Tales of Thre Cities; J. Wilke;

Of course, the company isn't doing this out of the goodness of its corporate heart. It simply must provide housing and facilities in order to attract the hundreds of additional people it will be em ploying in this previously semi abandoned town. Strangely, these things are rare ly mentioned even by company of ficials when under attack. So, the best kept secret in the world con tinues to be the fact that private interests are in the public interest. Since Montanans are being deMiss Wilke is an advertising writer.

1974 TALES OF THREE CITIES 749 prived of th~ opportunity to pay taxes for all those services, it's a wonder the community hasn't been called unconsti tutionaI. That's precisely the word heard lately to describe another city. This city, too, was built with private capital and the profit mo tive. That's how it was possible for it to be so well-planned and to serve such a great need. The streets are wide and wind ing and alwt\ys clean. Shopping and commercial centers' are well locat ed for convenience and traffic ease. Green belts are beautifully land scaped with a variety of trees from the community's ownnur sery. This city isn't on the most beautiful land in the state. The government owns most of that. But the developers took an avail able piece of desert waste near feedlots and a railroad and made it green and beautiful with lakes, streams, waterfalls, flowers, golf courses, country clubs and nume rous r~creation centers with all kinds .of sports, entertainment, educational activities, hobbies and crafts. There's even a bandsheU bowl and baseball parks.

Sun City is a beautiful answer to a million prayers. It fills a need that should never have existed, but it was a needed response to a society that has sought to force inactivity on some of its most vital, creative, active and fun peo ple. Sun City is now being called un constitutional by some because houses are not sold to people with children under 18. Such critics ar gue that there should not be a com munity without children - espe cially since communities without children don't seem to want to pay for new schools in the next town. They do not say that it is uncon stitutional to force some people to educate several generations of other people's children. Aside from the absurdities Sun City is occasionally subjected to, it seems to be one of the happiest communities in the United States and has been the model for many other fine recreational and adult communities. And it clearly dem strates that when a community is privately planned, controlled and marketed, the results far exceed ordinary municipal standards.

Advantages 01 Private Development Including Schools In a privately developed commu nity, you know what you're get ting. Streets, commercial areas, church locations - everything is planned on the drawing board. You know the restrictions when you buy the property. No hamburger stand can pop up unexpectedly next door. No billboards. No trashy empty lots.

750 THE FREEMAN December Everything. bad destroys value. Everything good increases it. De veloperslike increased values. The community grows progressively better. It was after the success of Sun City's phase I that Del Webb was able to add lakes, country clubs, bowling alleys, minature golf, ten niscourts - and a mammoth indoor swimming pool, artificially land scaped with giant palms, rock gar dens and grass. The purchasers at Sun City con tinue to enjoy an outstanding ap preciation on their investment along with the progression of pro fitability that has made it all pos sible. Compared to the certainties of private control, purchasing a polit ically manipulated lot under any municipal jurisdiction is just a grab-bag proposition. One of the most rapidly devel oped states in recent years, Ari zona has seen the construction of many new subdivisions, and its most successful developers are well aware of the profitability of community services.

These new communities usually include streets, street lighting, sidewalks, water, sewer systems, underground utilities, clubhouses, swimming pools and all kinds of recreation. And since there's no use trying to sell a house to families with children if there are no schools around, schools, too, are often built with private funds, not taxes. It would be interesting to see what the developers would do if we didn't have a politicalized edu cation system. Imagine the ben efits that could result if they tried to outdo each other in providing educational services as they do in providing recreation. And it would be interesting to see what sales packages of im proved materials and methods ed ucators could come up with in their competitive efforts to convince developers of the superiority, and therefore salability, of their ser vices over another company of educators. A City of the Future But let's leave Arizona and look at another city in the United States built with private funds.

This is a city where the side walks are resilient so you won't get tired from walking. A city where the streets .are never torn up. A city with a "basement" an underground infrastructure of tunnels, walkways, wires, ducts, cables, water lines and sewage systems that are easily accessible and readily repaired. All city operations are moni tored by computers and closed circuit TV - methods ·that sug1974 TALES OF THREE CITIES 751 gest· the possibility of developing crime-proof communities. There's a hotel in this city with a pollution-free monorail running through its ten-story lobby. The rooms for the hotel were completely prefabricated units _. wired, partly furnished, and hoist·, ed into place by cranes. The mod ules are complete with artificial moonlight. This city had a mass transit system from its inception. People are also transported by non-pollut ing aerial tramways and "people movers" that run on the most basic of all principles - friction.

