We make special mention of settled work as the work of old age, because, even though it must begin early on in a person’s life, it is in old age that having such work becomes a necessity. The crisis of old age, life integrity versus despair and cynicism, can only be solved by a person engaged in some form of settled work —see life cycle (26). People who have the opportunity to develop such work and to relate it in some appropriate way to the world about them, will find their way to a successful resolution of this crisis as they grow old; others will sink into despair.
Therefore:
Give each person, especially as he grows old, the chance to set up a workplace of his own, within or very near his home. Make it a place that can grow slowly, perhaps in the beginning sustaining a weekend hobby and gradually becoming a complete, productive, and comfortable workshop.
. . . this pattern forms the backbone of the distribution of towns (2), which requires that scores of smaller country towns support the larger towns and cities of the region.
❖ ❖ *J*
The big city is a magnet. It is terribly hard for small towns to stay alive and healthy in the face of central urban growth.
During the last 30 years, 30 million rural Americans have been forced to leave their farms and small towns and migrate to crowded cities. This forced migration continues at the rate of 800,000 people a year. The families that are left behind are not able to count on a future living in the country: about half of them live on less than $3000 a year.
And it is not purely the search for jobs that has led people away from small towns to the cities. It is also a search for information, for connection to the popular culture. In Ireland and India, for example, lively people leave the villages where there is some work, and some little food, and they go to the city, looking for action, for better work, for a better life.
Unless steps are taken to recharge the life of country towns, the cities will swamp those towns which lie the nearest to them; and will rob those which lie furthest out of their most vigorous inhabitants. What are the possibilities?
1. Economic reconstruction. Incentives to business and industry to decentralize and locate in small towns. Incentives to the inhabitants of small towns to begin grassroots business and production ventures. (See, for example, the bill introduced by Joe Evins in the House of Representatives, Congressional Record —House, October 3, 1967, 27687.)
2. Zoning. Zoning policy to protect small towns and the countryside around them. Greenbelt zoning was defined by Ebenezer Howard at the turn of the century and has yet to be taken seriously by American governments.
3. Social services. There are connections between small towns
BUILDINGS
Arrange the workshop, physically, along the lines defined by home workshop (157), and make the workshop open to the street, a part of local street life—private terrace on the STREET (140), OPENINC TO THE STREET (165). . . .
| 157 HOME WORKSHOP |
|---|
 |
737
. . . at the center of each house cluser (37) and in your own home (79) there needs to be one room or outbuilding, which is freely attached and accessible from the outside. This is the workshop. The following pattern tells us how important workshops are, how widely they ought to be scattered, how omnipresent, and when they are built, how easy to reach, and how public they should always be. It helps to reinforce the patterns of SCATTERED WORK (9), NETWORK OF LEARNING (18), and MEN AND WOMEN (27).
As the decentralization of work becomes more and more effective, the workshop in the home grows and grows in importance.
We have explained in scattered work (9), network of LEARNING (l8), MEN AND WOMEN (27), SELF-GOVERNING workshops and offices (80), and other patterns that we imagine a society in which work and family are far more intermingled than today; a society in which people—businessmen, artists, craftsmen, shopkeepers, professionals—work for themselves, alone and in small groups, with much more relation to their immediate surroundings than they have today.
In such a society, the home workshop becomes far more than a basement or a garage hobby shop. It becomes an integral part of every house; as central to the house’s function as the kitchen or the bedrooms. And we believe its most important characteristic is its relationship to the public street. For most of us, work life is relatively public. Certainly, compared to the privacy of the hearth, it is a public affair. Even where the public relationship is slight, there is something to be gained, both for the worker and the community, by enlarging the connection between the two.
In the case of the home workshop, the public nature of the work is especially valuable. It brings the workshop out of the realm of backyard hobbies and into the public domain. The people working there have a view of the street; they are exposed
to the people passing by. And the people passing learn something about the nature of the community. The children especially are enlivened by this contact. And according to the nature of the work, the public connection takes the form of a shopfront, a driveway for loading and unloading materials, a work bench in the open, a small meeting room . . .
We therefore advocate provision for a substantial workshop with all the character of a real workplace and some degree of connection to the public street: at least a glancing connection so that people can see in and out; and perhaps a full connection, like an open shop front.
Therefore:
Make a place in the home, where substantial work can be done; not just a hobby, but a job. Change the zoning laws to encourage modest, quiet work operations to locate in neighborhoods. Give the workshop perhaps a few hundred square feet; and locate it so it can be seen from the street and the owner can hang out a shingle.
Give the workshop a corner where it is especially nice to work
-LIGHT ON TWO SIDES (159), WORKSPACE ENCLOSURE ( I 8 3) ; a
strong connection to the street—opening to the street (165), windows overlooking life (192); perhaps a place to work in the sun on warm days—sunny place ( i 61). For the shape of the workshop and its construction, start with the shape of indoor space (191). . . .
| 158 OPEN STAIRS* |
|---|
 |
740
. . . most of the last patterns—rooms to rent (153), teenager’s COTTAGE (154), SETTLED WORK (156), HOME WORKSHOP (157)—can be upstairs, provided that they have direct connections to the street. Far more generally, it is true that many of the households, public services, and workgroups given by earlier patterns can be successful when they lie upstairs, only if they are given direct connections to the street. For instance, in a work community self-governing workshops and offices (8o),
SMALL SERVICES WITHOUT RED TAPE (8 I ) , SMALL WORK GROUPS
(148) all require direct access to the public street when they are on the upper storys of a building. And in the individual households-HOUSE FOR A SMALL FAMILY (76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE
(77), house for one person (78) also need direct connections to the street, so people do not need to go through lower floors to get to them. This pattern describes the open stairs which may be used to form these many individual connections to the street. They play a major role in helping to create pedestrian streets (lOO).