Spectral lines: The cities' dark side

Would it were that Spectrum's Bicentennial look at the next century U.S. cities might suggest a fulfillment of the idyllic line sung perennially, if unthinkingly, by thousands of school children -from sea to shining sea.— Unfortunately, A. P. Adamson's thought is far more realistic. And yet it is precisely this dualism — the ideal vs. the real — that best characterizes both this issue of Spectrum and the endeavors of engineers, architects, and urban planners who devote themselves to getting from “here to there”: from disorder to order, from the present to the future, from the real to the ideal.