This is just a small excerpt from the interview:

Matthias Ries:
Looking back to the times when you were a little boy. From an urban planners perpective, how did cities and villages change over the past 100 years?

Robert E Simon:

Matthias Ries:
That’s because New York has already been one of the most modern cities at that time. Can you remember more rural and pedestrian friendly cities? In the end there has to be a reason why Reston looks like the way it is – it doesn’t have the grid structure of earlier urban plannings for example.

Robert E Simon:

Matthias Ries:
In one of the films about Reston, you state, that the usual suburbs in the 60ies were too homogenious and therefore lacked vitality. Your idea for Reston was to build a suburb as a place to live, work and play. How do you evaluate your goals from a todays perspective?

Robert E Simon:

Matthias Ries:
In 1996 I was an exchange student here in Reston at the SLHS. The first thing I remembered was how wonderful green Reston was, with woods and nature everywhere; however the second thing was, that most of students were driving to the high school with there own car – something fairly uncommon in Europe – and that there was no proper public transportation nor were there any students on a bicycle.
During Restons first phase in the 60ies and 70ies – as far as I can see that from the maps dating 1971 and 1978 – the impact of the car was relatively moderate and cars didn’t play a major role – please correct me if I am wrong. Nowadays it seems that Reston is a town, that is very much based on the use of the car. Hundreds of parking lots in front of every facility, village centers are encircling parking lots and not plazas and thus turned into repetitive shopping centers as everywhere else, every few miles and large roads, like the Baron Cameron Ave, the Reston Parkway or the Wiehle Ave. I quote from your developers brochure from 1962: ” Each of the seven villages will have a center for convenience shopping, but this center is planned to be much more than the usual strip of stores.” Nowadays, at least this is my outsiders impression, the only plaza like village center still is Lake Anne, the others are the strip of stores, you never wanted to have.
What’s your view on this issue?

Robert E Simon:

Matthias Ries:
So you would agree, that your early priority project – the plazas – is currently lacking in Reston?

Robert E Simon: