of them had maintained all along that none of the specialized professions of architecture, engineering, and surveying were really the whole of town planning. Town planning arose out of the community's needs, and those needs had to be met constructively in the many ways which the Author had shown.65. In the end the most d@cult problem was in dealing with town centres. The Author had made a very bold attack on the problem of rebuilding them. Many people were saying nowadays that perhaps it was wrong to rebuild town centres, because to do so only attracted more and more traffic-and so it did. The attitude towards traffic must be one of acceptance and not one of rejection. The town centre would always be the focus for community life, and the efforts at dispersal which had taken place in some towns, especially in the building of some of the new towns in Russia, had demonstrated, sociologically, that dispersal was wrong. It might be scientifically right in certain instances, but it was wrong sociologically, and that was the thing that in the end mattered, because everything was being done for people.
DISCUSSION ON A CIVIL ENGINEER AND TOWN PLANNINGMr J. H. Melville Richards (Borough Engineer and Surveyor, Harrow) admired the Author's perseverance in his work over the past 15 years in the planning and reconstruction of city centres at Wakefield and Bradford, and also in devising the means of putting his plans into effect, which was more than half the battle. Many of them had drawn up plans which had never been put into effect.
69.In 3 3 the Author had stated: "It is, therefore, natural that civil engineers with imagination and aesthetic sense who have become Engineers and Surveyors to municipalities should be the leaders in town planning." That was undoubtedly true, and he would go a little further and say that not only in this respect but on other occasions the municipal engineer and surveyor was the most fitting officer to co-ordinate the planners and to lead the whole of the technical team, including the architects, the planners, the engineers, the surveyors, and all the constructional staff who had to be employed. This was really common practice in the more enlightened boroughs and towns in Britain at the present time.70. The Author had mentioned the exclusion of public service vehicles from the shopping precinct. Did he mean that no public service vehicles should go into the shopping precinct? If so this might be going a little too far. It was true that where there was a shopping precinct for pedestrians only no public service vehicles could enter it, but he was in favour of allowing the buses to go into the centre and put people down as near as possible to the shops. 71. If a shopping precinct or part of it were closed to traffic so as to become a pedestrian shopping precinct, would the trade in that shopping centre be helped or hindered? Was there any evidence on that aspect? He had been asked the question recently when explaining one of his own plans.72. The motor car was certainly causing trouble, and this was...