It's not often that Pittsburgh gets the royal treatment, but on March 4th and 5th 1988, Britain's Prince Charles was her.

To check out the Monongahela Valley.

To get a firsthand look at the abandoned steel mills and the devastated mill towns.

To deliver an important speech to an international conference of architects.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, if newspapers can be believed nowadays, I seem to be gaining a reputation for indulging in controversial speeches of one kind or another.

His visit capped four days of intensive study by a team of outside experts, focusing on solutions to this area's economic decline.

I believe that really healthy, strong, beautiful communities don't just come because somebody comes and paints all the buildings white.

For Pittsburgh, it was a time for voices from the Valley to be heard far and wide.

Steel could have stayed in the valley, but it will never return.

We've got clean air again.

But we don't have any work.

What can we do with the Mon Valley?

And people will say, blow it up.

Pittsburgh has problems, but it's working to solve them.

The prince, the professionals, the people.

All part of an unusual conference with the vital goal of remaking cities.

Hello, I'm Rick Seback.

Remaking cities is a huge task facing urban communities around the world.

Many people consider Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the archetype of the decaying industrial city, so it served as the ideal site for an event called Remaking Cities, a joint effort of the American Institute of Architects and the Royal Institute of British Architects.

The event began with an intensive study of the economic devastated Monongahela Valley by an international team of specialists, who came to propose ways of saving it.

They heard many voices from the valley, not all saying the same thing, but all united by the desire to see the Mon Valley, and ultimately Pittsburgh progress into the 21st century.

Perhaps no international figure is more concerned about the future of cities than His Royal Highness Charles the Third, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cornwall, the future King of England.

Since 1985, Prince Charles has been grabbing headlines with his outspoken views on urban architecture and the quality of life in English cities.

Prince Charles's accusation that architects and planners have done more damage to London than World War II bombers has provoked a controversial reaction.

You have, ladies and gentlemen, to give this much to the Luftwaffe.

When it knocked down our buildings, it didn't replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.

We did that.

Prince Charles arrived in Pittsburgh on Friday, March 4th, 1988.

He was met by wet snow and a select group of VIPs.

There isn't a single world leader who speaks out about cities except one.

And that is the Prince of Wales.

Pittsburgh architect and conference chairman David Lewis was instrumental in getting the Prince of Wales to be honorary chairman and guest speaker at the Remaking Cities Conference.

He was extraordinarily enthusiastic when we invited him to come to Pittsburgh.

He said he'd heard about the city, but long wanted to come.

Cherished an opportunity to come.

When the royal motorcade reached Mount Washington.

Pittsburgh refused to show itself, hiding behind fog and heavy falling snow.

Mayor Caligiuri tried to point out landmarks that would be impressive on a nicer day.

The choice of Pittsburgh as a host city, and case study wasn't random.

Pittsburgh's story holds a lesson for most post-industrial cities.

It's ironic that the city was obscured for the Prince's visit, because at one time, the city was constantly shrouded in smoke and soot.

At its zenith, the steelmaking city of Pittsburgh was called hell with the lid off.

By day, the skies were black with smoke.

By night they glowed like an inferno.

We have to turn our minds back to a city in which the street lights were on at midday.

To a city that was under a pall of smoke.

We laugh to think of a businessman taking a clean shirt to change into at lunchtime.

But beneath the smoke was the pride of a nation, a steel industry unrivaled by any on earth.

It was masterminded by the great entrepreneurs Carnegie, Frick, Phipps.

Steel forged in Pittsburgh, built this country's railroads, bridges and skyscrapers, its military arsenal and its wealth.

According to Franklin Toker, historian, professor, and author of Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait.

This Hell with the lid off notion, which we know about, was not applied as a negative term.

Pittsburgh was the cutting edge of technology in the 19th century.

Smoke was the sign of the city.

The lifeblood of Pittsburgh's industry was the Monongahela River, coursing through a natural ice age valley.

