Stockholm and beyond : report.

  • United States. Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.
Date:
1972
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Stockholm and beyond : report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/164 (page 13)
    B. Reeommendations—National In preparation for proposal of actions to be taken by ourselves and other nations, individually and collectively, we must examine the American experience with human settlements. The “frontiersman” concept provides a useful vehicle for seeing both the positive and nega- tive aspects of the past and present. It conjures up images of strong, free individuals setting forth to seek a new life on the apparently limitless lands of the frontier. The conquest of natural elements and, where necessary, human ones was viewed as the ultimate challenge to man; of course, on a more practical level it was viewed as the only way to survive, let alone, prosper. While individual freedoms, social mobility, and material abundance for some people did result, so did other facts which cannot be neglected. The “limitless” natural resources, in particular, the land itself, were often despoiled and depleted; many persons were subjected to economic and cultural oppression ; and the qualitative aspects of human existence were often discounted in favor of the quantifiable ones. Regardless of the initial values of the “frontiersman” approach it increasingly became a problem as the resources diminished, the population grew and the industrial age asserted itself. To some extent the cities which have grown up in America, unlike the older cities of Europe, reflect either the organic human scale of the Feudal period nor the grace and beauty of the Renaissance and Empire periods, but rather the model of the industrial machine. Essentially, our cities are like machines: they were built for the productive process and have become more machine-like as the processes were refined. | Feeding this type of development has been a lack of public plan- ning, the prevalence of private land speculation, and the influence of special interests. The lack of public planning of the use of land has led to massive public expenditures that have benefited the few at the cost to the many. The role of special interests as well as the lack of public planning have resulted in the location of businesses and, sub- sequently, larger settlements in areas where the carrying capacity of the air and water have since been seriously taxed. Had the environ- mental impact been anticipated, much damage could have been avoided. Another major phenomenon of the American development process has been the heavy emphasis on economic concerns—a fact which has been made manifest in many of our human settlements. For example, while major attention was directed at the construction of industrial plants all too often inadequate resources were channeled into the construction of decent homes for the workers. Due to the drive for economic efficiency and greater food production, huge agricultural