Evening star., 1927-05-10
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL =. COLLINS.

decade Los Angeles has added a great
er population than San Francisco con-
tainS
Today. 4O3 cities have city planning
commissions, but in all the United
States there are probably not 50 quail
fled plan experts. and there are not
more than half dozen firms devoted
to that science.
Absolutely new phases of city plan
ming have developed in the last decade
through the traffic congestion of au
tomobileS. Streets in crowded cities
can no longer be on one level, but, as
In Chicago, streets must now be
planned for several stories" each to
carry its own kind of traffic. Sky
scrapers, which shade the canyons"
of New York and other great cities,
are a serious problem. Receding sto-
ries may solve that difficulty. but what
are to be the regulations? Studies in
sanitation and in Identification are
essential and of vital Importance.
No city offers such a wide scope.
nor such an imminent opportunity for
departures from the conventional and
the passe. as does the National Capi.
tai, now that the Government Is about
TO begin an extensive course of erec-
tion of great Federal buildings No
other city has such features of at
tractiveness as does this most beau
tiful Capital in the world.
Washington has it's L'Enfant plan,
which was made more than a century
before the modern renaissance of CITY
planning, and that fact seems today
veritable miracle, especially consid-
ering the pioneer times. and the
struggling little Nation of which it
planned the Capital. AS the decades
passed. that plan was almost buried
in inartistic vagaries of streets and
architecture, but in the last quarter
of century it has been reinstated.
and today no city planner dares offer
serious departures therefrom. 1t took
a Boss Shepherd to begin it's redemp-
ton. and he was almost mobbed by
the benighted populace, just as Baron
Haussmann had been denounced when
he remodeled Paris, the inspiration of
L'Enfant in his planning this Paris
of America"
OF course, it is Inaccurate to say
that city planning was unknown prior
to the present century. The aucient
cities. in some cases, though not in
all. appear to have been we'll planned
void. The streets of Pompeii are laid
with a definite plan. Many cities show
no right-angle street corners. but, like
Boston. suggest hit-and-miss pat
tern. or a jig-saw puzzle Ancient
Babylon was IA miles square. sur
rounded with a wall $40 feet high and
80 feet thick, and according to
Herodotus;
THE city itself is full of houses.
three or four stories high. and has
been laid out with its streets straight.
notably those which run at right
angles-that is, those which lead to
the river. Each road runs to small
gate in the brick wall; there are as
many gates as lanes.'
Where ancient cities did have
"checkerboard streets it was usually
due to- the dictatorship of the central
government in arbitrarily planning a
new city by mandate, in order to col
onize, thereby relieving the capital
of surplus population: the cities did
mot grow spontaneously as in Ameri-
can pioneer times or today. With but
one or two exceptions, none of the
ancient cities. which survive today
have their streets coincide with the
lines of the ancient plans.
Dictator Mussolini promises to "re-
it ever knew in ancient glory. In those
good old days" of the glory that
was Rome" which inspires poets and
orators. there was q law which die
t"ted that no man might destroy, lin-
roof or disSnantle an urban building.
unless he was ready to replace it with
a building equally good or better
Emperor Hadrian, in 127 A.D.. decreed
that certain house in a town in
Eastern Italy must either be repaired
by its owner. Claudius Socrates. or
turned over to some citizens who
would do so. Hence it is not without
precedent when a city planning com
mission DEGREES zoning system and
regulates the liberty of the properly
owner in behalf of the general good.
The city is the heritage of the people.
not a private perquisite of eccentric
and non-social property owners.
tCopyright 1927. by Paul v. Collins)