Excerpt from Design for Business
The twentieth century is the first period of recorded history in which huge masses of the population have come to accept change as natural and desirable. In ages past, men have spent more time preparing for immortality than improving on their surroundings; they have expended more effort erecting magnificent monuments and cathedrals than building the humble structures of daily living. Their immediate environment remained relatively the same from generation unto generation.
But today the old proverb, "Nothing is sure but death and taxes," should read: "Nothing is sure but death, taxes and change." Change is fast making obsolete nearly everything we think and use. Even our cities are obsolescent. They are crazily congested, and their dark, airless cells of masonry and stone offend against the modern realization that health is an asset far greater than wealth.
There is actually no longer any reason for a city. The press and radio have made the printed and spoken word equally available to country dwellers. Television is carrying visual participation in current events to ever-widening circles of rural communities. With the coming of microfilm, the amount of recorded knowledge now stored in the New York Public Library can easily be housed in the library of the smallest village.
All American cities are going through a dynamic period of change. The current decentralization of industry is part of the trend. Before long, blocks of empty stores and millions of dollars in tax delinquencies will plague our larger cities. There is no easy solution to this problem.
And at the same time, across the oceans to east and west of us, gutted walls and piles of twisted steel are grim reminders of the fact that cities are no longer havens of protection in war.
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