The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-06-08

~ ERLIN, June 7.-(specia1)-Eu
N ropes social reformers are busy
- planning cities of the future. This
means a revival. because the much
doomed town planning" has been dis
credited of late and there has been ten
dency to revert to the systemless way of
England under which cities grew SYM
metrically as the result of organic laws
Now town planning has again come into
its own; but it is a different and wider
kind of town planning. which is to reject
the police rigidity of the past, and plan
only within elastic limits stretchable by
citizens of the future to suit now un-
fcreseen contingencies.
The discrediting of the former kinds
of town planning in Germany and Aus
tria is a result of the recognition that
planned towns have turned out worse
than the unplanned Germany's towns
are contrasted with England's to the ad-
vantage of England and the contrast is
backed by the lower English disease and
mortality rate. by the high German child
mortality, and by an overcrowdng of
German working class families which is
far worse than the worst London slums
present. The town planners failed be-
cause they planned in procrustean fash
ion for decades ahead, but showed no
Imagination in estimating how the world
would develop. The town planners did
not see that the compressed type of con-
tinental city, such as Paris and inner
Vienna had been conditioned by fortifca-
tions which prevented expansion, but that
IoI1t f,
be built on the dispersed and healthier
English system. They did not foresee
the coming increase of speed in urban
communications, and assumed that If
towns spread too far the residential out
skirts would be inaccessible from the
business center. This led to Berlin and
other modern cities of Germany develop
ing vertically instead of horizontally.
1t led to Germans building many storied,
gardenless flat barracks, half of the win
dows of which get no light, while the
English were building rows of gardened
cottages on the one family one house
principle. The self-confident town plan
ners were warned against this. Wilhelm
L. when Prussian crown prince, finance
minister Miguel, the economist Adolf
Wagner, the social reformer Victor Aime
Hueber, and other sound judges pre-
dicted evil from the town planners zeal
for barrack housing. But the town plan
ners had their way, and today every en-
lightened town planner in Germany sighs
for what is called 1.-The nglo-American
way and says that Berlin ought to be
razed to the ground.
The present trend is to go to the other
extreme. Germans are trying to develop
the new Berlin and Dresden suburbs on
the Garden City principle; and they have
built at Hellerau near Dresden garden
city" which is IN exact copy of an ord-
nary London suburb. In most cases this
Plan fails, be cause the concentration of
population las set high standard of
value for nrban real estate. The SUBJ
urban municipalities think they have
done Great stroke of work in reducing
the maximum of stories in residential
hrFfes from five to four. The Berlin
a4gn ;tsct fessler declares that the only
setA IS to prevent altogether the
t-iher growth of Berlin, and to put the
attl1s population and new factories in
5tich towns" separated from the capi-