May 25, 1965
PAGE 11595
LAUNCHING OF THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF URBAN REGIONALISM
The SPEAKER. Under previous order of the House, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. VANIK] is recognized for minutes.
Mr. VANIK. Mr. Speaker, it is with a great deal of pride that I call to the attention of this body the successful launching of the Kent State University Center for the Study of Urban Regionalism on May 21 and 22, 1965.
Under the leadership of Kent State University's president, Dr. Robert I. White, leaders in Government, education, and metropolitan planning gathered to learn and to teach about the problems of urbanization in the northeastern Ohio area and the Nation.
One of the highlights of the conference was an address delivered by the Housing and Home Finance Agency Administrator, Dr. Robert C. Weaver. Dr. Weaver emphasized the importance of local cooperation with State planning programs. He was highly praiseworthy of Kent State for opening its center on regional planning as the means to a brighter future for orderly development of northeastern Ohio.
Dr. Weaver strongly emphasized the importance of injecting plans to develop and maintain existing natural beauty as an integral part of orderly regional development. President and Mrs. Johnson's beautification program will undoubtedly find great support in this program.
The presence and contributions of the Senator from Maine, EDMUND MUSKIE, were immense. He spoke eloquently of the need for careful utilization of existing resources in an urban region. He spoke strongly of the need for massive water and air pollution control and abatement programs for the northeastern Ohio area and others throughout the Nation. Senator MUSKIE pointed out that if techniques and controls are not developed to reuse water now being polluted and wasted that our use of water by 1970 would far exceed the available supply.
Senator MUSKIE and Dr. Weaver proved once again that they are true champions for the development of the Great Society concept of rendering life of the urban dweller as pleasant and ordered as is humanly possible.
Tom Vail, editor-publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, spoke in like terms of the needs and desires, aspirations and hopes of an urban region such as ours in northeastern Ohio. His eloquence and substance added further to this auspicious launching of the Kent State University Center for Urban Regionalism.
The foresight and imagination which Kent State University's president, Dr. Robert I. White, and his hard-working staff have invested in this project from its inception can mean nothing but success from both the standpoint of its academic and practical or operational success. The people of northeastern Ohio will stand to benefit greatly from the commitment of a great university to the problems of our great urban region of northeastern Ohio.
I wish to include at this point in the RECORD the important remarks of Senator EDMUND MUSKIE and Dr. Robert C. Weaver which were delivered at the Kent State University Conference on Urban Regionalism which signaled the opening of this historic endeavor:
THE URBAN CRISIS AND THE QUEST FOR THE GREAT SOCIETY
(Address by Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE before the Conference on Urban Regionalism, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, May 22, 1965)
I am glad to have this opportunity to speak to this conference and to join in commemorating the formal establishment of Kent State's new center for urban regionalism.
The crisis created by the emergence of an urban American constitutes the most important single problem in the field of intergovernmental relations today. It contains the greatest threat to our traditional Federal-State-local relations. Yet, it provides us with the best opportunity to implement President Johnson's ideal of a "creative federalism."
Historians tell us that the old frontier was closed by 1890. But 20th century developments tell us we have a new metropolitan frontier, and the quest for the Great Society is, in large measure, a search for the good life on this frontier.
Let us look at the nature of the metropolitan frontier in human terms. About 2,600 years ago, the prophet, Isaiah, capsuled the problem with this warning:
"Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no more room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land."
As we approach the end of the 20th century, Isaiah's prophetic warning must be our challenge.
Our sprawling urban areas can be made stimulating homes for the human spirit. They can provide the environment for the good life. But unless we devote more of our creative energies to solving our galloping urban problems of housing, education, transportation, pollution, recreation, indifference, and others, our cities can choke human growth and entomb the human spirit.
At the heart of our urban dilemma is the phenomenal population growth.
Its impact on housing alone staggers the imagination. In New York, for example, with its massive housing program, 1.25 million residents live in substandard homes. There are 600,000 New Yorkers who are eligible for, but cannot get into public housing.
Since 1950, about 800,000 middle-income residents have vacated New York for the suburbs. This, despite the evidence that many would prefer to stay if apartments were larger and less expensive, if schools were better, if streets and parks were safer, and if transportation were less cramped and painful.
Air and water pollution are problems which I have come to know in great detail. They are a threat to our health, to our prosperity, and to our civilization itself; and they are most pronounced in metropolitan America.
