Willow Run, General Electric's enormous installations at Louisville and Syracuse, the Pentagon, Boeing in Seattle, Douglas and Lockheed in Los Angeles, the new automobile assembly plants everywhere -- none of these is substantially served by any sort of conventional mass rapid transit. They are all suburban plants, relying on the roads to keep them supplied with workers. And wherever the new thruways go up their banks are lined by neat glass and metal and colored brick light industry. The drive along Massachusetts' Route 128, the by-pass which makes an arc about twenty miles from downtown Boston, may be a vision of the future.

The future could be worse. The plants along Route 128 are mostly well designed and nicely set against the New England rocks and trees. They can even be rather grand, like Edward Land's monument to the astonishing success of Polaroid. But they deny the values of the city -- the crowded, competitive, tolerant city, the ``melting pot'' which gave off so many of the most admirable American qualities. They are segregated businesses, combining again on one site the factory and the office, drawing their work force from segregated communities. It is interesting to note how many of the plants on Massachusetts' Route 128 draw most of their income either from the government in non-competitive cost-plus arrangements, or from the exploitation of patents which grant at least a partial monopoly.