Correspondents' Correspondence
LAND, JANET BARKAS \ TOM HENEGHAN \ THOMAS
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Adapting to Violence Belfast—The train to the capital...
...Gierek, who has been trying to bring the nation more into line with its allies, now finds himself strongly challenged in that effort by the intellectuals and the Church...
...I originally planned a vacation after my two-week working tour throughout England...
...Rumors began multiplying about when and how the leaders would handle this sensitive matter, and in his December address Gierek took a diplomatic tack: He assured his countrymen that they would "enter the new year with an unchanged price list," while admitting that increases would eventually have to come...
...At the border between the two Irelands, the train slows down and soon stops...
...Thomas Land...
...Unfortunately, most local specialists have the wrong training for the job...
...1 accept his offer of a ride back to the hotel...
...The first concerns changes in the Polish Constitution...
...Belfast survives, even though it has become a city of guns...
...But the scaffolds surrounding the edifice remind me of the dozens of bombings that had previously damaged it...
...UDA Chairman Andy Tyrie sends three of his boys to get me...
...When we reach the beginning of the Catholic area, he stops the car...
...After a long period of relative plenty, Polish consumers found meat growing steadily scarcer...
...Somehow my hands move and take notes...
...But whenever I told people 1 am writing a book about violent crime, they suggested doing research in Northern Ireland...
...As familiarity diminishes my fear, violence loses its meaning...
...I remember telling friends in Dublin that I would be safe in Belfast because I am Jewish...
...And not five minutes from the bombed-out and poor section are succulent parks and mountains, another bitter contrast...
...Popular anger finally let loose, resulting in several smashed store windows in the Polish capital...
...And redistribution of resources includes a better distribution of technology—not only within countries but among countries, too...
...1 went to school here," he explains...
...The changes are, in sum, a compromise...
...He blames the IRA...
...a unicef project assisting women and children in slums and shanty towns is operated in a number of African countries...
...Still, I feel he relishes the power the sectarian killings have brought him...
...This prospect, along with the issues of food shortages, energy and the international imbalance of trade and wealth, will be discussed at a United Nations conference to be held in Vancouver, Canada, this May...
...A middle-aged man walks toward me...
...Experts assembled in Holte, Denmark, for a similar meeting agreed, going on to recommend that popular participation in housing development—whether through consultation, negotiation, or even confrontation with public authorities?should be considered an integral part of urban planning...
...She tells me that I have been photographed coming into her home by a government-operated camera across the street...
...So I am traveling to Belfast to sec how Catholics, Protestants and agnostics adapt to living under siege...
...Cardinal Wyszynski, the leader of Poland's powerful Catholic Church, preached against the amendments, too, seeing them as the basis for future legal discrimination against Catholics and other non-Communists...
...Last fall amendments were formulated codifying the leading position of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP), proclaiming Poland's ties to the Soviet Union "unbreakable," and making a citizen's rights dependent on the fulfillment of his duties to the state...
...When I change money in the bank across from the hotel, I point to its wooden facade and ask the teller what happened...
...Perhaps the most disturbing conclusion to emerge so far from these gatherings is that planners know virtually nothing of how the newly arrived poor set about making a living in the city slums...
...Adapting to Violence Belfast—The train to the capital of Northern Ireland leaves Dublin's Connolly Station at 8:30 a.m...
...She blames the UDA...
...Many urged that housing in the new cities be "user-oriented,' so as to reflect the priorities, requirements and resources of local populations rather than Western standards...
...Where are you from...
...My anxiety only lessens when I am finally sitting on the bed in my room...
...Hardly a day goes by without at least one death...
...In 1970 striking workers unseated him...
...The two issues carry important implications...
...A sharp pain darts back and forth through my abdomen...
...Then I quicken my stride...
...Technology is also on the mind of Barney Danson, the Canadian Minister of Urban Affairs who is to host the Vancouver conference...
...In a separate letter, 12 legal experts from the Academy of Sciences expressed their reservations...
...The present rate and magnitude of population growth in the cities is historically unprecedented," he observes...
...this seems proof that my visions of gunfights and bloodshed are pure fantasy...
