II.
Reston's residents--so far there are 800 families--are enthusiastic. "If they keep going the way they are, they'll have a dream town here"; "It has all the advantages of a large city without being one"; "You can have privacy without being isolated," residents tell interviewers. They enjoy owning a share in the community and in its open land. And many participate in community organizations, attending school planning meetings or forming a committee to get the state circulating library to stop at Reston. Last year, a group of parents decided that they wanted to start a Montessori school, and 15 children now attend it. "I did not realize there would be so many cultural things to do," said one woman. Sports too--one of Simon's hobbies--are readily available and include tennis, sailing, fishing, golf, and skating.
By definition, a new town offers available space and facilities for the daily interests and activities of its residents. At present, Reston's country club image; its golf courses and Montessori schools, reflects the composition of these first families of Reston. By and large, they are a well-educated, well-paid group. This beginning was necessary, for Simon had his first houses range from $27,000 to $50,000 in order to get his idea commercially off and running. His market advisors assured him that urban lower-income people would not be the first to move to the country where bulldozers were still breaking ground. As the composition of the residents moves to a broader cross section of income levels and interests, image of life at Reston will change as well. Reston's publicity, too, which thus far has been directed at middle and upper-middle income groups, will change as the availability of lower-priced homes increases.
III.
City planners see Reston as an oddity, an inappropriate regression to rural Americana. A planned community cannot be a model for megalopolis when it deliberately keeps its population density at 13 persons per acre. Wood and trees, they claim, are irrelevant media for the city of the future. And the attempt to preserve large tracts of hillside is unrealistic when the eastern seaboard of this country will be entirely covered with building in the next half century. "The philosophy of Reston is focused too much on the picturesque and the pedestrian," says one planner, "and it ignores the dynamic, rich, and pertinent part of our society--cars, industry, technology."
No Cars
Furthermore, city planners often condemn Reston by judging it aesthetically as some sort of pastoral anachronism. The automobile is missing; Simon has carefully wound his parking areas behind the houses and the town center. But to the planner, this seems a negation of the automobile's existence. And the Lake Anne center, with its yellow brick walls and walks and clay chimneys reflected in the lake looks too much like an Italian fishing village to belong in the age of plastics, steel, and pre-stressed concrete. To some urban designers, Reston appears to deny the visual, as well as the statistical facts of the twentieth century.
But these criticisms ignore what is essential about Reston; that it is a New Town tailored to the American suburb, and that it is being built.
Simon does not propose to be solving the urban problem; Reston is definitely and experiment in revised suburban life. The Washington area will quadruple its size by the year 2000. As it grows, its suburbs will become more than bedrooms for the city. Implicit in the figures of city expansion is the spreading of the city's functions into the suburbs. And developing a model plan for this new type of suburb is as crucial as finding a model for in-city redevelopment.
Reston is not just an anomoly, but a much needed experiment in solving part of the problem which the city planner faces; how to help suburban areas handle their new functions. And Simon's wish to integrate industry, private homes, commerce, and recreation for optimum use by all classes is not different from the aims of the most technically ambitious planner.
By applying these goals to the new type of suburb, Simon is helping to bring the city planners' goals closer to reality. Changing the Fairfax zoning ordinances, for example, won the county to a more realistic view of its planning needs. Getting federal funds for a new-town-style low income housing project is another major step.
To build Lake Anne village, Simon's greatest breakthrough was with the financial community. Over 70 corporate and lending institutions turned Simon down when he set about getting capital for the huge initial investment needed for Reston. The story goes that at one point there were two briefcases on Simon's desk, one containing the orders to dismantle the whole project, the other with the plans to go ahead. Simon recalls, "It was a tense time. Very tense." Fortunately, Gulf Oil pulled through at the critical moment with a considerable grant, and, since then, Simon has found the task of obtaining capital for his project somewhat easier.
Simon aims to make Reston a commercial success; he wants to prove that New Towns area sound commercial investment. In the process, he will do more than make a profit. He will overcome the obstacles, philosophical and material, which currently baffle Reston's critics.