It was ideal for the inexpensive transport of materials.

Surrounded by deep gullies where slag could be dumped, with rolling hills where housing could be stacked close to the mills.

They called it the Mon Valley or the Steel Valley.

It was the stretch from downtown Pittsburgh to Clairton, with ten major mills that employed at their peak over 100,000 workers.

For a century, the Monongahela Valley represented opportunity for thousands of immigrants from all over Europe.

The Mon Valley is the core of the core.

It absolutely represents the tremendous betterment and self-satisfaction that came to the immigrant families who moved there, who gave up the green fields of Czechoslovakia to come to the quite hideous blackness of Rankin and Braddock.

They seem to feel, at the end of it that they had got the best part of a bargain.

A tough as steel work ethic flourished and was handed down through generations in an area where output soon overshadowed environmental concerns.

We have to remember that 40 years ago, this city was both a symbol and the fact of perhaps the worst industrial environment, not only in this country, but in the world.

Probably the most unlivable city.

By the end of the 1940s, wartime production had exhausted the appearance of this town.

The label Smoky City was no longer charming.

In the 1950s, Mayor Lawrence, backed by Pittsburgh's corporate leaders, pulled downtown Pittsburgh from the ashes.

Renaissance One rebuilt the point and introduced better flood and pollution control.

Renaissance Two came 30 years later, spearheaded by Mayor Richard Caligiuri.

For too long we lived on the First Renaissance, and I just wanted to get us moving in a direction to give us a goal again and something to shoot for.

Today, Pittsburgh is the most livable city in America, based on Rand McNally's rating of education, affordable housing and medical technology.

It is also the third largest center for corporate headquarters in America.

Visually, downtown Pittsburgh sparkles like a jewel in the Golden Triangle with buildings like PPG and Oxford Plaza.

Downtown, the buildings are built in the very materials produced by the city.

Steel, aluminum and glass.

And these buildings soar up towards clean skies.

But up the Mon river a few miles, the steel towns that put Pittsburgh on the map have been virtually untouched by improvements.

When the steel industry left, so did many people.

Ray Terza mayor of Duquesne, explains.

We recognized the tax base depreciating.

We recognized loss of revenues due to parking, for example, that went away.

So some 80, some thousand dollars we were taking in on parking went to nothing.

A psychological as well as economic depression now clouds the skies over the Mon valley.

We don't have that smoke any longer.

We've got clean air again, but we don't have any work.

Mel Achtzehn is a former steelwo who now owns an auto parts store in Duquesne.

As project coordinator of the Duquesne Business Advisory Council, Mel is involved with home and business improvement programs to help attract people back to this Mon Valley hometown.

And we got to get them back.

We got to get our future back here.

Out of myself.

How much longer?

Who knows?

If only him above is going to direct that.

But at least we're laying the groundwork for those people.

Other grassroots groups, like the Steel Valley Authority have fought to retain steelmaking and heavy industry.

Bob Ericson is project director of the SVA.

The only reason Pittsburgh exists is because of the steel and related industries.

And if those go, ultimately what you're going to see is Pittsburgh disappearing.

It will simply revert to what it was before the Industrial Revolution, which is an insignificant little river port of about, at that time, about 35,000 people.

The Remaking Cities Conference agrees that something must be done to preserve the Mon Valley.

There is too much history and too much potential here in the thousands of acres of abandoned mill property, in wasted manpower and natural settings.

And there is character here.

The city's diverse ethnic spirit survives, even as the rusting carcasses of the mills fall apart.

I certainly see it as a work dominated city, and for the late 20th century United States, that's a pretty good value.

- As we stand on the threshold of the 21st century, we realized that the that 19th century, the 19th century industrial revolution, has really run its course.

And so we felt that there was a great deal that the world could learn from the example of Pittsburgh.

We could learn about challenge that Pittsburgh faces.

The economic challenge, the need to change our economic base very rapidly in order to survive.

