners don't know what they are after or what they should be after.

On zoning, reform is long overdue. Developed in times even more primitive than these, New York City zoning was a magnificent first step. After that first step, zoning sat down among its withering laurels. Thousands of cities produced handmade facsimiles of the New York ordinance, discovered its shortcoming and did nothing about them.

A model state zoning enabling act developed by the U.S. Departments of Commerce in the mid-twenties drew heavily on the New York prototype, was adopted verbatim (including some very obscure language) by most states, and still stands as the foundation for zoning in many cities. Generally speaking, zoning is entirely too close to where it started.

Zoning was one answer to the problem of frictions between land uses. As a crude approach, segregation of uses with incompatible characteristics into different districts was better than nothing. Perhaps at the time it was the only practical solution. Now we should be able to do better. As an obvious alternative to the isolation ward approach, we might try curing the disease. Where we can remedy the elements which cause incompatibility, the walls can come down.

We have taken some steps in this direction with performance standards for industry. We should go on to develop performance standards for commercial and residential uses. What is a yard? What do

14/CITY PLANNING PRINCIPLES

we expect it to do? If we know, we can say that if the things a yard is expected to do are done otherwise, the yard is not required, and if the things a yard is expected to do are not done otherwise, the yard must be shaped and designed to do them.

Why is an industrial plant or a store offensive in a residential area? If we know, and can control the offensive characteristics, there should be no objection to permitting plants and stores in residential areas subject to such controls.

Given sound taxation policies, zoning or land-use control with the same general objectives should be closely tied to taxation. The privilege to use for more profitable purposes should have a price lag. This would ut down substantially on overzoning for commerce and industry to create speculative opportunity. It would also be helpful in timing land development of all kinds.

The board of adjustment, required to be a highly qualified body in the New York prototype, has generally failed to apply the "discretion of experts" when it is not made up of experts, as is usually the case. Entirely too often, existing boards are bodies of amateur arbiters dispensing favors according to political pressure, compassion, or the amount of noise made by those applying for "relief." Quite generally such boards operate with only the vaguest knowledge of, and less regard for, the limitations on their powers and the procedural require- meets governing their exercise.

Whether there is general reform in zoning or not, the board of adjustment hole should be plugged. In operation or proposed are several remedial moves: trained and paid zoning examiners; paid and qualified boards set up on a statewide or regional basis; and special courts.

This hasty discussion of what may lie ahead in physical and social technology suggests a number of things. The repetition of old planning incantations is even less likely to produce miracles in the future than in the past. The range of potential means and ends is increasing. The vast diversity of things which may happen, and ways in which they may happen is both a threat and a promise.

Even individually, the elements discussed point in many directions. Collectively, they do not balance out to any neat averaging of forces moving cities one way or another. The small sample package assembled here may not include some, or any, of the major determinants which will in fact shape the future urban scene, but should serve to demon-

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strate the explosive potentials if all the real elements are thrown together.

Harnessed to clear objectives and driven with a steady hand, there are tremendous powers for human benefit. Left free to pursue their own courses, exploited for maximum private gain regardless at of impact,or handled by public agencies on a hit-or-miss basis, the forces released by technology will boil and fume to monstrous urban mess.

I emphasize a message which should be clear without emphasis top Increasingly, in the years ahead, the challenge to planning will be "for I what" rather than "how." The wise selection of major goals is of primary importance. Both potential goals and means for reaching them multiply apace, but without selecting ends, the application of means is aimless.

Have we come full circle at this point? I began by saying that in large measure the planner in the years ahead will not know what he is planning for. I am now saying that the effectiveness of planning will depend on wise selection of major goals. Both of these statements are true, and the contradiction states the basic problem facing planners. Stating the problem helps. Is there a solution? Does planning have a chance to survive, or should planners seek other employment?

I think planning will survive and prosper, but it may have to change of its ways. First, it will have to sort out what it can and cannot do, and second it will have to go about its job a Iittle differently. the should abandon the detailed Master Plan for the Year 2000 (or for eternity) in favor of something useful. There remain a few permanent general objectives which planning should defend. For example, cities must have land, water, and air.

On air, the problem is Pollution and one of the eternal objectives of planning should be to hold air pollution to a minimum.

