f . the city, but there's a nagging feeling about trying to go very far beyond. It's not that you can't or don't ever fill-er-up on the road. It's just that it isn't the same old nonchalant thing. Once out of the urhan__gas hassle, it just doesn't feel like part of the trip to be reminded of the need, look fo~ that open station, or watch the pennies fly by on the pump. We seemlo clearly prefer travel free of worry, and are tending to rediscover the luxuries of our own home ground rather than continue the old habit of looking always just a bit further. There are still lots of choices. That 150 miles out and back opens up seventy thousand square miles of area to explore with wheel freedom. We probably haven't really looked at our city's "neighborhood" much, where there's lots to find and get involved with. I think that's a switch, 'a real change in direction, if you will. Instead of always looking to see what's "beyond," we seem to be turning-slowly perhaps-but turning to see what's "around." When you see this pattern as just one more part of a general turning inward, of regional community forming, of the progressive trend of adapting to local climate, lifestyle and resource conditions, the nature of the city's home-base can be seen taking shape. To me, it's suddenly obvious, though still soft-edged and changing, that America is complete. The physical building thing we've unwittingly been pursuing for the past three hunone can expect in a given season. But trying to keep the larger climate in mind is like trying to keep aging, death, time in mind. One toddles along, only occasionally thinking of such ... I was brought up in a very small village of 45,0 people. So perhaps being brought up in a highly integrated village in France made me aware of a kind of biological aspect of human nature which is essential for the d<:;finition of neighborhood. Most people cannot relate to a very large number of peopk. What is the optimum number is very difficult to decide. But there have been experiments on that. The experiments ask, It's only if we become sufficiently stable that we can rediscover some principle of integration that will solve the problems of our cities. This will be through the neighborhoods ... how many persons,can you remember? How many can you identify sufficiently well, so that if you see them you will not only recognize them but know what to expect of them? It's not that you like them or dislike them, but to some extent October 1979 RAIN Page 7 dred years is what we have now achieved-the becoming of a large, closely grouped family of "regional neighborhoods" of large communities, neighborhood regions measured by what opportunity is conveniently within reach in a single motion and shaped by local adaptation. In somewhat the same way a pedestrian community takes shape from the opportunities within convenient walking distance, the definition of our overwhelming notions. Perhaps, as with the method described in The Canadian Alternative (RAIN, Aug./Sept. '79), which concerns the geography of the urban environment as a complex interaction between human needs and values, one has to relate the immediate to the far away, the small to the large, the obvious to the hard-to-see and invisible: At the small end of the picture, there's our very own, sub7 jective climate. Inside our physical envelope is the most precious climate of all. We perform our own weather modification by what we eat, by what we wear, even by what we think and feel (you know, "he was hot under the collar"). Just beyond our physical envelope there's the shelter we construct to modify the climate we live in. Persons living 50 feet apart in different structures can have entirely different climates in their homes depending on the materials of the shelter, walls-to-window ratio , orientation to the sun, placement of trees, hedges, and so on.. The microclimate that exists up to 4 feet above the surface of the earth, as defined in the classic Rudolf Geiger study, The Climate Near the Earth, is yet another step out from the you know what to expect of them. The -numbers are never over a thousand. Beyond that, it becomes difficult to remember .. . there seems to be a limited number to whom we can relate. In cities, it's very djfficult to formulate that principle of limited numbers in a precise manner. Nevertheless, I have seen it in New York City. I have seen neighborhoods become reestablished. Tpere arc streets where people know each other well enough so that when they walk, they recognize the people who belong there. I have seen block parties being organized. I see a spontaneous attempt at recapturing this kind of relationship .. . Unquestionably, from the beginning, human' beings lived in small limited clusters. The New Stone Age, about 10,000 years ago- villages that we know of- had about 500 persons. So, it seems, in some way there must be something in the human brain that limits the number ·of identifications we can make. The human brain doesn't change, biologically, so somewhere we still have that limitation. And, I suspect, it is reflected in practically all social organizations.
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