Pittsburghers love it when their city is a leader in any field.

And if Pittsburghers can show the rest of the world how a city can revitalize itself, remake itself, they'll be proud to do it, with a strong ethnic heritage.

Immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Blacks from the southern states.

Pittsburghers like this town, and they'll work hard to put it in shape.

There's plenty of determination.

And one man who exemplifies that quality is George DeBolt, a native of one of those devastated Mon Valley towns.

Homestead in the Mon Valley.

A once vigorous steel town where generations of families made their living.

I come from down the valley where Mr.. When you're done, they bring you up to do like your daddy done.

When the homestead work shut down less than a decade ago, it put thousands out of work and damaged the economy of local businesses.

Now people are wondering what can be done with this town and others like it along the Monongahela River.

I've talked to people who will come into the into the Mon valley and ask them what can we do with the Mon Valley?

And people will say, blow it up.

Bulldoze it.

What can you do with the Mon Valley?

Leave it.

I think people tell me that.

George DeBolt is one who did not leave the valley.

Instead, this owner of a travel and bus company in Homestead chose to stay and make a difference.

And there was a saying back in the 60s when I was going to school, if not us, who?

And if the DeBolt family was not going to make the commitment to this valley where they had been for so long, then who would?

I'm third generation.

My grandfather was George DeBolt and my father was John Pierpont Morgan DeBolt, and I'm George DeBolt.

We are the oldest surviving business in Homestead.

We were the second oldest business until the mills closed down.

So we've been at the same location since 1898.

So we've gone from the wagon era, to trucks to a moving company, to a steel hauling company, and then into the bus business.

Not only has George kept the family business intact, he has been a driving force in revitalizing the surrounding town.

As an active member of numerous task forces, George DeBolt has proven that citizen involvement can affect changes for the better.

His participation in the Homestead Economic Revitalization Committee revived the town's business district.

In the 100 block, you can see the trees and the decorative lights and some of the buildings, some of the facades that we helped improve.

We had an empty furniture store here.

We got the Goodwill Industries of Pittsburgh to move in there and occupy the whole building.

So if you drive down Eighth Avenue today, you'll see that even though the mill is shut down, the main business district looks pretty good.

There are other areas in Homestead that are earmarked for progress.

The old Tyndall building will soon house a technology council, but George believes the biggest change must be made in the way people perceive this place.

The people have looked at the Mon Valley a certain way for 100 years.

The Mon Valley was where steel was made.

Period.

We need to get people to look at the valley with fresh eyes, with a clean perspective, if you will, and consider the modern valley as a place for other enterprises besides making steel.

Such optimism as George's is hard to imagine when all around Homestead are bitter reminders of steelmaking and its downfall.

From the balcony of the building that is both his office and his home, George DeBolt sees a constant reminder of what was.

I miss the feel of it.

There was something very solitary about working here at night by yourself with the noises of the mill.

And it was just like you in the mill.

Some people would look at the empty mills, the rusting sheds, and see it as a problem.

I see it as an opportunity.

So along this stretch of the Monongahela Valley, you have a thousand acres of opportunity for development.

But the greatest hope for this area is its people.

Though many young families have moved away, George DeBolt has faith in those who remain.

Many times, an outside developer like I can do much more harm to an area than he does good because he doesn't realize.

But by the same token, sometimes you get an impartial opinion at least, or a recommendation... - They really do care and they're hard working, and they do have a commitment to try to make things better.

Now we need some help.

George DeBolt is symbol and shining example of how one man can make a difference.

He is what Prince Charles advocates when he calls for involvement by the citizenry.

Though the Homestead titan of transportation and the future King of England are worlds apart, they share a firm commitment to rebuilding industrial towns.

The Prince and I are the same age, and I remember as a little boy saying, reading about him and saying, oh, he's the same age as I am.

We'd probably get along very well.