We know that smog can be a killer, but do we also realize that air pollution causes $11 billion in property damage a year, and that long-term low- to medium-level air pollution contributes to and aggravates a host of crippling diseases?
Water pollution is an even more severe problem. Within just 15 years, our demands for water will outrun our supply by at least 85 billion gallons a day. By the year 2000, the daily demand is expected to be 350 billion gallons greater than the supply. This means that we must accelerate our efforts to clean up fouled water and to reuse it, not only for swimming, for fishing, for drinking, but for industry as well.
Statistics are one way of describing the urban dilemma, but behind every decision and program to improve our metropolitan areas must be concern for people, for children playing on a dirty, sunless sidewalk, for families living in crowded flats; for the office girl walking home at nights; for the student seeking broader educational opportunities; for the businessman driving his car over snarled highways or riding a commuter train, for boys looking for a lot big enough to play baseball, or for a clean pond to swim in; for citizens looking for leadership; and for many others.
There was a Maine lobsterman who was asked if he was afraid of the atomic bomb. "The only thing I'm afraid of," he said, "is people, and there ain't any around where I work."
People are the problem, and also the reason for our concern and the purpose of our efforts. These problems must be our own, because most of us live in urban regions, and many more of us will in the years to come.
With this greater urban concentration will come a greater dispersion of this population over a wider and wider area. During the decade of the fifties, regions classified as urban by the Bureau of the Census increased from 12,000 to 25,000 square miles in area and almost one-fifth of that area was accounted for by your own northeastern Ohio urban complex. By 1980 your region will experience a 26-percent population expansion and most of the increase will occur in the outer fringe suburbs.
In 1960, there were 212 regions in the United States classified as standard metropolitan statistical areas. Two-thirds of our citizens lived in these areas, and were served by 18,442 local governments.
After analyzing this national trend, one authority recently predicted that "by the end of the century, the United States will possess at least five supermetropolises which will have the general complexity and geographical extent of the present-day metropolitan area of New York."
The dimensions of this future growth stagger the imagination. To you of this area, however, it must appear only as a national projection of your own experience of the past decade and a half. For northeastern Ohio, with its five standard metropolitan statistical areas and its aggregate population of more than 3¾ million, is, in fact, in the process of joining one of these five supermetropolises.
I do not have to burden this audience with a long explanation of all the dimensions of this urban crisis.
You are aware of the problems of numerous overlapping and competing jurisdictions of local government. The average number of independent units of government per metropolitan area is 87. There are 1,060 in the Chicago area, and 1,400 in the Greater New York region.
You are aware of the disparities between the costs and the benefits of governmental services among local governments in urban areas.
You are aware of the imperfect performance of such major governmental functions as urban transportation, water supply, sewage disposal, air pollution control, and so on, due to the spread of population beyond the jurisdiction of individual governmental units.
You are aware of restrictive State constitutional provisions that inhibit the easy adaptation of local government to meet present and prospective needs.
And I am sure you are aware of the lack of effective coordination among the many Federal programs that directly affect urban areas.
Yet, awareness is not enough. Central to all these problems is the fact that the metropolitan area has become, in effect, a new kind of community. But it is a community whose members have little or no "feeling of belonging." Wolf von Eckhardt has warned that comprehensive regional planning is useless if it remains a "theoretical exercise confined to study groups, commissions and boards with insufficient political and popular support to make it effective." Unless we can generate a genuine sense of regional loyalty in terms of joint resolve, common effort and shared resources, the pressures to make our urban areas wards of the Federal Government may well become irresistible.
The traditional concept of intergovernmental relations has two dimensions. One presupposes three levels of government, Federal, State and local, with separate powers and personnel and with independent constituencies and decision making processes.
The second stipulates that many governmental activities are shaped by all levels of government and involve each in significant and continuing responsibilities.
Most politicians and many academicians tend to accept one or the other of these views. Yet the record reveals that both are accurate descriptions of the remarkable 176-year history of American federalism.
The urban crisis challenges us to create effective metropolitan planning agencies without divorcing them from the meaningful political bases which have been the foundations of American federalism.
The genius of the American system of government has been that it has enabled us to preserve freedom and, at the same time, deal effectively with our problems.
We have done so in the framework of the Federal system which was established 176 years ago.
The metropolitan area is a problem which does not fit into that framework. We must find a way to govern it which, again, will preserve freedom and, at the same time, deal effectively with the problem.