And it's the only city in the United States with a STOL (short take-off and landing) airport. The community is served by over 200 watercraft and has the 5th biggest navy in tonnagein the world - a navy that exists only for purposes of entertainment. This city has houses that are experimentally powered by fuel cells, a hospital that utilizes closed circuit· TV to diagnose cases by remote control. Half the power for this com munity is generated by gas tur bines whose waste heat is· turned into chilled water for air con ditioning. The city extends over 37,443 acres with 7500 acres set aside a.s a well-protected wildlife pre serve. It also includes a $7 -million water reclamation project with 40 miles of canals that look like nat ural rivers. Garbage disappears from the streets of this city at a velocity of 60 miles an hour through vacu um tubes. It's sucked into a com pacting plant equipped with an in cinerator that purifies its .own emissions with filters and scrub bers so that nothing comes out of the stack but clean steam.

Waste water is recycled toa "Liv ing Farm" of trees and plants. This city, built on a swampy wasteland, owes its existence to the genius and energy of one man - Walt Disney. It exists in a country of cities that never trusted their street maintenanoe, sewage responsibili ties, power generation, parks, con servation and recreation to private· enterprise. Cities where trucks still haul refuse and streets are torn up regularly in .order to repair pipes. Cities where recre ation is always swings, sandboxes and monkey bars - certainly not African safaris and Snow White's castle. Cities that have polluted rivers and streams with the waste from their treatment plants and, as .public bodies, are never an swerablefor their actions. Their answer to a messy environment is never action but always exhor tation to "keep the city clean." Part of Disney's success was in 752 THE FREEMAN December expecting people to be as they are.

The Disney communities are meticulously clean - and under cotton candy circumstances. He expected sticky little fingers and spilled popcorn. He planned for it - and his plans led to undoubt edly the most efficient waste dis posal methods in use in the coun try today. Can Dreams Come True? There are more new cities too. Cities of dreams. Cities we'll never see - not as long as we consider communities to be political enti ties instead of private properties. Not as long as we trust politicians and distrust private enterprise and corporate bigness. Ifa city is a political entity, property rights don't exist. There's eminent domain to prove it. And building codes. And zon ing. And rezoning. And permits. And fees. And taxes. And graft. And favors. One reason for the startling in novations at Disney World is that it was constructed with its own building codes. This allowed the use of new materials and tech niques and specifications.

Modules could be made wider, for example, because they weren't transported over state roads. Disney's independent code also resulted in much stricter safety and fire protection than the law allows under municipal mandate. Building codes, in fact, estab lish minimum requirements that usually become standard. Their effect is simply to stifle progress and substitute repetition and mo notony for innovation and im provement in building. Largely because of these codes, we build and rebuild the same houses over and over. And mostly because of zoning regulations, we build the same cities again and again and then complain about them, calling for more of the city planning that has already contrib uted so largely to their deficien cies. Our best hope for better cities is private development and profit ability - corporate prosperity. Al though "big business" is popularly deplored, it is the big corporation that is capable of the biggest ac complishments.

And fundamentally, we need new respect for private property and enterprise with the long overdue recognition that the public welfare inheres in private interests -- and only in private interests. We won't have really new cities until we first enjoy the depolitical ization of human relationships. That would not only give us new cities. It would give us a new world. f) A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN IF THIS COUNTRY is to be saved, it will be saved outside of Washing ton, D.C., by people who have ab sorbed the sort of wisdom provid ed by Leonard Read in his beauti fully bound The Free Man's Al manac (Foundation for Economic Education, $5). This book, which provides a more or less epigrammatic quota tion for each day of the year with out reference to the zodiac (~r. Read is concerned not with the stars, but with ourselves), is far less heterogeneous in its substance than it is in its styles. The varia tion in sty les gives a pleasing modulation; the concentration in basic content, on the other hand, provides a formidable educational wallop.