I think he really cares about people, but I think he is committed to making a difference in the urban environment and making a difference as to how people live, in what conditions they live.

I like living here, but you know, this family's been here for a long time and we expect to be here for just as long.

George DeBolt not only had the privilege of touring his hometown with the Prince of Wales, but he was also citizen advisor to the team of experts who came to study the Mon Valley.

They donated their work as a public service.

This team called itself a RUDAT, a regional slash urban design assistance team.

They were asked to come up with ideas exciting as well as practical to attract prosperity back to the valley.

And Burton Franklin.

But we got a page.

Bluestone supposed to meet me here.

I left a message at the gate.

On February 25th, 1988, the RUDAT team arrived in Pittsburgh to be the core of the Remaking Cities Conference.

Probably an easy way to describe as like a Swat team of people who are coming in, professionals who are going to work with the local community.

When these steel mills were in existence... - This was the largest group ever assembled by the AIA in the 20 year history of 99 RUDATs.

These were British and American experts on urban planning and architecture, all volunteers whose joint mission was to study the Mon Valley sites of Homestead, Carrie Furnace, Duquesne and McKeesport.

The team would advise how to update these sites, to integrate them into the surrounding neighborhoods, and to reunite the entire valley.

At the moment, there is a vacuum and we're trying to do something about filling that vacuum.

There aren't recommendations.

People don't know directions to go.

The RUDAT would propose actions based on the Allegheny Commission Report, a broad overview of the Mon Valley's problems compiled a year ago by Allegheny County.

Ray Reeves of the county, says the $50,000 it cost to bring in the RUDAT is small change for securing the future.

For about a dozen people who are tops in their profession from around the country.

You couldn't buy that for $50,000.

The specialist made Bishop Boyle High School home base in Homestead, but this was not to be a study done behind desks.

With boxed lunches in hand, the team boarded a bus for what felt like an eerie Universal Studios tour through the back lots, where the Story of Steel was played out.

This was the steel production facility that produced pipe, and it was called the National Tube Works back in the 1890s.

Inside the sites, it was clear that steel could never return here.

There has been a lot of vandalism, there's been vandalism, and big, big people killed vandalizing.

USX had already been cannibalizing equipment and buildings, selling off what they could and demolishing other parts, leaving the area wide open for imaginative uses.

Of course, big and small developers are already eyeing these areas.

Not surprisingly, the RUDAT met with these developers in a closed door session.

What was unusual was that the RUDAT took pains to meet with everyday citizens to hear their needs and desires for the future.

My concern is rebuilding the moral and social fiber of our communities.

This area is a union area and it's going to continue to be a union area because that's the way people feel around here.

For a guy who couldn't find work, left a note for his wife and right in his living room, put a gun in his mouth and blew his head apart.

Why don't you direct government to start helping people, putting them back to work?

I would prefer that you look at these steel mills at this time of the year as a symphony in gray.

And this thing means a lot to our people in Homestead.

So if there's anything you can do to preserve it.

And we sure will appreciate it.

In the National Science Foundation with a load, it has a lot of low base.

Okay, I guess I can tilt it out.

- On the fourth night, the RUDAT burned the midnight oil drafting, discussing and writing their report to be published the following day.

Tony is, we think, writing something here.

No, this is the South.

No.

The north face, McKeesport.

You'll be able to hit people pragmatically and say, okay, now here's the plan.

We're ready to hit with.

And here's something we can really start with and get going.

It's the hardest few days I've ever spent.

The long hours paid off in a vision of the future that is colored with common sense as well as whimsy.

Homestead would become the gateway to the Mon, with an amusement park next door to a crystal palace made from an old mill building.

And our proposal is to strip the corrugated sheeting off it totally, and to infill parts of the building with glass and create a wonderful exhibition center, greenhouse, theater.

Instead of a sad, crumbling tombstone, Carrie Furnace would be restored as a proud monument to the labor and genius that made Pittsburgh great.

