MILFORD WHITEHILL LEADERSHIP SEMINAR 609

C. Structural problems include blight, traffic congestion, air and
water pollution.

1. We possess and may employ scientific knowledge and technical
methods to correct those problems. Comprehensive planning and
zoning, capital expenditures to construct urban expressways,
mass transit lines and community facilities can alleviate, elimi-
nate or even prevent structural problems.

2. Here we have fairly dependable answers and the obstacles to
resolution are primarily economic and political: Are we willing
to invest the necessary dollars in solutions and on what priority
basis?

D. Social problems are infinitely more complex.

1. Although this is the heart of the problem — these are subjective
and psychic issues of poverty, prejudice, family disorganization
and inherent inequality — for which no single sure or secure
solution exists.

a. The very absence of clear-cut solutions increases the ob-
stacles to implementing plausible solutions.

b. Without positive proof, remedial action is weighed by pop-
ular opinion which tends to be most divisive, ambivalent and
emotional on social issues.

c. Consequently, elected officials are hesitant — and with good
reason — to invest taxpayers' dollars in programs which could —
but not definitely will — relieve poverty, unemployment and
prejudice.

2. This does not imply that answers do not exist or justify delay
in pressing for application of highly plausible solutions. For
with the three prevalent urban problems go three logical —
albeit long-range — solutions.

E. Impaction and overcrowding inevitably produce blight. How-
ever, slum or substandard housing is not the only adverse aspect of
impaction. Crime, unemployment, poverty and public dependence are
its handmaidens.

1. Urban renewal, once thought a "final solution" to blight, has
been found to displace more people than it can accommodate.

2. And unless the dislocated and displaced are accommodated, the
project simply stimulates the transfer of blight and impaction
to another vulnerable area.

3. Satellite cities pose a creative alternative.

a. Columbia, Maryland, is an ideal example of the "instant