Some students of our society believe the growth of supercities will erase the traditional distinctions among city-county-State and Federal responsibilities.
It seems to me important to maintain these distinctions while expanding areas of intergovernmental cooperation.
The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, concluded from a study of metropolitan areas that a single areawide government whose boundaries are coterminous with the scope of a particular service is neither likely nor necessarily appropriate. This Commission further stated:
"In many situations, it appears more likely that ad hoc, or function by function, arrangements among existing local units will assure that these functions will be performed more efficiently on an areawide basis. Such arrangements will require allocating the costs of services among the independent units on a fair and equitable basis."
I spoke earlier of America's old and new frontiers. Timely cooperation and tough minded individualism were the keys to survival on the 19th century's Western frontier. They have equal relevance to meeting the dangers threatening us on the 20th century's metropolitan frontier. The experience of your area, in my opinion, indicates that cooperation as well as independence, can be a dynamic attitude as well as a method of procedure. The balancing of local demands for autonomy against the regional need for coordination and planning is always difficult to achieve, but you are on the right road.
You have found the middle road between the extremes of "standpatism" and a federated metropolitan government by the establishment of regional planning commissions in four of your five standard metropolitan statistical areas.
You have blended the political know-how of elected local officials with the professionalism of the planners and the engineers in the design of these commissions.
And, you here, by creating this new center for urban regionalism and by launching a regional advisory council, will, I am sure, balance the interests of each of these five urban areas with the interests of the northeastern area as a whole.
The combined activities of the regional planning commissions, your center, and its advisory council incorporate the essential elements of a dynamic, voluntary approach to solving your regional problems. These public and private agencies have assumed the responsibility for research, long- and short-range metropolitan planning, technical advice and assistance, and the necessary political leadership. They will strengthen immeasurably the cooperative ideal in this metropolitan area. But they will also provide a broader opportunity for Ohio's traditional individualism to express itself.
The State government also bears a responsibility for strengthening the basis of regional cooperation. As a matter of fact, the ultimate responsibility for easing and resolving these problems rests primarily with this level of government. Nearly a decade ago the Council of State Governments stated the following in a report to the Governors' Conference, of which I was then a member:
"Although the roles of local governments and the National Government are indispensable, the States are the key to solving the complex difficulties that make up the general metropolitan problem. To achieve adequate results the State governments, the legislative and the executive branches, and the people need to exert positive, comprehensive and sustained leadership in solving the problem."
States have tended to react to the urban crisis in a haphazard fashion. Few have led. Some, by continued inactivity, have been obstacles to corrective action. The fiscal, jurisdictional research and planning needs of large urban centers have commonly been ignored or when treated, handled on a piecemeal basis. The advisory commission on intergovernmental relations reports that metropolitan areas receive less State aid annually than non-metropolitan areas -- an average of $9 per capita less.
Such neglect has led to a more direct, and often more responsive, Federal-local collaboration. This alarmed the defenders of States rights more than it has encouraged the proponents of States responsibilities.
Ohio's response is better than that of many other States. Your legislature has enacted many permissive measures, including provisions for interlocal agreements, voluntary transfer functions, and the coordination of States water resources. These constitute an arsenal of weapons for use by local units of government in their attack on some of the metropolitan area problems. The recently created State legislative committees on urban affairs, and their interest in the proposed strengthening of your laws on municipal incorporation and annexation, are other encouraging developments. But these are only beginnings.
All State governments should establish a special unit to give continuing attention, review, and assistance to the States urban areas.
Most States need to expand their financial and technical assistance to metropolitan jurisdictions in the fields of urban planning, urban renewal, building code modernization, and local government organization and finance.
Most States should establish a special unit to give continuing attention, review, and assistance to the States urban areas.
Most States need to expand their financial and technical assistance to metropolitan jurisdictions in the fields of urban planning, urban renewal, building code modernization, and local government organization and finance.
Most States should take stronger financial and regulatory action to secure and preserve open land in and around urban centers.
And nearly all States should take legislative or administrative action to resolve those disputes among local units of urban government which cannot be settled at the local level.
The Federal Government must also assume its full share of the urban burden. The national character of many metropolitan questions makes this mandatory. More than 50 Federal programs are now operating in our urban areas and most of them have been enacted since 1950. The future is not likely to reverse this trend. The rapid urban growth, new technologies and fragmented responsibilities for local government in urban areas that I have described are making these Federal programs increasingly interdependent, and their impact on other objectives of the urban community is becoming more pronounced. Authority and effort are needed in Washington -- as well as in the States and metropolitan areas -- to assure that each of these programs contributes not only to its more limited program goal but also to the general goal of orderly urban development.
