Regional Plan Association on April 7 proposed a new kind of center for the fast-growing suburbs around New York City and Newark - a place where universities, offices, culture, commerce and related industry and services could work together in uncrowded surroundings but related to each other so that each contributes to the usefulness and efficiency of the others.
The proposal was illustrated specifically by the center of Nassau County on Long Island, a I0-square mile area including Mitchel Field, a former air base, and the surrounding 5,000 acres. In this area are 1,000 uncommitted acres, right among the major department stores of the County, nearly all of the County government offices, the largest hospital, a college and two universities, a projected cultural center and good links to the Long Island Rail Road.
Unveiling the proposal before Long Island business executives, C. McKim Norton, President of Regional Plan, urged the County government to have a detailed plan prepared for the area which would transform it into “a green Rockefeller Center suited to the suburbs.”
“Without a design plan,” he cautioned, “piecemeal development is likely to scatter related facilities so that transportation, efficiency, convenience and maximum use of each would be less than if they are planned together.”
Regional Plan’s report listed eight advantages of suburban centers which combine a large number of different activities, as opposed to scattered development or the typical one-purpose shopping center, government center, medical center, isolated cultural center, or separate college campus.
In addition, the report noted, the housing needs of a growing number of suburbanites in the New York Metropolitan Area can be best met in such a center. People generally move to the suburbs in their middle years, with young children. Now several years of suburbanization have passed, and many are looking for apartments. So are their just-married children.
This new kind of general purpose center is the best location for the apartments they will be demanding, the report observes - it is most convenient for the apartment dweller, and apartments there do not disturb the essential one-family tone elsewhere in suburban counties.