as against the general
degradation of the stream, culminated in the issuance of our report The
Creek and the City and then in a public meeting under INCOPOT auspices,
people who had long been fighting the Creek's battle became the nucleus
of a revived public effort. It now appears that under a new Council the
upper watershed may be developed in some accordance with the
Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission's protective plan
for the area, so as to keep much of its surface covered with the grasses
and humus through which rainwater percolates underground into aquifers
that feed the creek through dry periods, and with some safeguards
against the customary terrific siltation that careless development
produces. And pressure has been generated to deal with the creek's other
pollution, which is certain to be a long and laborious job.

[Illustration]

Suburbanization itself is based in social forces, and this is not a
sociological report. The knotted, often bitter, sometimes violent tone
of contemporary American cities does not come within our province, but
some consideration of it is inevitable. Not only must any planning for a
decent environment--like planning for water use--take into account the
needs and interest of the majority of the Basin's citizens who live in
and around Washington, but it needs to be based in some understanding of
the way they are. For in part the way they are is what determines the
pattern of urban growth and much of the restless shifting and wandering
that makes the city's people a strong influence to the limits of the
Basin and beyond. In part also, however, the pattern of urban growth
makes the people the way they are--it has been observed, for instance,
that if suburban Americans were better satisfied with their manner of
life, they probably would not spend so much of their time in automobiles
getting away from it.

[Illustration]

Within Washington itself, children may be born to erstwhile rural
parents and may come to adult years with only a scant sense of the
peace and beauty that can be found a few miles away, and often with
little sense of anything else but the crumbling, teeming, stifling,
noisy, sooty slums where they live--the other side of the monumental
splendor along the Federal riverfront. Not all urban frustration is an
outgrowth of the physical environment by any means, but much is. And
this frustration, plus the pattern of exodus for some and sour jammed
impris