Another aspect of the park-like quality of many American cities is the way they attract large numbers of people at certain seasons of the year. Mardi Gras in New Orleans is world renowned. Thousands upon thousands of people come to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., and to predict the time of peak flowering is almost an occult art. The spring flora displays of Charleston, South Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, Jacksonville, Florida, and many other cities attract visitors who enjoy these places when they are decked out for spring in rhododendron, azalea, and magnolia.

In spite of the lament over the conditions of our cities, there is considerable evidence that very large numbers of people leave one city and go to another for their recreation. Going to San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Honolulu, San Juan, London, Paris, or Rome is vacationing for many people. In Washington, D.C. as many as 16 million visitors a year visit the museums, monuments, and Congress to experience the cultural, historical, and political life of the nation's capital. And it is not only the public buildings and monuments that attract these people but the range and variety of things to do and places to go, including shops, restaurants, quaint sections of the city, night life, theaters, and nightclubs. The Factory and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco are enormously successful as business enterprises as well as having high recreational value because of the enjoyment of being in them. Architecturally Ghirardelli Square is a great ornament that wears people. They are attracted there by the beauty and charm of the structure itself, and by the rich variety of places, shapes, levels, shops, restaurants, and views that can be used and experienced.

Downtown department store owners, concerned about the downward trend of their inner-city business, might seriously consider converting the departments of their stores into an appearance of separate shops, each visually separated and with its own characteristic style and decor. This would relieve the appearance of bigness that now exists where most of a single floor, with many types of goods, can be seen at a glance. In Alexandria, Virginia, a merchandising enterprise called Dockside, specializing in imports that arrive in the port of Alexandria has spurred the redevelopment of a run-down industrial area. It includes the conversion of part of an abandoned ordnance factory into an art center (the Torpedo Factory Art Center) recapturing part of the flavor of The Factory in San Francisco but retaining much of the ambience and style of Colonial Alexandria and its ocean shipping and port activities.

The monolithic, solid, gray areas of the cities have little attraction either for the people who live there or for visitors. It is the mosaic of architectural patterns, the variety of activities, and, more importantly, the distribution of activities available throughout the 24-hour day that determine and establish the interest and curiosity that the area will inspire in people and hence its entertainment and recreational value. These factors in turn establish the ecological stability of the area.

Cities, then, are habitats of man and meet his needs well, indifferently, or not at all, depending upon the richness and variety of the city and the manner in which the city is perceived by its residents and visitors. If the city creates feelings of well-being, comfort, and security, people will be happy there and visitors will seek it out. Cities or portions of them that fail to provide these simple ecological needs are feared and shunned or simply avoided and are not considered residences of choice even by those who must reside in them. Other areas of sameness and monotony may not be dangerous and may even be considered residential areas of choice, but they lack entertainment and recreation and serve merely as the bedroom for some other part of the community.

The city provides great contrasts in recreational values that represent our national, cultural, and historic heritage. It seems almost random or accidental when the right combinations are encouraged and the delights of sound ecological community living are achieved. Cities are not and have never been established as parks, but if a park is a habitat for the conservation or preservation of a value or values considered important to man, then in the broad sense the city too must be a park, whether by accident or design. What are the values that man seeks to preserve in cities? Traditionally, these values have been man's technology, his business, industry, and commerce, and only incidentally man himself. It is clear that the continued development of technology, without reference to the comfort, well-being, and security of man, is destroying the city as a habitat for man. Man still is the interconnecting link between the machines that produce or communicate, and it is not sufficient to consider only the ecological requirements for the machines but the ecological requirements for man as well. Man is a social animal and lives in communities. These communities have requirements that go beyond simple technology, although it is technology that makes modern communities possible. The question simply put is, does the furtherance of technology for its own sake take precedence over the utilization of technology to promote the welfare of the community of man? An affirmation that technology will be used to promote the welfare of man will insure that habitat maintenance and preservation of man in the city will occur, and that, in essence, defines the city as a park.

In that context, then, it is valuable to discuss the park-like qualities of cities in the same ecological terms that we might use to discuss the habitat requirements and community relationships of any higher form of life.