Mayor Alioto Says That Violent Cities Create Civilization

"The best we have is culture has come from the teeming, turbulent sinking cities," San Francisco Mayor Joseph L. Alioto told an English class in the Fogg Norton Lecture Hall yesterday.

Alioto said that it is "out of cities with all their violence that the best in our civilization has come." He also said that his city must be compared to the violent Florence of Machiavelli which he called "the most civilized city in the world."

The mayor also discussed the problem of busting in San Francisco. He said that the coercion involved in busing was more disruptive than any good it produced. He noted that the majority of people belonging to racial minorities in San Francisco had voted against busing.

Alioto said that the ideal in education is to allow young members of minority groups to first learn about their individual culture and then bring the various groups together at a later age.

The "freeway revolt" against indiscriminate paving of the countryside began in San Francisco, Alioto said, when the auto lobby proposed that a freeway be built alongside the "crystal lakes" of the Bay area. Alioto said that he could only reply. "You gotta be kidding."

The mayor compared his job to that of a poet who must "walk the edge of a volcano" trying to analyse the prevailing social currents. Saying that there is always going to be injustice in the world. Alioto urged students "not to give up" and "try as best we can to ameliorate the problems."