Similarly, Duquesnes Dorothy, six and northern mill buildings would be saved as a museum to industry.

The immense ore pit would become a cement lake for sailing dinghies and other small craft.

The remaining Duquesne works are best suited for conversion into a science and technology center, with a resource recycling plant possible in the very near future.

Grant Street would be extended to allow housing on the riverfront once again.

Capping off the valley would be McKeesport.

National works huge mills could be shown up to house an immense trademark for flea markets, used cars or a Pottery barn.

Most exciting is the half mile auto race track, playfully dubbed McSpeedport.

- And the idea was that we said Mon back to McSpeedport.

This is fun.

You have to have some fun doing these things.

The entire valley would be united by a monorail, public transport system, and a universal riverfront with marinas to beautify and return access of the waterway to the people.

The RUDAT suggests immediately turning the mill sites into garden parks, landscapes that can be converted when developers are ready.

The idea is to remove the decrepit structures that only serve as a psychological block for the future.

This is not a quick fix.

This is a process that will get communities from where they are in their planning process to a next step.

Recognizing there's still many, many, many more steps.

But first, elected officials from all the towns must establish zoning control over the USX property and meet with state legislators to organize tax and cost sharing River authority.

The Prince of Wales honored the RUDAT with a visit.

He appeared enthusiastic about what they accomplished in less than a week.

In 1985, the Prince of Wales suddenly gave a speech.

Nobody expected it to happen, in which he voiced the same ideas, the same concerns.

This gave enormous impetus not just to to those of us in this country, but also to our colleagues in Britain.

The romantic image of the Steel Age still holds many in its grip, but in reality, the smoky city was not Paradise.

The Mon Valley must honor the past, but look to the future.

To the skeptics, RUDAT member Tony McGann said if his hometown of Liverpool could turn itself around, so could Pittsburgh.

I suggest to you, if you want to keep this area from dying or whatever I suggest to you, you get off your backsides, take your coat off and get stuck in.

With the delivery of these ambitious suggestions and provocative ideas, The RUDAT has completed its mission to provide the Mon Valley with a blueprint for its future.

The RUDAT doesn't have to answer its critics.

It doesn't have to figure out how to finance these plans.

That could keep local politicians busy for a while.

And no one promises that these plans will be carried out.

They may seem unrealistic to some, plastic pipe dreams, but if some of these plans seem outrageous, Pittsburghers need to remember how innovative Mayor Lawrence may have seemed once, when he proposed putting a park where railroads and warehouses once stood at the point.

Big ideas can inspire action.

At the end of the Remaking Cities conference, everyone looked to Prince Charles for inspiration.

The Prince addressed the closing plenary session of the conference at the Benedum Center.

At the time, the Benedum stage was filled with the set for a new production of Macbeth on its way to Broadway.

Oddly enough, in his student days, the Prince had once played the role of Macbeth.

This day, however, his concern was not acting, but architecture.

Ladies and gentlemen, I need hardly say that it is an enormous pleasure, as far as I'm concerned, to have this opportunity of jetting by Concorde over to Pittsburgh, and to have the opportunity to see something of what you are trying to achieve here.

Sadly, yesterday when I arrived in the midst of an unbelievable blizzard, I was unable really to see a large proportion of the city that David Lewis wanted to show me.

And all the way in the car, he was getting more and more frustrated at being unable to carry out the original program, made even worse, I can hardly tell you by the fact that I was 40 minutes late, but what I've decided to do is, police permitting to drive backwards out of the city on departure.

So that I can see that very important view through the tunnel, which he was telling me about.

So don't be alarmed if you do see me reversing out of the city.

It's not a technical malfunction in a Rolls-Royce, but purely a desire to see Pittsburgh properly.

Now, listen, gentlemen, if newspapers can be believed nowadays, I seem to be gaining a reputation for indulging in controversial speeches of one kind or another.

As a result, I am constantly fascinated by what I am going to say next.

