"Island Park, a pleasant place for a stroll on a weekday, has had its solitude forever ended by
an apartment project on its margin."
oDr!S t 41o e ri e S S Of AlII Scenes like this are becoming more difficult to find in some areas.
01elnnightmareof the North ments, man needs space and finally held in Rome in 1954. In
R d eianlmgmarely prh e beauty, recreation and enjoy- the five years between the two
y paners in any competition for ment. Excessive population dates the world population had in-
terstyofmdesiny Theettiey can erode these things. The creased by more than 130 million.
aterihty of deaign. There they rapid population increase has The planet is being populated at
U stand in a huge clearing with the already created cities so big the rate of 4,000 people per hour,
an wUrban togethern tees pushed back into the dis- that they are beginning to de- 90,000 per day and 34 million per -
tance.as though nature would con- feat their own ends, producing year. Malthus pointed out in 1798
natt discomfort and nervous strain that population grows geomet-
P a w ry l nothisaeorarlnPa and cutting off millions of pe- rically, not arithmetically.
a pleasant place for a stroll on a ple from any real contact or The effect of this may be ob-
t'° erfan } o ace weekoida, orhas ha dposbilitie sense of unity with nature, served in the fact that the popu-
Americans Refuse to Face fo Esoliude: fo'revr nded by: an ;~n ggo ega e
aparmen project on its margin. 50
aparmen prjec onitsmarin. It doesn't take a sociologist or lation of the world in the latter
In the article previously referred psychologist to explain why chil- part of the 17th century was 500
to Professor Platt notet: dren without parks become delin- million, in the 1920's it reached
By DAVID LO E These communities (Madison, qunt or why, in our-mass society, two billion, today it is two and
Evanston, Ann Arbor) are be- so many people find no satisfaction one half billion. That is to say
7F SOME future historian should I Suddenly the problem is not only twee 50.000 and 100,000 pop- in their work nor security in their that it doubled twice over between
be asked: What was the most one of protecting distant preserves, ulation. Without a university, lives. It is usually the most urbane t hand1 920.
remarkable phenomenon in 20th but the neighboring countryside it takes a larger number, 200,- of us who feel the need of potting Und te pre se the
century America? he will un- as well, not only a matter of pro- 000 or 300,000 to support a or folk singing or painting - all compound rate of increase was
doubtedly answer: The disap- viding vacation sites, but also symphony orchestra or a good attempts to get back to the most ne per cnt per year. isn
pearance ,of the countryside. And fields and woods of immediate ac- art gallery. But this is near primitive, the most natural parts one and one-third per year. With
he will go on to explain that even cessability. the limit. Any further increase of our personality, universally falling death rates the
by the 1930's thse urban centers, John Rader Platt, associste pr- begins to cut the people off As the cities grow, as Chicago nrespound rat ill ntbieto
where a greater and greater pro- fessor of physics at the University rom their countryside. nears Milwaukee and o ctroit ap- incras, h angr itisnow beleved
that the danger point of popula-
portion of the growing population of Chicago, writing in the New This is obviously already hap- proaches Toledo their inhabitants
was concentrated, had so extended Republic on this very subject has pening in Ann Arbor. The shopping find that the 20th century Amen- reached in the next 30 or 40 years.
