Finite & Soluble

Lyndon Johnson is not Kublai Khan. He cannot simply decree the Great Society. In what is probably the most highly urbanized nation the world has ever known, the foundations of a better life must be laid by and within the very cities that are seemingly faced with an infinitude of utterly insoluble problems. That these problems are both finite and soluble was implicit last week in the diverse yet apposite experiences of four of the greatest cities in the U.S.

Los Angeles, seared by the racial violence that threatens nearly every city, was struggling to define and remedy the wrongs that drove its Negroes to savagery last month. In Detroit, where there are long, rancorous memories of racial friction, a young, vigorous mayor who was renominated last week is work ing imaginatively to make a happier and more beautiful city for all its people. New Orleans, the Crescent City that habitually bubbles like a Jeroboam of Mumm, struggled agonizingly back from the flat despair sowed by Hurricane Betsy. And in New York, after years of soul-deadening drift, the voters leaned forward for what looked like the first no-holds-barred, two-party mayoral contest in years.

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