The other day in in Britain, I had intended to make a speech in our upper chamber of the Parliament called the House of Lords, on a subject that was clearly becoming daily, more emotive and controversial.

I decided to abandon any idea of speaking when I read what I was going to say in a newspaper.

Needless to say, they chose the wrong theme.

But it does illustrate the problem you face if you speak frequently in public.

The problem of being taken out of context.

I remember hearing years ago of a visit to New York by a former Archbishop of Canterbury, who bore a strong resemblance to one's childhood image of God, and whom I remember well, not God, but the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Apparently, on arrival in New York, he was asked by the assembled media if he was going to visit any nightclubs in the city.

Are there any nightclubs in New York?

The Archbishop inquired.

Headlines in next day's newspapers blared out in huge letters.

Archbishop asks, are there any nightclubs in New York?

However, I am used to being taken out of context nowadays.

Sometimes, I must admit, as an amateur at such gatherings as this, I may even look out of context.

So learning to live in a contextual vacuum is no doubt good for the soul.

But as a mere professional heir to the throne, with a layman's concern for urban deprivation and the quality of the built environment, I'm only two conscious of being surrounded here by acres of experts.

From social scientists and corporate leaders to neighborhood environmentalists and even crisis managers.

And at this precise moment, the latter kind of expert would be hugely appreciated by your honorary chairman.

Although there is no one who appreciates or values experts more than I do, and I'm lucky enough to meet many of the most interesting ones all over the world and talk to them.

I do believe that it is important not to be intimidated by them.

This, I need hardly say, has happened in the recent past.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, weve have had 40 years of practice at urban design and comprehensive planning and development, particularly so in the United Kingdom.

The results have been pretty disastrous, often with the best intentions.

But people, I think, have felt this sense of disaster subconsciously, having been told so firmly what was good for them, what was fashionable and intellectually acceptable, what was artistically correct and contemporary.

Most of us were cowed into feeling that we were frightful, reactionary imbeciles, even to consider that what was being produced was often nonsense and thoroughly inhuman.

Now, however, there is, I think, a growing awareness that it is all right not to be ashamed of such feelings.

Now, this is not to say, of course, that experts are not needed.

On the contrary, they are absolutely vital to the whole process of urban regeneration and the search for contemporary solutions to the appalling problems of dying traditional industries, urban decay and the wasted lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

This is where the regional urban design assistance teams have been playing such a fundamental part in this complicated field.

I have the greatest admiration for the way they go about their business, and for the astonishing selflessness of the team members who are unpaid volunteers working day and night with only four days to produce their recommendations.

Let us make no mistake about this.

The subject you have all been discussing here this week, Remaking Cities, is one that raises incredibly complicated issues.

I found myself becoming involved in these issues almost by accident, a natural concern brought about through frequent journeys around Britain, visits to some of the worst areas of inner city deprivation, and an effort to put myself into the position of those who found themselves in such situations led me to voice a very few basic thoughts on the subject.

Little did I know what I was going to unleash by such remarks, but having done so, I very soon became aware of the complexity of the whole issue.

I also began to realize that so much is subjective when it comes to taste, for instance.

I began to wonder what really did make the best sort of urban environment.

What was likely to produce the greatest sum of human happiness when it came to the design of modern cities?

Who is going to decide anyway?

How do we avoid making similar mistakes to those of the past?

With the speed of technological advance being so great, will we be designing now a built in obsolescence for 30 or 40 years time, merely to hear our children or grandchildren castigating us for getting it wrong?

There are many other questions, of course, to be asked, but I do believe there is less chance of getting things wrong if sensible and effective ways are found of consulting the existing inhabitants of our cities.

This is where people like David Lewis and Rod Hackney, or perhaps I should say Roderick Hackney, the president of our ABA, have been playing such crucial and pioneering roles.

They and others have been trying to find a way to an acceptable, livable human environment for everyone.

