William Rogers, chairman of the Minneapolis Committee on Urban Environment, speaking at The Livable Winter City Conference. Rogers joined planners, architects and others from cold weather climates gathered at the Spring Hill Center in Wayzata to discuss "The Livable Winter City", with focus on how the Twin Cities can be made more liveable in winter.
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30 year ago and I became chairman of the Minneapolis committee on Urban environment. I was standing on the top of the City Hall Parking Lot Ralph rapson looking out over. What was a rather dismal Seno's around 5 it is today, but I said, I don't think much about what we should look like in winter. So that gave me a cube to do something about official City Commission of the city Minneapolis to improve the appearance of the city.So I started asking questions and I'm an amateur and my political scientist international relations Ralph's wraps until it's alright for amateurs to be engaged in this activity. I start asking questions of my fellow crew members and others. And as you said Harry, I got in the newspapers now use the interviews from Canadian national radio on CBS has all kinds of radio stations for calling and I use those occasions to ask the radio announcers if they had any idea Western Montreal when I pick up ideas and WCCO pretty soon. They started to kind of take shape and we put together a little document which is in this folder you have which are the guidelinesEnvironment this conference than you want to know what really behind it is really deceptively simple. We want to be sure that at the end of this meaning of possible. We collected all the possible ideas. We can form in the city the winter City more livable and then we've got his start on the process was going to be pretty hard of getting other people who get things done to put these plans and ideas into the next stage after this is action.The Raven Formula works right now is that is the plants a tree who builds a building who buys an Overcoat should think what it's going to look like in too many of our plans are made to pay either in summer or in rooms without windows. And we see these nice looking fans of buildings with deciduous trees sketch dinner around 9, so I'm into people walking by and summer clothes and looks just hot but the question is, how's it going to look in January in Minneapolis that sprinkler catalog about January to look at all those beautiful ornamentals and you think that's get those boxes were getting is that we need more Evergreens because evergreens are Evergreen and cover a lot of unsightly things not just in the summer. This is what we're really talking about and want to call Urban Aesthetics, but we're concentrating on the winter. We realized it's Minneapolis many other cities are summer cities to we haven't forgotten that but when is the game at the present time? The structure of the concepts and that has to do with things that grow or what kinds of plants do I put in the ground that are going to look good in Winter and I've learned a lot about ever games in the last year is going to talk about them and other attractive plants for the winter. The second thing is the built environment. I have picked up some fancy vocabulary winter and we have an excellent example right here in this room of the filler from Edmond Bacon's Hometown, Philadelphia schoolchildren responding to an article in the National Scholastic Magazine by sending me pictures of how the city should look in Winter and the buildings and you'll see them around around this room. And there's some other color seems to be coming up as one of the answers to the problem of the built environment homes in Minneapolis. I think I'm conscious that I've been looking at them against the snow. It is so weird pastel Dan i m afraid of it people look at me funny when I mention I hope we'll get to the bottom of what kind of colors look good against the snow through with this meeting. Turn the concept of Outreach lot of ideas are coming together is what might be called The People environment to the human environment on their way people look in the winter, but what they do in the winter overcoats in Moscow in the winter. I want had a rust colored coat and everybody looked at her and she couldn't get a London why they were looking at it because she dared to wear a bright colored coat in the winter unheard of another woman and she spends the same thing that I talk to wants to the man who ran the ice Follies who lives in Minneapolis and he told me about Sonja henie. Who came out of her hotel with a fur coat that was a pure white ermine with all the way down to ankles and people looked at her and then she went upstairs and came down with a black fur coat when she had even longer for her and so on but did anyway we seem to be getting the idea that maybe colors on clothes are important part of making a winter scene little more active part of the human environment. And this is one of the topics we've been hearing about silly ideas. It came up like pink steam just jokes. I have turned out to have a basis. In fact, we found a professor at MIT a woman sculptors who does pink does steam Fountain how would she replaces water fountains with steam? And she, there is a steam Fountain sculptures available. I tried to get her and get the steam Fountain because the one that's with water only works half of the Year solo ideas as to actually come up.