. . . And the City's

Agronomists have managed to calculate and predict crop disasters, but when it comes to urban blights, no one has devised a coherent method for measuring them, let alone overcoming them. Poverty, crime, narcotics, pollution and sheer physical decay are the new locusts, as terrifyingly confusing as Egypt's plagues.

Last week in a letter to the New York Times, a reader named Richard Shramko made an engaging if wistful suggestion: the creation of a "Quality of Life Index." Like a weather service temperature-humidity index, the Q.L.I. would take into account "air and water pollution, the unemployed and those on welfare, the adequacy of housing and medical care, the acres of accessible park land, crime and auto accidents, the years it takes to settle a lawsuit, the presence of minority group members in American institutions and American soldiers abroad."

It is an intelligent idea, something like compelling a man with chronic heart trouble to have a periodic electrocardiogram. The graph might be depressing, but it might make urban anxieties more susceptible to solution. It might also provide voters with a new standard: if the Q.L.I, fell below, say 75%, they might decide to throw out a mayor or a Governor or a President.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.