...Generally, they have received their educations at schools and universities in the industrialized countries, where urban questions are very different...
...We never used to check, but the British Army was sending spies around using phony press cards...
...Taking water supply as an example, they argued for communal wells or water taps in places where individually piped water is too expensive...
...Do you have a press card...
...I just remembered that I left some papers in my office," he shouts nervously...
...Are they searching for armaments...
...And nowhere is the danger greater than in such African cities as Lagos and Ibadan, for the migration of unemployed African peasants to ill-planned industrial centers has given the continent the highest urban growth rate in the world...
...In fact, water supply and waste removal are among the most immediate of the Third World's urban problems—posing serious threats of major epidemics if not soon attended to...
...She is on the other side and seems genuinely committed to her cause as she discusses the differences between the three factions in Northern Ireland's struggle...
...But even before Gierek gave the amendments cautious support in an address to the Party congress last December, 59 intellectuals had written to the Sejm, Poland's Parliament, objecting...
...Nonetheless, the three groups are clearly unhappy with important elements of Gierek's policies and a base of discontent has emerged...
...You can walk to the hotel from here.' Within seconds I am standing on a war-torn road...
...It looks like a gun...
...Cardinal Wyszynski, the leading role" in the state, the PUWP is described as the "leading force in the construction of Socialism...
...I watch him take out the object...
...A week before, a large cache of stolen guns and bombs was found at the bottom of a pile of pig manure...
...It will take all of the Polish leader's considerable political skill to see that it becomes no more than that.—Tom Heneghan Third World Cities London—The massive environmental disasters of the future will probably occur in the urban areas of the Third World, says Maurice Strong, executive secretary of the United Nations Environment Program...
...Although his successor, Edward Gierek, has been far more responsive to public opinion, two issues have emerged over the last year to test his government's rapport with the people...
...Then Margaret O'Neill died, shot from a passing car while shopping with her son and husband...
...As the train proceeds through the picturesque, green countryside, there is little indication of disorder...
...A few nights ago, she calmly replies, the window was blown out by a bomb...
...He dashes across the street...
...I ask the salesgirl in a handbag store...
...Have you thoughts of leaving Belfast...
...Michael Safier, the unit's director of research, echoes Strong's words when he discusses the project...
...At the end of our talk, 1 ask if he is personally afraid to live in Belfast...
...The second issue, that of food supply, surfaced initially almost a year ago and remains a problem...
...In January, about 300 academics and students seconded these protests...
...Authoritative global forecasts estimate that as many new towns and cities will have to be constructed in this quarter of the century to deal with peasants arriving from the countryside as were built during the whole of previous human history...
...1 try unsuccessfully to find a place in the room that is away from windows, out of the line of any gunfire...
...Over the next few days, I speak with anyone on the streets and in the stores who is not afraid of a stranger...
...She glances at a coworker and they both laugh...
...The coalition of 1956, when workers, intellectuals and the Church joined to wrest important concessions from the Party, is not on the horizon...
...the World Food Program is involved with food-through-work and related efforts in various metropolitan regions throughout Africa...
...Existing training programs are barely adequate for national needs, especially as the problems of the developing countries require solutions quite different from those in the rich world...
...I am afraid, yet rarely see any trouble...
...By the time the Sejm adopted the changes in mid-February, their wording had been altered signifi-tests...
...These cities, spreading and deteriorating over another two decades, offer us the tragic prospect of providing the very worst environment in which human beings have ever been reared...
...Rising prices for Soviet oil, moreover, promise to further complicate the situation...
...In early February, more groups joined in...
...The combination of demographic and geographic concentrations has already produced symptoms of acute strain in virtually all main urban centers...
...Despite the fear that grips them, the inhabitants of Belfast are warm, compelling people...
...Occasionally I read that someone was killed in a place where I happened to be only a few hours before, but I begin to believe the deaths are inventions of the media...
...I meet with high officials of both the Loyalist Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the IRA...
...They search my body, my suitcase, my shoulder bag before I may enter...
...The amendment linking Poland to the Soviet Union has been rephrased...