thenmselves that thin last vestiges coime to an interinsting conclusion: cinnters are goiing up and the din- can ideal of TOGETHERNESS 1seah iny th rext 3 orc 40 ears.i
of nature had retreated to a dis- It is no accident that the uni- velopments, and in a very short the worst aloneness of all. And cul- Any projects such as irrigation
tance where most of the populace versity communities on a river time a pleasant hour's saunter in turally, only New Yomk and per- of the deserts, cultivation of the
rarely saw them, or a lake-Madison, Evanston, the country will be impossible. haps San Francisco among our problem but merely postpone-
Should he be asked further: Ann Arbor, in the Midwest- cities can pretend to give any ad- problem, t nel pne-
Why this astonishing develop- appear often on the lists Of BUT SO WHAT? Does it really vantages commensurate with the ments of the inevitable. In recoi-
ment? he will answer that there the most livable places, even matter? It matters a great Physicalndisadvantages of living in nition of this the governments of
was no conscious reasoning behind for people who are not profes- deal them. And what's going to happen a are o -
it, only a combination of an un- sors. The scenery and the sym- Ann Arbor may be seen as a when, as now predicted, by 1975 tively at work in the area of popo-
imaginative use of land and a phony are both within a few miniature of the larger picture of there will be 277 million of us? lation control
booming population. minutes walk, yet the citizens our nation-a victim of spreading OF COURSE the United States
And he will be right, These two have national horizons, blight and approaching overpopu- THE PROBLEM illustrated in does not have the problem
facts-the almost complete lacko lation which will, in time, perhaps such a small but vivid way in that India or Japan does - neither
planning for the new building on 0NE WONDERS how long it has lower our standard of living and Ann Arbor is, of course, not only a Ann Arbor nor New York is likely
the edges of our citiis and an ever- been since those lists were certainly effect the quality of our national one, but a world-wide one. to be faced with the reality of
faster growing population - are drawn up. If a person in search of lives. A few facts will help to put what starvation as is, from time to time.
perhaps the beginning of the most livable places should visit Ann Ar- Julian Huxley, one of the world's is happening here in proper per- Calcutta or Bombay.
serious crisis America has ever bor today what would he have to authorities on population prob- sective In 1949 the United Na- Yet our standard of living is
faced say about the present availability lems, has pointed out that ex- tions began preparation for an the result of so much space, so
of the scenery? cessive population effects not only official international survey of many resources to spend and
They should be of national con- man's material necessities: the subject of human population. waste, that a large reduction in
cern. But they aren't. Senator East towards Detroit the gently Beyond his material require- A conference on the matter was (concluded on cage 15)
Richard Neuberger, one of the rolling hills are beig set with
Senate members of the National houses, and along the highway
Recreation Resources Review Com- there are new motels, new stores,
mission, has said with justified new car lots and the inevitable .
sharpness that such matters, es- drive-ins. Here and there, like is1'
sentially matters of conservation, remnants of an already condemned
lack "glamor" and therefore get race, there is a tand of trees but
little coverage in the press. annually these become rarer and w 1
rarer, while all the evidence points
THIS WORD - conservation - to Ann Arbor's becoming one with
has been traditionally asso- Detroit.
ciated with National Parks, irriga- Southeast beyond Stadium Bou-
tion projects and wild life pre- levard what was recently openrt
serves, but that is only one facet country is now a mass of crowded
of the problem. houses lining streets ironically
Since the Second World War given such names as Runnymede
the urbanization of our popula- and Glastonbury,
tion, combined with a growth in Where there was once meadow, K
the last half century from 90 to children, for lack of yards, play in
170 million people, has made us the stieets. That there are more
a nation of city dwellers, of crowd- and more children is made evident
ed city dwellers at that. A single by one of the largest land users of
metropolitan area may be said to all, Ann Arbor High, a great red
stretch from Washington to Bos- brick factory proclaiming to thel
ton, and the complexes of Chicago passing motorist our soaring birth
and Los Angeles, to name only two rate,
others, yearly become more and
more vast, YET IT IS to the north one must
look in order to view the most
David Lowe, an English recent and saddest desecrations
teaching fellow, reviewed a of all,
book on Thomas Mann in the Standing on the ridge of Geddes
last issue of The Daily Ma a- Avenue near the arboretum one
fieg g maysee the ugly bulk of th Vet Metropolitan areas expand toward each other at alarming rates while rows of houses fill in between.
_ _ _ eran's Hospital, and behind it the The problem is not of protecting distant preserves, but neighboring fields and woods.
Pace Eioht THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE