I hope those are examples which Capetown and Pretoria will some day follow. There is no art which, in the long run, is more profitable to a city, nor any field in which good seed, well sown, will ultimately reap a richer harvest. As it is, through not keeping strictly to L'Enfant's plan, when the first enthusiasm died, and the usual cold fit came on, millions are now being, and will have to be, spent for expropriation. Jerry buildings and even railways were built on the architect's vistas. Growth of Modern Towns Modern towns are not created, as old ones often were, by the fiat of a despot.
Democratic communities grow in a less arbitrary manner.
Alexander and the great building emperors, such as Trajan, Hadrian, and Constantine, took very direct methods to establish their new cities. They carried with them in the imperial progresses through their empire architects, armies of workmen and craftsmen. Towns laid out on scientific and artistic principles sprang up like magic. Constantine, in his new capital of the empire, not only endowed this new capital with magnificent architecture and all the arts, but he took more direct measures to force population. If the Roman patrician families refused to migrate to the new capital, the emperor ordered the father of the family away to the frontier in Gaul or Britain.