...I walk to the nearby Europa Hotel...
...They take me to a modest store-front office on Shankill Road...
...As economic pressures both from abroad and at home continued to grow throughout 1975, increases in food prices—frozen since 1971?seemed inevitable...
...He is holding something in the palm of his hand...
...In the experience of these agencies, says one UN spokesman, "measures to deal with slums and squatter settlements are likely to be only first-aid exercises without simultaneous efforts to redistribute resources and income...
...New York...
...A gun...
...Yet I am scared...
...More than half of Poland's meat production is exported to earn hard currency, needed to balance the country's debts and trade deficits...
...Besides, it's not that bad...
...We will have to drive down a road that is off limits to a Protestant...
...The connection between rights and duties has been watered down to an admonition to citizens to fulfill their obligations honestly (and two previously existing clauses restricting dissent have been removed from the Constitution...
...The two opposing societies I have visited within a few hours seem quite similar...
...Tourism is at an all-time low...
...I freeze...
...The bellboy is inquisitive and I wonder if he is a spy for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA...
...Ah," they laughed, "but are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew...
...The developing countries," he explains, "are experiencing urban expansion well beyond anything the industrialized countries ever had to accommodate at an equivalent stage of growth...
...Her husband, son and daughter had been, or are, interned at Long Kesh...
...Poland, with its strong Catholic Church and predominantly private agricultural system, has been odd man out in Eastern Europe since 1956...
...It's more dangerous there.' I leave quickly, taking along my noticeable frown—Janet Barkas Polish Discontents Warsaw—The vox populi has always played a relatively important role in Poland...
...asks Mairie Drumm...
...Party leaders responded to the irate consumers by announcing that they were working to improve the situation, yet there was little they could actually do...
...Why am I going to Belfast...
...He recently told London's Royal Commonwealth Society that the wealthy nations have the technology to transform the global urban crisis into an opportunity for creating new, carefully planned communities catering to the needs of their inhabitants in balance with the wider environment...
...Half an hour later, the dozen or so passengers leave the train...
...I turn left and jump at the sight of a British soldier pacing up and down, staring hard ahead, firmly gripping his rifle...
...To deal with this gap, the Development and Planning Unit of the School of Environmental Studies, University College, London, recently launched two investigations, in Zambia and India...
...The windows of the car are rolled up, the doors locked, and it looks like a scene from a gangster movie...
...Only a short time earlier, three-year-old Michelle O'Connor was killed in Belfast when a booby-trap bomb exploded in her father's car...
...Soon I am interviewing a psychologist...
...In about two hours, I will arrive in that publicized city where bullets and bombs have killed over 500 men, women and children since the outbreak of violence in 1969...
...In 1956 a rebellious populace brought Wladyslaw Go-mulka to power...
...I'm only a victim of the trouble over here...
...those departing look as if they are on business...
...He concludes the interview by offering me tea and biscuits...
...E. Paul Mwaluko, director of the UN Center for Housing, Building and Planning, noted not long ago at a preparatory conference in Cairo that "to rectify this situation, there is an urgent need for adequate institutions to train people within the developing countries...
...Various UN agencies are already concentrating on African community planning: The World Bank runs slum upgrading campaigns in Botswana, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia...
...Twice in the country's postwar history it has been strong enough to topple the Party leadership...
...It is a set of car keys...
...A series of preparatory seminars have meanwhile focused on the specific needs of threatened regions...
...There is also an alarming decline in the ability of city governments to cope with these difficulties...
...At the same time, the Party leader's emphasis on economic modernization and higher consumption has run into the difficulties of a credit-based boom after markedly improving the country's standard of living, and the reaction to the meat shortages indicates that consumers will not quietly accept serious belt-tightening...
...I don't approve of violence," Tyrie explains...
...But, he went on, the Third World's means of employing the West's knowledge is tragically inadequate, and Danson proceeded to paint a grim picture: "In the cities of the developing world the old environmental evils of poor water, absence of sewage and spreading slums are coupled with modern evils of smog and fumes and chemical pollution...
Vol. 59 • March 1976 • No. 6
