\ -35. \ manner calculated to reduce the number of casualties and the amount of physical destruction that a given mimber of atomic bombs can cause. in their most drastic form these plans, many of which will shortly reach the public eye, involve the re- distribution of our urban concentrations into "linear" or "cellular" cities. The linear or "ribbon" city is one which is very much longer than it is wide, with its industries and services. as well as population distributed along its entire length, Of two cities occupying nine square miles, the one which was one mile wide and nine long would clearly suffer less destruction from one atomic bomb, however perfectly aimed, than the one which was three miles square. The principle of the cellular city, on the other hand, would be realized if a city of the same nine-square-miles size were dispersed into nine units of about one square distant from another. ons \h a Loo mile each and situated in such a pattern that each unitwas three to five miles se L i } é such "planning" seems to this writer to showSsinetlar lack of appreciation of the forces which have given birth to our cities and caused them to expand and multiply, There are always important geographic and economic reasons for the birth and growth of a city and profound political and social resistance to interference with the resuits of "natural" growth, Cities like New York and Chicago are not going to dissolve themselves by direction from the government, even if they could find areas to dissolve themselves into, As a linear city New York would be as long as the state of Pennsylvania, and would certainly have no organic meaning as a city. "Solutions" like these are not only politically and socially unrealistic but physically impossible, Nor does it seem that the military benefits would be at all commensurate with the cost, even if the programs were physically possible and politically feasible. We have no way of estimating the absolute limit to the number of bombs which will be available to an attacker, but we lmow that unless production of atomic bombs is drastically limited or completely suppressed by international agreement, the number available in the world will progress far more rapidly and On