A Painful Analysis

...His conclusions do not exclude mass transit, but they strongly urge continued planning for the automobile, the truck and street traffic...

...Recognizing that this cycle must be broken simultaneously in a number of places over a long period of time, that it requires a broad frontal attack providing many kinds of economic and social opportunities for participation in the mainstream, Starr suggests an innovative flanking tactic...

...at best it will redistribute them slightly...

...Although things may change, Starr has written a provocative and much needed book for the present...

...And Starr's skepticism is not relieved by his unpleasantly realistic assessment of mass transit costs...

...It is his conclusion, though, which is short range dynamite to the political theorist...

...This is not a scheme for institutionalizing the lives of these youngsters in the sense of isolation and regimentation...

...Rather, his concern is with the choices in urban life, which he argues must be responsibly made with awareness of their implications and price...

...The problem of personal preference versus public utility in America is pointed out most clearly in Starr's treatment of the highways...

...Even if public housing could build the units, and make them beautiful too, it would not solve the problem of integration because the people moving up and out are mostly white, while those moving in are mostly Negro...

...But there is no easy talk of "community" here, since Starr believes it to be a deceptive phrase for a society really geared to individual mobility...

...The Living End: The City and Its Critics is a collection of essays on urban problems that deals with the city on its own complex political terms...

...It honestly recognizes how things are now and seeks ways to get the most out of what there is to work with...

...He is not disturbed by profit or the fact of the automobile...

...A tough-minded tactician, Starr refuses to deal in generalities, inappropriate analogies, or any notion that change can be purchased with good will instead of money...

...Starr knows full well that "the essential municipal financial problem is how to provide the funds to pay organized workers serving clients who are unorganized and underpaid...

...He accepts the notion (considered heretical in certain circles) that membership in the middle class is now the norm, as well as the goal of those who have been excluded from it for reasons beyond their control...

...The Living End is openly addressed to those in public office who, after all the debate has ended, have the responsibility to form and implement public policy...

...Reviewed by EDER ROSS LIPSON Fellow, Institute of Current World Affairs Roger Starr has written the most frustrating kind of book for city liberals and people of innocent good will...

...In short, it is impossible to produce decent housing at rent levels the poor can afford without subsidy...

...So long as the American dream includes not only a single family house outside the center city, but a plot of land around it, mass transit will not do away with cars...

...He wants to try to create "artificial families" for children of the disorganized poor...

...As Starr carefully describes it, with ample reference to precedent and traditional theory, it is an attempt to create surrogate families and go beyond merely caring for physical needs in the manner of current welfare and social services...

...What it takes, he feels, is political guts to find and then defend the use of funds for the subjective realm of esthetics while the poor are so painfully among us...

...Choosing a place to live is an economic decision, not the exercise of an abstract human right, he points out...

...The problems of the economically poor??those who lead organized lives, share social responsibilities, but do not have money, are viewed separately...

...We should examine the kinds of architecture our systems produces and study specific ways to improve it...

...Displaying a generous and explicit appreciation of the progress cities have made in raising social standards, he also details some of the steps taken to achieve these advances, forcing the reader to remember what is really very recent history...

...Starr is exceptionally lucid and candid in explaining how housing programs work, particularly the financial rationale behind governmental participation...

...All the curative measures offered require the ultimate use of public funds, either in the form of direct subsidies or tax incentives...

...To improve them, Starr contends it is pointless to look to the architectural remains of other systems that are unacceptable in America...

...The Living End offers a painful analysis because in any situation of choice there will be losers, and its bluntness will no doubt arouse the "yes buters...

...The battle for beautiful architecture, says Starr, must be fought and won "if people who combine taste and sensibility with the power of choice are to be kept in the city...

...He sees the increasing demands placed on municipal services as a healthy sign of the expanding prosperity...

...More than merely unorganized, the truly indigent are disorganized by the social and economic standards of the rest of the country, and are unable to teach their children the skills and attitudes needed to break the cycle of poverty and despair...

...Not only do we have the resources to accomplish this within existing neighborhoods, Starr believes, but the program might release adults from burdens they cannot cope with anyway and make it possible for them to participate in the community...

...Essentially urban esthetics is a political problem because "good architecture requires generosity of spirit and it is lost in the city not by accident, but from conflict...

...Their existence is a complex social fact that must be solved through the massive use of public money, for in addition to their other burdens, the poor lack the funds to solve their problems or exercise choice in their lives...

...If, in fact, class is more important than color, and integration is the goal, he maintains, priority should be given to the middle-class Negro in the search for decent housing, with an emphasis on Title I programs...

...He is very skeptical about the ability of mass transit??which is most effective when the population is concentrated near its routes??to eliminate automobile congestion...

...Starr defines the city in terms of diversity, and flatly accepts the inevitable conflict arising from that diversity as a necessary part of urban life...

...Invocations to beauty can only be effective when the partisan is willing to pay higher taxes to achieve it, and to defend the use of these additional revenues for the production of beauty rather than, say, for more beds in the hospitals...

...A "yes, but" work that leaves simple assumptions and hopeful convictions sputtering...

...For example, on the illogical and confused issue of urban esthetics he lists four categories in the cityscape distressing to the eye: the vanishing landmark and older buildings of charm, municipal and other government buildings financed with public funds, private commercial buildings built primarily with an eye for maximizing profit, and large scale residential construction??mostly low income and public housing...

...Yet to admit that improving the city architecturally will be expensive is not to say this is unimportant, or worse still, irrelevant to its future...

...Their great problem, according to Starr, is finding decent housing that they can afford, a situation that traps them in decaying ghettos...

...Trucking, which obstructs our streets, is essential to the elaborate distribution system that sustains the economy...