Perhaps this way we shall encourage people's concern for the continuity of the past, for conservation and a search for an acceptable, if reminiscent vernacular by architects, which will help to reinforce people's sense of belonging and involvement in places.

If we help to recreate places where people can walk in comfort and security and could look about and be entertained by buildings that are tuned to the eye, if we encourage a renaissance of craftsmanship and the art of embellishing buildings for man's pleasure, and for the sheer joy in beauty itself as opposed to mere functionalism, then we shall have made our cities centers of civilization once again.

Clearly, urban regeneration has to be fueled by a renewed economic incentive.

But if the money motive for a development is the only serious force in urban renewal, then we shall not succeed.

Building is about more than just money and market forces.

Urban renewal cannot be left entirely to the kind of developer who lacks an awareness of the type of old fashioned philanthropy that was evident in a city such as Pittsburgh.

When universities like the Carnegie Mellon were founded.

In Britain, we have been learning a lot from the United States experience and have been trying to adopt many of your partnership approaches to our peculiarly British problems.

Having seen something of the remarkable work that has been going on in the city of Lowell, near Boston, I managed to arrange for a group of Americans to come over and advise us on the best way to rejuvenate the old textile mill town of Halifax in Yorkshire.

From the start, we were convinced that it was essential to break that sense of hopelessness, which naturally afflicts people who have seen their whole economic base shattered in front of their eyes and who have experienced unemployment on a huge scale.

I was also convinced that I had to visit the town as frequently as I could, to try and stir up a sense of enthusiasm amongst the inhabitants.

I then had to make sure that I dragged continuing numbers of captains of industry to Halifax to show them the very real possibilities that exist there.

Gradually, 1 or 2 initiatives got off the ground, combined with restoration of shopfronts in the town center and help for small business start ups and so on.

More and more projects are now getting off the ground, and people in Halifax are starting to think there is a future once again, and have seen how the rather attractive industrial buildings from the past can be restored and converted to for present day use.

Now the problems in Halifax are very small in comparison to the vastness of the problem here in Pittsburgh.

But in each case, there are a lot of people who must feel that things are taking a very long time to change, which is always the great difficulty.

Now, however, through partnerships between the public and private sectors, possibilities and opportunities for the future are being identified.

The physical relics of the past may seem like a huge liability to the people of the Mon Valley, but in fact they can provide a unique and important asset, one that can be the basis of a new spirit of pride and cooperation between the different valley towns.

I would even go so far as to suggest that it might be worth preserving certain aspects of one old steel mill, such as the Carrie Furnace, as something of increasing historical interest as the years go by.

In Britain, I've been trying to persuade people that they should look upon the old industrial buildings of the past as a real asset, which, once restored and converted, can ensure the town or city has a special character of its own.

But still, planners and developers persist in destroying so much that is a real intrinsic value with a charm that is indefinable.

We need more architects too who understand how to rehabilitate old buildings.

I note in the RUDAT Report, a proposal to convert one of the mill buildings at Homestead to a second Crystal Palace, which I would have thought was an imaginative idea.

For those of you who have seen the Crystal Palace.

But ladies and gentlemen, when all is said and done, however, it seems to me that the most essential feature of this whole debate is how to recreate communities.

At the heart of the question, seems to me, lies the human individual, and how his surroundings are designed and laid out can make a huge difference to his state of mind and to his behavior.

Man seems to function best in small, recognizable units, hence the village where he is part of a community of people to which he can relate.

It is the anonymity created by postwar urban design, particularly in the United Kingdom, which seems to have produced a breakdown in the normal functioning of a community.

Maybe I am not the best person to make observations in this case, but I have always felt that it must be marginally bearable to be poor if you are part of a mutually supportive community, but if you are poor and lack the support of a community, it must make life intolerable.

So let's therefore help people to live in friendly surroundings that value the individual as part of a wider community, and which make it possible for children to grow up respecting other people's property.

Let us, above all, restore people's sense of pride.

