Architecture and civic design face serious problems of location, structure and accessibility, arising from the condition of crowded urban societies in every part of
the world-even the newly developed: unprecedented increases in numbers, rapid technological advance, greater mechanization and new concepts of space and scale; but less corresponding capacity, as yet, to adapt social institutions and controls to cope with accelerating population and growth rates: more affluence and leisure on the one hand, and on the other a growing majority of people inadequately fed and housed. There is thus a universal migration into cities coupled with a deterioration in urban environment; as the vehicle ousts the pedestrian, utilities replace the monument and advertisement-commercial and public-camouflages the noticeable parts of the civic structure and furniture which man has already designed for purposes of living, working, playing and meeting his fellow-men.
William Holford