Three current case studies indicate that Washington is responding to this challenge. First, for more than 2 years the Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations has been examining the questions of Federal-State-local relations, including the vexing problems of our metropolitan areas. Last month we held a week of hearings on a bill introduced this year and which 39 Senators cosponsored. This proposed Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1965 is of paramount importance to you here and to all the other metropolitan regions of the country.
Title 4 of the bill merits your special consideration, since it establishes a national urban assistance policy. It prescribes full consideration of all viewpoints -- national, regional, State and local -- in planning urban development programs and projects. Each Federal administrator, in this framework, would be obliged to coordinate his efforts with those of other Federal agencies. And his plans must be part of -- or consistent with -- local and regional planning objectives.
Another section of this title stipulates that applications for grants and loans under certain urban programs would be reviewed and commented upon -- but not vetoed -- by an areawide planning body composed of elected officials of the general units of local government. This provision is designed to strengthen metropolitan planning and to assist Federal agencies in their evaluation of grant applications. It will not protect the integrity of local and regional planning objectives from subversion by a fragmented and uncoordinated Federal approach to urban development.
A second case study in Federal responses to metropolitan problems is covered in the proposed Water Quality Act of 1965, which I was privileged to introduce in this session. The bill has now passed both Houses of Congress. It increases grants for the construction of municipal sewage treatment works and provides financial assistance to municipalities and other bodies for the separation of combined sewers. Of special concern to metropolitan areas such as yours is the provision that the grants may be increased by 10 percent for projects which are part of a comprehensive regional plan. This incentive approach has already worked well in the “open space program." It will strengthen our attempt to curb water pollution and I am convinced that the device should be extended to other Federal programs.
A third proposal would create a broad instrument for dealing with the urban crisis at both the national and grassroots levels. The Federal Government's reaction to the emergence of a metropolitan America -- like that of the States -- has generally been disjointed, sporadic, and unplanned. Most of the efforts to date relate to specific program or to local planning.
For this reason, I supported and worked for President Kennedy's proposal for the establishment of a Department of Urban Affairs in 1961 and subsequent years. I am also cosponsoring President Johnson's proposal to establish a Department of Housing and Urban Development.
This legislation is needed to improve the administration and coordination of the principal Federal program which provide assistance for housing and the development of the Nation's urban communities.
It will help promote interstate, regional, and metropolitan collaboration.
It will provide better technical assistance and information, including a clearinghouse service, to these units of State and local government.
I believe this department is a necessary instrument in our struggle to achieve a more measured metropolitan development.
No one of these proposals for Federal action will alone solve the urban crisis. But when combined, they offer a meaningful answer to the task President Johnson set before us in his State of the Union message when he charged us "to break the old patterns, to begin to think, work, and plan for development of entire metropolitan areas."
There are many who deem these measures drastic or undesirable. May I simply remind them what we have at stake in the urban crisis.
About 70 percent of our population lives in metropolitan areas. According to the latest figures available, 78.6 percent of all the Nation's bank deposits are in metropolitan area banks; 70 percent of the Nation's assessable property lies within the boundaries of metropolitan areas; 76.8 percent of value added by manufacture originates in metropolitan areas. These regions account for 67.2 percent of the country's manufacturing establishments: 73.8 percent of all industrial employees and 78.5 percent of all manufacturing payrolls.
I suggest that the measures we propose do not exceed the problems we face. Each of the 135 million Americans who lives in a metropolis is entitled to a meaningful life in a healthy environment. The potential is there; we must realize it.
Our concern is for preservation of human dignity in a democratic society. I should like to conclude by reading to you the oath taken by citizens of another and earlier democratic society no less concerned with the fate of human dignity in a metropolis.
"We will never bring disgrace to this our city, by any act of dishonesty or cowardice. Nor ever desert our suffering comrades in the ranks; we will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with many.
"We will revere and obey the city's laws and do our best to incite a like respect in those above us who ire prone to annul or set them at naught; we will strive unceasingly to quicken the public's sense of civic duty, thus in all these ways we will transmit this city not only not less, but greater, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us."
So vowed the Athenians long ago. We might well renew that vow as a prelude to renewing our cities.