Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3074

Los Angeles Times Article by Al Johns, Times Real Estate Editor, directly inspired by one or more interviews with Spencer Heath while Heath was a house guest of Mrs. F.N. Manning, Santa Ana, California. Also a message to Johns from Heath

Sunday, April 2, 1961

 

 

Megapolis Gets ‘Way-Out’ Look of

Things to Come 19 Years Hence?

 

LOS ANGELES, April 1, 1980 — Did those of you living in this sprawling Southland megapolis some 19 years ago ever wonder how things would be here today?

   Like Rip van Winkle, I had a long sleep. It began with an excessive helping of apple pie a la mode just before the late movie started on television about 11:30 p.m. March 31, 1961, after a long, trying day.

   The movie, quite frankly, was dull. Thus I remember my mind wandering to an invitation from A. A. Wilkin, area representative, Housing and Home Finance Agency, asking me to be his guest at a meeting April 4, 1961, to hear a talk on “Los Angeles Centropolis, 1980.”

   I wonder how it went. And whether they were really able to envision the changes that actually have transpired.

   To begin with, those of you familiar with Greek roots are aware that centropolis means the central core of a city. Back in 1961, the Los Angeles Civic Center really flowered, being completed two years later.

   A campus-like setting with a mall running from City Hall to Music Center made it one of the most beautiful in the world. Stately buildings surround it. And people now come from even distant places to view this architectural spectacle.

Bunker Hill Development

   Just southwest of Civic Center is an area called Bunker Hill. Here stand numerous tall apartment and office buildings, most of them over 26 stories high, making them seem to rise right into the Heavens.

   These buildings all have parking underground, often with four or more levels below the surface. There are fine shops, restaurants, service establishments, recreational facilities, including even delicatessens, drug stores and supermarkets.

   Within each four-block area is almost a total city within a city. Here live the people who work within the downtown section.

   The apartments, while expensive, are occupied by working girls living together, bachelors — usually two to an apartment — and couples whose children have grown and gone their own ways. In many respects, the structures are streamlined versions of what New York City once offered, providing complete complexes for living close to work.

   Downtown Los Angeles, which was suffering somewhat economically back in 1961, is completely rejuvenated, with great new skyscrapers, commensurate with its role as the hub for a gigantic megopolis, necessary to serve as the financial and economic heartbeat for a Southland population /continued on page 12, but that page is missing; so on to page 13/ . . .

 

. . they discarded governmental processes to form business corporations for the operation of urban areas, large and small.

   City government has now been eliminated, giving way to a businesslike corporation involving all of the people as stockholders. They choose their board of directors on the basis of their shares of stock, or by how much they own of the area.

   An outgrowth of the young student’s concept came from the observation that there is no coercion in the marketplace. This is where the greatest freedom of all prevails. For at the marketplace, people may buy or may not buy tomatoes, watermelons or what have you, nor must their owners sell them. Both the buyer and seller must have a meeting of minds as to price and other conditions of the transaction.

   There is now no pork barreling, or serving special interest groups, because this is unbusinesslike and costs money. Purchases of necessary facilities are achieved through agreement procedures, rather than taxes, thus people will only buy what does them good.

Automation

   In talking about automobiles, we have automation on all freeways, secondary roads and all streets. The automobiles, powered with either atomic or solar energy, are regulated as to speed, distance from other cars, and direction by electronic devices.

   For example, if a person wants to travel in the fast lane, he indicates this by pushing a button. He is carefully moved over into this lane. When he wants to turn off the freeway, he presses a button before reaching his turnoff, having previously prepared for this by being in the right lane, and this takes him where he wants to go.

Smog Slight

   Accidents have been completely eliminated by this system, which incidentally also is operated by a free enterprise group, who received their franchise from the automobile and insurance companies.

   Smog also has been eliminated, for the most part, except for an occasional few days a year, when it is barely discernible. This is caused, when it does occur, by families using old-fashioned barbecuing methods, done frequently during summer months. But it is actually quite aromatic. And doctors say it is not the least harmful.

   One of the major changes making this new life possible is that automobile manufacturers no long sell their automobiles. They lease them. But only to people who can be insured.

   The insurance companies of 1980 supply all police and fire-protection services. They insure everybody who is insurable, and whenever anyone undergoes any type of injury or loss, it is the given insurance company that must satisfy the damaged person.

   Streets and highways are improved and maintained by the automobile manufacturers. Thus the era of planned obsolescence is gone because such process benefits no one.

   How does this leasing work? Well, one may want to lease an expensive car for say a year. That same car may be leased the next year to someone who cannot afford as much. So with medium priced and lower priced cars. Some lease one car for two or three years, with the rate of monthly payment being reduced each year.

Leasing

   Most people also lease their apartments, houses and furnishings, keeping their money for investment in their own businesses or their favorite stock.

   Now everyone is fully engaged in free enterprise and thereby a partner in the entire operation of urban areas. Their partnership is in direct relationship to worth.

   But through elimination of income and property taxes, all people have large amounts of money to invest in the full development of each given business or service establishment.

   From the standpoint of education, this has also changed. When people realized they were paying taxes for benefits not actually received, they decided to operate secondary schools much like churches function, giving everyone free education only through grade eight.

   It happened that teachers formed corporations and bought the existing high schools, selling their services to parents and children directly, like private colleges do. In hardship cases, where there was proven ability and desire, provisions were made to provide scholarships for these deserving students.

   But it all worked on the free-enterprise system, beginning at the high school level. And you would be surprised how hard the young people work and how demanding the parents are that full measure of dollars spent is received in education.

   Juvenile delinquency has also disappeared No one has time for it.

   You see, when it ceased to become mandatory for children to go to school, they knuckled down and went to work. It was economically unsound to educate those who were not interested. So they got a job.

   Getting in trouble was impossible, for those who did could not get insurance, therefore they could not lease an automobile. And what a motivating factor this turned out to be.

The Awakening

   I could feel myself stirring from my sleep. The television was blasting away with that ridiculous Lumpo Soap commercial.

   The announcer was saying: “And you know, Lumpo read backwards is Opmul.”

   I felt that filed-up feeling I always get when I eat apple pie a la mode. And then I awoke and looked at the screen.

   The announcer was saying: “We now end this broadcast day at 2 a.m., and will resume at 9 a.m. this April 1, 1961.

   Then I realized that I had been dreaming. It was still 1961 and I had a meeting to attend next Tuesday to learn about the “Los Angeles Centropolis, 1980.”

   Here it was April 1.

   So I took a bicarbonate of soda to ease my nausea.

   And I went back to sleep to recapture the beautiful dream of freedom.

 

_______________________________________________________________

Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3074

Pencil draft by Heath at Harvey Mudd College for a letter to Al Johns,

L.A. Times Real Estate Editor, regarding the latter’s feature article in the Times resulting from interviews with Heath that Mrs. F. N. Manning arranged

April 2, 1961

 

 

 

 

Al Johns

Real Estate Department

Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles, California

Personal Delivery

 

Thank you for your telephone report on publication in Los Angeles times today wonderfully conceived and carried out. Am awaiting public reaction. Would appreciate significant letters or copies by way of Mrs. Manning and would gladly participate in any conferences or serious discussions.

 

                                 /s/ Spencer Heath

Harvey Mudd College

Claremont, California