A WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Year Twenty-One ... Number Thirty-Two ... August 9, 1974
THE CONTRIVED EVOLUTION
OF REGIONAL GOVERNMENT
PART FIFTEEN
MORE ABOUT ECUMENOPOLIS
Walter Lippmann was a student of pioneer Fabian Socialist Graham Wallas when the latter was teaching at Harvard University. Lippmann organized the Harvard chapter of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, went to become an associate of Col. E. M. House, went with him to Paris where he became a member of the Round Table Group and a charter member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He eventually found his niche with The New York Times, where he was to remain until. his retirement. It was Lippmann who, described the principle dogma of Regional Government in his book "The Good Society" (Little Brown & Co., Boston, 1937). He wrote:
"Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must, by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come. They believe in what Mr. Stuart Chase accurately describes as 'the overhead planning and control of economic activity.' This is the dogma which all the prevailing dogmas presuppose. This is the mold in which are cast the thought and action of the epoch. No other approach to the regulation of human affairs is seriously considered, or is even conceived as possible. The recently enfranchised masses and the leaders of thought who supply their ideas are almost completely under the spell of this dogma. Only a handful here and there, groups without influence, isolated and disregarded thinkers, continue to challenge it. For the premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive .... For virtually all that now passes for progressivism in countries like England and the United States calls for the increasing ascendancy of the state: always the cry is for more officials with more power over more and more of the activities of men."
The increasing ascendancy of the state, and the overhead planning and control of economic activity! This is the dogma that supersedes all dogma with the Planners, whether they be "communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives or even liberals." And Regional Governance has come to be the approved method for the achievement of this "ascendancy of the state" and the ultimate goal: the "overhead planning of all economic activity" on a world scale.
However, the Planners did not all agree, until quite recently, upon the best way in which to install this Regional Governance System. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, they seemed satisfied that their Regions be set up around "core cities." This was the original "Metro" system that was promoted and installed in Miami, St. Louis, and other metropolitan areas. "Metro" is a modernization of the old Greek city-state concept, expanded to include the world-city or ecumenopolis idea, which was conceived by the man who also coined the term 'social science' and called himself the world's first 'social scientist': Claude Henri de Rouvray de Saint-Simon, a French aristocrat who survived the French Revolution and lived to develop a socialistic concept upon which to organize all of society. In the book The Great Deceit, a Veritas Foundation staff study of Fabianism and the social pseudo-sciences (1964), there is the following note regarding Saint-Simon:
"When he was a youth Saint-Simon felt that he was destined to great things and had his valet awaken him each morning with the words, 'Remember, monsieur Le Compte, that you have great things to do.' It was during the revolution, while suffering a temporary imprisonment in the Luxembourg that visions of a new social system, based on scientific principles and not on political conventionality, first unfolded themselves to his ardent imagination. His ancestor Charlemagne appeared to him one night in a vision and said: 'Since the world existed, only one family enjoys the honor of producing a hero and a philosopher of the first rank. This honor is reserved for my family. My son, your success as philosopher will equal that which I reached as soldier and politician." ... Throughout his life Saint-Simon was afflicted with mental disorders .... It is an irony of history that 'social science' was born in a mind completely lacking in scientific training .... "
Saint-Simon's plan, briefly stated: he wanted to divide the whole world into city-states, after the manner of Athens, Sparta, etc. in ancient Greece. Each city-state would be governed by a company of philosophers; and overall rule would come from a world-city, a world capital which he would build on the site of Constantinople, then considered to be the geopolitical center of the world.
It is remarkable that the Planners at "1313" took these plans for ancient Greece, the concept of world government imagined by Saint-Simon, and the promotional scheme of a modern Greek Planner, and try to rebuild the United States according to such a pattern, and in line with the map that is reproduced on this page. When we first published this map (March 8, 1963), we wrote:
"Back to the Golden Age of Ancient Greece -- this could well sum up the dreams of the New World Planners .... It was a Greek Planner, bearing ideological gifts to a 1961 Conference of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (this was a 1313 project), who showed how the "Super-Metro" concept fits into the "City-State" plan.
"According to a report prepared for the Ford Foundation, 'Dr. C. A. Doxiadis, Urban Consultant from Athens, Greece ... said : "Most of the evils from which we suffer today in urban areas stem from the fact that we have overlooked the trend that is heading topspeed toward an ecumenic city, and that we are, instead, struggling with the image of the city of the past .... The city has become a network of urban settlements which will one day cover the whole earth.'
" ... Dr. Doxiadis traced the development of the city from a static to a dynamic force: The city first became a metropolis and then a megalopolis .... The next stage will be merging into settlements which will cover the whole earth, and which Dr. Doxiadis called ecumenopolis. Ecumenopolis is the city of the future, and will have to be based on a new network of centers and lines of transportation and communication that will be able to stand the pressure and demands of the growing populations of the earth.'
Here, then, is the 1313 formula:
Metropolis to Megalopolis (Super-Metro);
Megalopolis to Ecumenopolis (City-State, or
Universal City);
A new network (world authority) to bind
together these `urban settlements which
will cover the whole earth.'