Let us bring life back to areas of our cities which become deadly and dangerous places at night, by making it possible for people to live in such areas.

Modern industry and high tech businesses make it more possible to look again at the traditional concept of a city where the zoning of residential areas and places of work was somewhat less rigid than in the urban layout we have become used to in this in this century.

Of course, it is all very well my talking like this.

The trouble is how to translate words into action, how to restore economic activity, how to rehabilitate the shattered environment of areas such as you have all been discussing at this conference, and how to bring new hope to demoralized communities.

Many people may wonder, with perfectly justifiable skepticism, whether a four day RUDAT study can hold out any hope for an area like the Mon Valley, whose malaise, as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says, has profound economic causes.

It was rewarding, therefore, to hear on my visits yesterday of the tangible success of the first Anglo-American RUDAT, which produced a new and exciting vision for the economic, environmental and social regeneration of the valley.

It seems to me that it is essential that all the communities along the valley should now become involved at a grassroots level in determining their own future.

In much the same way as some of the more successful urban regeneration projects in England, which operate under the banner of Community Architecture.

From their experience in Pittsburgh, the British team is now so enthused with the RUDAT process that they have already invited their American colleagues to participate in a similar initiative in Newcastle upon Tyne.

At this stage, I want to emphasize a point which I believe is absolutely crucial to the whole question of regeneration.

This hall is crammed full, almost of professional people, whose very considerable skills and talents amount to a formidable potential for solving problems.

It has been my experience in the UK that the professional enabler, whether an architect or whatever, can have a dramatic effect on a community by acting as an honest broker to bring a whole range of public agencies, commercial corporations, voluntary bodies and central government together to sit down and work out solutions in partnership with the local inhabitants.

Such dedicated professionals, by their remarkable willingness to live, to actually live and work within the local community.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the most vital factor, I believe, can bring the kind of leadership based on knowledge of the whole bureaucratic system, which is the secret ingredient that provides the catalyst for action.

All over the United Kingdom, I have come across considerable skepticism about this approach.

People don't believe it until they see it for themselves, but I know it works.

The secret is to enthuse people who have become demoralized and perhaps resigned to the hopelessness of their position through professional leadership and through helping people themselves to overcome problems.

This may be through helping them to rehabilitate their own houses, for instance, which in turn gives them newfound confidence through the acquisition of a skill.

Through confidence comes hope, through hope comes new ideas and new economic activity.

This, together with the coordination of the private and public sectors, which can provide pump priming resources, ensures that a renaissance can take place.

I have seen it with my own eyes.

I have talked to those involved, and I have seen the skepticism evaporate when people discover how this approach can work.

But it requires a change in attitude, which is not easy for those brought up to view things differently.

Above all, it requires people like yourselves who are concerned enough to want to make a contribution and who are humble enough to make it in this way.

The final point I would make is that when talking about remaking cities or bringing new economic life to certain parts of them, we must never forget that at the heart of the question is the human individual.

A person who is more than just a cog in a gigantic utilitarian machine.

Someone who responds, often subconsciously, to things of the spirit, as well as as of the material.

As von Mises, the Austrian economist and philosopher, said on one occasion, every individual must derive a psychological as well as an economic profit from his actions, or else he could not act at all.

So, les and gentlemen, let's go out and show the skeptics what can be achieved.

Prince Charles and his concern for the future of cities served as a fitting conclusion to the many activities involved in the Remaking Cities Conference.

Obviously, the real work of revitalizing urban areas will take more than a few days.

Pittsburgh's lucky to have had a royal visit to honor the city, and a RUDAT report to propose grand visions from architects dreams.

Speedway's, Crystal Palaces, riverfront and festival gardens where rusty old mills stand idly now.

It's exciting to rethink a city and a challenge to get something done.

All this international scrutiny and media attention may stimulate some big thinking, some reworking and eventually the remaking of a city whose citizens refuse to give up.