The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1911-02-05
NEW PROBLEMS
FOR OUR CITIES
Lessons for Future Taught by
Urban Congestion
MORE ROOM NEEDED
Development of Manufacturing Is Re-
F.. observation-disclosures District I'M
portant In Town Planning.
Advance of Civilization
MORE ROOM NEEDED

From the London Saturday Review.
The problem of the town is the prob
lem of civilization. AS society becomes
more complex and more highly organized
men congregate in increasing numbers in
the towns and desert the country.
Urban congestion has gone farthest in
England, where four-ffths of the popu-
lation are town or suburb dwellers; and
the process is going on apace everywhere
else in old communities like France and
China, and in new, sparsely inhabited
areas like Australia and Argentina,
Buenos Ayres and Sydney are capitals
absurdly disproportionate to the popula
lions of their hinterlands. Instead of
lamenting over this fact legislators and
reformers should have recognized 1t in
time and made suitable provision for the
extension and adaptation of the urban
districts. This Is what they have almost
invariably failed to do in the past. I'm
til almost the other day most legislation
seemed to assume that the natural habi-
tat of mankind was the rural village.
The town was a mere accident which
vices. At the best it was considered a
static unit That it was bound to grow
was a conception seldom entertained, and
even at present hardly taken with the
seriousness it deserves.
Tide Swept to Cities
Hence the confusion which arose in the
last century when the development of
manufacturing industry caused wave after
wave of immigration to flow from the
country ia the towns. The invaders came
down in such seate of narrow thorough
fares, mean streets, crowded courts and
lnsatlibrious slums as they found in Lon
don, Paris or Vienna sixty years ago;
just as they had crowded into Rome I'M
der the early Caesars, and into Cairo I'M
der the caliphs. Like causes produce like
effects in all ages. And in all the ages
the problem appears insoluble until some
great systematic, aided by a CONFUSION
of Nature or a strong-handed ruler, is
able to make fresh start.
There exists in the library Of All Souls
college, Oxford, plan of London, drawn
by Christopher Wren, as he would have
constructed it after the great fire. 1t
would have been city something like
Washington, with broad, straight aven-
mes, radiating from circles and triangles,
systematically designed to render traffic
and locomotion easy from the outer
fringes to the center. Wren foresaw the
future The common COUNSEL of 1866 did
not, and London grew up again in the old
haphazard fashion. AS a result its con-
gested thoroughfares are a scandal and a
danger. The human, animal, mechanical
traffic of the twentieth century is poured
through a channel that may possibly
have been adequate in the seventeenth
This anachronism, In one form or an
other, is exhibited in most great cities.
Lesson In Mistakes
The evil has been recognized late, but
not too late. There is hope for the
cities of the future Even if we cannot
do much with the congested central cores
of our older towns, it Is at any rate In
the power of a progressive city govern
ment to see that the former mistakes are
not perpetuated in the outer rings. The
council can acquire undeveloped land in
advence of the jerry builder, and lay out
a systematic plan to which that restless
protector must conform. 1t can see that
adequate provision is left for open spaces,
so that the town of the future may be
more like a garden city, and the hideous
brick-and-mortar nonotony of much of
East and South London rendered impos-
sibe
This Is very helpful though a good deal
more remains to be done. Sir Wilton
Richmond at the recent town planning
conference" held at the Royal Academy
pointed out that the deafness, the black
ness, the want of color of most large towns
is due to the coal smoke. 1t is this that
corrodes the stonework Of st. Pauls and
forbids anything in the nature of real
decorative colors on the outside of the
houses. 1t also prevents us from enjoy
ing the delights of roof gardens, which
In the midst of a crowded urban area
might be a necessary aid to sanitation
and vigor in the quarters OF the poor.
Sometimes all our houses will be heated
and all our cooking done by electricity,
and the million household CRATES pour
ing out carbonic acid into the air will be
closed.
Solution Outside of Towns
But the real solution lies outside the
towns. The town is now changing into
a collection of suburbs and daughter vii
lagos. The process by which it was built
up is being reversed. The people are GO
ing black to the land, though not as ag-
riculturists. The central areas tend to be
preserved for business. shopping and
amusement; and those who work or play
in them will find their homes even fur
Their afleld. Improved facilities for loco
motion will soon make it possible for
even the poor man TO steep twenty or
thirty miles from his work. The city of
the future, instead of being a vast, solid
mass, will have kind OF solar constitu-
ton; 1t will be mere nucleus or grav-
rational center, with it's planets thrown
all around 1t far away among the woods
and fields. Railways, tramways and mo-
tor omnibuses will bind ever larger and
larger tracts of country into this loosely
conpacted suburb city. And it is over the
development Of this kind Of urban COM
munity that legislators and reformers
must watch very carefully, indeed. For
It presents many novel problems and will
need viligant supervision If in its rapid
growth 1t does not reproduce some old
abuses and errors in new forms. Town
planning in its larger sense must include
the regulation and organization of those
wide Inhabited semi-rural areas which