The City: Filling the Doughnut

For years, downtown storekeepers in the nation's cities have been standing morosely watching all the ladies go by—to the suburban shopping centers. It is the city's biggest dilemma in the age of the automobile: the stores have the goods, but where does the shopper park? After a few more years of this, says Planner-Architect Victor Gruen, the cities of America are going to be like doughnuts—"all the dough on the outside, and a hole in the middle."

To Victor Gruen, 58, a lively Vienna-born leprechaun, solving the problems of the deteriorating downtown...