"This world-wide network of urban settlements will, of course, have spaces in between, which are commonly called rural areas, the land usually devoted to farming and stock-raising.... Now comes the plan to put all land under the direct control of the Federal Government. According to a plan first published in the April, 1962, issue of Nation's Business, all land in the United States would be divided into eight classes:
"1) A "greenbelt" area 30 miles in depth which would surround each ecumenopolis or universal city, in which area no industry, no home building, and practically no gardening or truck-farming will be permitted.
2) Areas where farming will be permitted.
3) Areas where 'federally combined farming' will be pursued (co-op farming as in Russia?)
4) Areas where government controlled conservation prevents the use of land by individuals.
5) Areas around 'historical sites.'
6) Areas set aside for 'hikers only.'
7) Areas which will be set aside for 'government use,' and in which the people may have access to the land, but for recreational purposes only.
8) Areas which might be called `the people's land,' since these are for mass use'." (End of extended quotation from Don Bell Reports of March 8, 1963).
Reproduced below is an illustration that accompanied an article written by International Planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis, for the book Cities of Destiny, edited by Arnold Toynbee, published by McGraw-Hill and retailing at $30 per copy. In other words, the book was not intended for mass circulation, and only "insiders" would be expected to read it. Hence, Doxiadis is not reluctant when he explains the international application of this form of Regionalism. He writes:
" ... This (world-wide) city is already under construction. It will absorb almost all the important cities of the present, and will gradually grow out of them through their dynamic growth, as well as through the dynamic growth of new settlements that are going to be created. It will be composed of almost all the major cities of the past and the present. This city is going to expand widely over the plains and the great valleys, especially near the oceans, seas, great lakes and rivers, since the most restrictive factor in its formation will be the presence of water. Even when de-salinized water can be used economically for urban purposes, it will be available only near the level of the oceans and lakes, so these will attract the city of the future, as the small rivers attracted primitive settlements.
"The ecumenical city is going to pass through two phases. In the first phase, which has already started, it will gradually build up through the expansion of dynamically growing settlements. It will consist of dynamic parts and thus will change automatically from more primitive towards more developed forms. When it finally reaches the maximum calculable population and estimable area, it will not expand any more, and in this phase it will undergo only those minor alterations that will be indispensable for the re-adjustment of the population, the economy, and the functions necessary for the world-wide city.
"The city of the future is going to form a world-wide network. The centres of a higher order are going to be located mainly where the greater concentration of population are, i.e., in the greatest plains which have the best climate and best water-resources. The connections between them will follow the natural lines of communication as well as some underground and submarine tunnels and the corresponding air-corridors.
"In this network of major and minor centres, the Ecumenopolis will have a hierarchical structure of centres. The structure will range from the very small centre corresponding to present neighborhoods, through centres of middle importance with a population corresponding to the large metropolitan areas of the present, i.e., from 5 to 10 million, to centres of the highest order with populations running to hundreds of millions. These centres are going to form networks of different orders within the major network.
"Several of these centres are going to comprise all types of functions, since they will provide administration, management, transportation, culture, production and pastime for a wide area. Several others, though, are going to be specialized centres catering for special local factors or traditions. Such cities -- for example, Cambridge, Massachusetts -- will attract all types of educational facilities and become important specialized centres of education of a very high order in the network of the world-wide city, while others will be important cultural, political or pleasure centres.
' ... The city as a whole will be the result of good programming and planning, based on very careful calculations of man's needs and of the possibilities of modern technology. The universal city of the future should be, as a whole and as a frame, the product of the creative work of every mind which can comprehend, and give shape to, the total habitat of man on this earth .... "
But Planner Doxiadis and his 1313-oriented backers were to learn that this plan for the Universal City, or Ecumenopolis, made up of a global network of connected cities, contained a fatal flaw: The Master Planning required to change these "primitive" cities into "more developed centres" did not supply the dynamism the Planners hoped for. Instead, master planning began to kill once healthy cities. As the urban epidemic took hold, population changes began to occur. This was especially true when the racial integration fever reached its climax. Once prosperous cities began going broke, downtown shopping areas and high-tax districts began resembling ghost towns. Well-to-do whites moved out, poor blacks moved in, and cities went into the red. Suburban neighborhood shopping centers began doing most of the business previously transacted on Main Street.
The Master Planning that was supposed to provide the dynamism that Doxiadis talked about, began to provide death instead. So, the plan for establishing a world-wide network via cities and Metros has been relegated to the utopian cemetery.
Then came the "better plan," that of disregarding population and resources per se, and establishing geographical regions, these regions divided into smaller regions, and the smaller regions divided into sub-regions.
Thus, the whole world has been divided into Regional Governments, Nations are being divided into Regional Districts, and the Regional Districts are being divided into subregional districts. The world-wide network will be, not by connected cities, but by connected regions. All else will remain the same.
DON BELL REPORTS & CLOSER-UP are privately circulated Newsletters accenting the Christian American point of view. Complete service: $24 per year. Extra copies: 10 cents each. Please address all orders to: DON BELL REPORTS, P.O. Box 2223, Palm Beach, Florida 33480