Urban Problems Met in Environmental Centers
The inception of environmental management activities in this country occurred at different times in history in response to clearly discernible needs. It is this time differential that has played a significant role in the evolution of our segmented approach-water pollution, air pollution, land pollution, solid wastes, and urban planning-to the solution of urban problems. While intensive efforts dedicated to these facets of man's environment are crucial to our health and well-being, a correlative need exists for an integration of environmental management activities into a total system. A significant and novel effort has taken form through a new program initiated in 1965 by the Public Health Service. I refer to the Environmental Health Center program. Recently such centers have come into being-one at Washington University (St. Louis, Mo. See ES&T, May, p. 390), one at the University of Cincinnati (Ohio), one at the University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wis.) one at Cornell, and one at the University of Southern California. Other universities are in the planning and development stages of additional centers. Among these are Harvard University and Louisiana State University. These centers are designed to advance understanding of the man-environment interactions that affect man's health and well-being. They call for a voluntary association of interested scholars, representing a variety of disciplines within a university, to create an innovative, coherent plan for producing knowledge, for training people, and for educating the public-all to the end of managing and improving the quality of man's environment. 532
Environmental Science and Technology
New relationships In the research and special training activities of a center, novel facultystudent relationships create new understanding of the complexity of environmental problems and clarify the diversity and importance of the contributions that must come from many professional fields. A center acquaints people who need to work together and who have been strangers to each other's work in the past. The urban designer and planner, architect, economist, political scientist, behavioral scientist, sociologist, anthropologist, and many others just join forces with the more traditional environmentalists who come from the fields of engineering, medicine, and the biological and physical sciences. A center attempts to give structure and focus to the environmental effort without establishing a new college or a new department. It preserves the freedom and flexibility of the participants while encouraging venturesomeness and spontaneity. The partnership I describe regards the university as its chairman and its own urban area as its laboratory. Most of the research and teaching personnel associated with a center will derive from the applicant university. Its members will retain their titles and academic prerogatives in their respective departments. Moreover, they will participate in departmental as well as center activities. Centers are expected to differ widely in purpose, size, and composition. Since the nature of the group associated with center programs will vary from university to university, the particular approaches designed by each group will also vary. This diversity of scope and approach is indeed desirable, for the di-