On water, the problem is quantity and quality. How much water / A, will be needed? Mark this down privately as unknown, prepare plausible projections, multiply by a fat safety factor, and then operate I consistently to conserve and protect plenty of watershed and plenty of water supply, and to prevent or correct pollution of: surface water and water in the ground.

On land, the problem in long-range terms can probably be stated only in such general language as "suitable division between public and lands." The purpose is to provide an ample and convenient framework for public and private uses without knowing in detail what those uses will be. It will be hard for planners to stop at this--we will .

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want to compute population densities and traffic flow and areas for residential, commercial, and industrial uses, and so on. No. Not now. This is one of the really long-range things. We are groping here for a framework within which many kinds and varieties of public and private uses, balanced out in detailed short-range plans, can shift and change - and mix and separate through the centuries. And we should start with public land.

On this, we should move consistently toward an extensive and, where possible, continuous network of public land adapted to multiple purposesÄopen space, recreation, protection of watersheds and water supply, parks, schools, public and quasi-public buildings, transportation in whatever form it may take, and things as yet unknown.1 The public land net is the permanent objective the historic goal. It can be achieved by pursuit of a series of short-range ends (which in relation to it become means). As present and future short-range public requirements unfold in a succession of plans adapted to their particular time. lands contribut- & ing to the net should be acquired and held. Basic policy should add land to the net by every possible device.

Except for things like these, the blindfolded broad jump into , everything should cease. Come back out of the millenium, and let's go to work.

Where does planning belong in government in the years ahead? There has been an inclination on the part of some planners to believe that there are four divisions of government: planning, legislative, executive, and judicial. The planning branch defines what is good for everybody. The legislative body passes laws to make these things possible and to keep anybody from doing anything which is bad for him or anybody. The executive body does all the routine work, and the judicial body decides that whatever the planners want done is legal. There is a stark simplicity about this which is very attractive.

But in the kind of government environment in which we find ourselves, and with the problems we face, planning is going to have to become a workhorse rather than Queen of the May. Planning should be e intelligence arm of the executive body, a function conducted with a trained staff reporting to the executive. It should keep a constant finger on the urban pulse, collecting, analyzing, and reporting currently vital information about what is happening to the city and its parts. It should keep abreast of planning technology--the way other cities are meeting their problems.

1. See "TheOpen Space Net," 161.

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The planning department should be responsible for the preparation maintenance of the comprehensive plan. The elements of this plan each be time-scaled in accordance with usable foresight.

I do not see the comprehensive plan as a beautifully printed compendium, with 47 colored illustrations, a title including the word "Tomorrow," and a letter signed by the mayor, including the phrase "This is your plan." Public relations is important, of course, and there should be a great deal of public reporting, but I sometimes feel that we 9-spend too much time preparing professional-looking publicity releases and splendid exhibits and not enough time on more basic parts of our jobs. If planning is well done and consistently done, it will be news, and fitted word of it will get around in the papers and on TV. This kind of reporting, dripping constantly, wears away more stones.

I see the comprehensive plan as a series of elements always in the reprocess of being fitted together, and usually being changed as new needs ome apparent or new information becomes available or as the city Changes its objectives. In its broader outlines, the plan is a statement that this is what we are trying to do, this is why we are trying to do it, and this is how we propose to do it. Against this statement of policies, measures, and objectives, which should be adopted in principle by the legislative body, the executive branch (including the planning deparment) should measure and fit and schedule programs of the line agencies of the city, and should exercise controls approved by the legislative body to ensure that private actions do not upset the applecart.

This is not to say that plans should be changed on the basis of whimsey. Shorn of extra language, a statement of the National Re sources Board in 1934 expresses my feelings well: "Stubborn adherenceto an outworn plan . . . is a mark of stupidity. Prudence dictates that . reasonable stability should not be endangered by capricious or arbitrary shift of plans . . . but insists that policies must be promptly modified as ; emerging trends and new situations necessitate recasting."

The challenge ahead of us (and in fact behind us) is twofold: We must learn to be alert to the implications of the unexpected obvious before it happens, or when it happens, or at worst not too long after it happens. And we must learn to fit applied logic (whether it be called planning or by some other name) into the workings of government, so governments--and the people to whom governments belong-- make the most of change instead of being overwhelmed by it.