Long may we live! Long may we live!

The City of the Future, The Future of the City: An Urban-planning and Socio-cultural Study of Urban Community, published in 1946, was a plea for marrying individual personal development with an awareness of social responsibility. It perceived the local community as the link between the individual home and society at large.

In order to promote maximum integration of the individual in the collective, a community must not only have everyday amenities such as schools and shops, but must also provide housing for all sorts of households, including single people, couples, families and pensioners. The publication attributed an important role to the elderly within the community and family life because they no longer work. But this role presupposes that they continue living in the community in a 'very compact dwelling on the ground floor, designed specially for the elderly, yet situated amid normal dwellings so as not to hinder contact with family and children or impede participation in everyday life'. This community ideal is based on maximum integration of the elderly in society.