"The lure of the romantic suburb caused the successful to move out, with unfortunate results. The community was deprived of its leaders, and thus lost its social dynamic, i.e. the capacity to renew itself, to hold the affection of its inhabitants.
Some existing slums are capable of regeneration, provided that a social dynamic can be created, or maintained. To take people from close packed row-houses and place them in seventeen storey blocks 600ft. apart has resulted in little social improvement. Delinquency rates go up and the new environment is soon reduced to the level of the old. What has happened is that the slums are no longer capable of growing, or able to retain their natural leaders: that is, those citizens who have made some kind of success and therefore exercise an almost unconscious control by civic example. Crude rehousing merely segregates the poor and the weak, flushing their leaders and exemplars into middle class ghettos of their own. No society can be stable, restrain its violent and criminal element, unless it is in a general way committed to law, order and a constructive way of life. It is the function of the planner to provide the format within which this commitment can be realised.
He must also be able to recognise those elements of our existing environment that are conductive to social growth. By protecting and extending these he will be able, often astonishingly, to revitalise a community without having to reach for his handy bulldozer.'
