The modern city is scale-sized to the automobile. This is paradoxical because the high speed, high power features of today's automobile are largely wasted in the city where short distances can be easily covered on foot and longer ones, by mass transit. Individual vehicular traffic means that the city must be designed to accommodate the automobile.

Cars require a great deal of attention; they are potentially lethal weapons; they are involved in a great deal of property damage; and they are expensive to own and operate. Even small models that are made for city traffic are expensive to operate, contribute to the pollution of the city environment, and pose similar problems in terms of parking, traffic congestion, and storage as do other cars.

No matter how miniaturized cars become or even if they become pollution-free, the capacity of even our largest cities to accommodate ever-increasing numbers is fast approaching the saturation point if, indeed, it has not already arrived there.

In addition to providing more horsepower and higher speeds than can be used to advantage in city traffic, individual vehicular transportation requires a great deal of very expensive space. Real estate values in metropolitan areas of the United States vary widely and range anywhere form $100 per square foot to $1,000 per square foot, the latter a recently quoted price for property in Manhattan. A family-size automobile requires about 200-square-feet of parking space which, if purchased as real estate, would cost between $20,000 and $200,000. Property of this value used for city parking with city-owned parking meters gives a very poor return on investment.

Walking in cities, particularly in business and industrial districts of cities, could be aided by moving sidewalks. In areas where some distance is to be traveled, parallel moving sidewalks, operating at slightly different speeds, would allow pedestrians to slow down for window shopping or to accelerate in order to reach a destination. A few airports, Disneyland, and other places are experimenting with, and in some instances routinely using, moving sidewalks. There is no reason why this technology cannot be applied to the business and industrial districts of our large metropolitan areas.

The vehicular traffic required in cities in order to travel from one neighborhood to another could be by public transportation consisting of jitneys, buses, subways, and taxis operated under group riding regulations. These alternatives could be competitive with automobiles if the city were not specifically designed and tax supported to favor the automobile over other forms of transportation. In addition, the walking city could easily be designed to accommodate human-powered transportation such as bicycles, and even motorbikes and motorscooters, while they would destroy the peace and tranquility of the walking city, from the viewpoint of space would be preferable to endless lines of family cars. In any event, motorbikes and motorscooters, like automobiles, are more appropriate for distance driving and the open road than for city streets.

Confining individual vehicular traffic to the main thoroughfares that are the nucleus of the city network would make more space available in the neighborhoods for playgrounds, parks, and squares where people could meet and socialize. Neighborhoods without the danger and congestion of high speed motor traffic offer exciting possibilities for the development of a park-like settings for cities. Even the streets would be more pleasant for strolling if the cacophony generated by an endless stream of automobiles was eliminated, or at least reduced.

An experimental community being developed on an island in New York harbor and designed specifically as a walking city is served by a ferryboat which brings automobiles and their drivers to the island. Once there, the automobiles are driven off the ferry into a parking lot where they remain until the owner is ready to return to the mainland. Residents and visitors move around the island on foot.

Operating an automobile in heavy traffic is not conducive to socializing with other persons in the car. The driver acts primarily as a guidance system, steering the machine through whatever space is available, and while engrossed in stopping and starting, in changing lanes, and in performing other maneuvers, he cannot interact easily with other persons. Bus drivers are forbidden to talk to passengers while the bus is in motion, presumably because most of us instinctively look at a person to whom we are speaking and, thus, the driver's attention would be diverted from the road.

If one observes the streams of commuter traffic approaching or departing any of our large cities during rush hours, one finds that a very high percentage of the cars carry only one person who, if he is interacting at all, is doing so with the advertisements on his radio. Large numbers of people on foot, on the other hand, interact with each other and have a feeling of well-being and companionship. As they walk, they can talk and laugh and observe each other and their surroundings, without fear of harm to themselves or to property. A person driving an automobile through the same area must simply watch where he is going and, instead of participating in a "happening," as his ambulatory fellow citizens are doing, all of his attention must be focused upon avoiding a collision.

Fast, efficient, inexpensive mass transportation is the key to the human community aspects of the walking city and, as we have seen, individual vehicular traffic, while not incompatible with it, must be regulated in a way that will not detract from the city as a place to live. A city designed around neighborhoods that will bring a sense of community to urban life would do much to establish our cities as exciting, humane, and safe places in which to live, work, and play. Such neighborhoods would be oases of tranquility in the bustling metropolis, linked together by efficient transportation corridors.

In addition, many non-residents of the city must have easy access to it in order to work, to shop, or to attend theaters, museums, and other entertainment and cultural activities traditionally found in metropolitan areas. For them, the time spent in the walking city could be enjoyable and rewarding rather than the ordeal-by-fire that it so often is today. Adequate off-the-street parking centers will be necessary to accommodate their automobiles, and these centers can be located adjacent to the interstate highway system or at intersections of the city transportation corridors. The design and location should be such that access to these storage centers and the avenues of ingress and egress through the city do not significantly alter its human scale-size properties. This could be accomplished by surface or subsurface transportation routes that end at intra-city transportation terminals. Access to the neighborhoods and districts of the city would have to be restricted to public transportation, and within the neighborhoods walking would be augmented by jitneys and other small, publicly operated vehicles, moving sidewalks, escalators, and elevators.

In order for the walking city to function effectively, it also would be desirable for residents to leave their automobiles at off-the-street parking centers where, it should be noted, they could be more easily safeguarded than on the city street. For residents of the city not choosing to own an automobile, car rental is a simple way to secure independent movement for travel beyond the city, and trains, planes, and long-distance buses provide a great variety of additional service.