The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1927-04-12
CITY BUILDING AND CITY SPOIL

An Editorial In the Christian Science Monitor
What, after all, municipal progress? Does citizen
reap advantage from the presence around HIM OF million
people, all earnestly DESTROYS of being in the place
and doing the thing at the same time! Does the
smoke of thousand factories persuaded to settle in town
by bonuses and other good and valuable considerations add
to the comfort of its citizens? In when Transport
tation amportan there added happiness to be found
from importing few Of thousands from southeastern
Europe crowd subways and surface cars? Is there Joy
in having the enthusiastically unattraclive-of
city extended far that family seeking picnic place
must go twenty miles find W Are the motorcar owners
who fortunate ten quite devoted to motor
ing sport, that they the country pushed far
away from their homes and the roads packed with others
seeking it?
These and Of similar pertinent questions are
posed by writer in the Harpers Magazine who
speaks as a reformed Rotarian, Kwanan Lion, mere
chamber of booster. He is Californian but
his wall of dsusioned distress may well be echoed by
residents Of other sections in which homeke towns have
been ruined by prosperity His children can no longer
attend the public schools Vacant lots for Fairgrounds no
longer exist He can't take his down town for lack of
parking space and if he tries drive the country
Sunday about all he is the stoplight the six
feet ahead He is done booster No longer will his
enthusiasm be famed by the slogan Two Million by
l040!'
The mood is likely TO become common one.
How many cities have been spoiled by overpopuation!
There was significance in Chicagos abandonment of its
ancient motto, "A city in garden, for the domi
neering one Il wll Having had It's will, and become an
uncomfortable spot result, Chicago is spending
millions trying adapt its physical conditions 10 the
needs of the teemng hordes who have focked to it. What
has become of Detros proud slogan Where life is worth
living? Not the busy real estate there quote it
any longer Its applicability vanished before the flood of
orknen for the automobile factories and the fumes of
the Ford smelters.
Are the crowded and fetd subways of New York an
adequate recompense for the dyc days when the best
resident section around Madison Square, and
body that was anybody walked down Broadway to Wall
Street about nine every morning? What New Yorker
above fifty years of age does regret the day when
man could be srst nghter at the theatres when sleigh
ride to McCombs Pass event. when Union Square
was park and flop, when shad could be caught
in the North River, and the Harlem Speedway still wit
messed lively brushes between famous steeds?
But cities will continue TO grow even though the
boosters reform Is it possible divert the abund
energies of these gentry into undoing in part what
they have accomplished? Having made cities great
let them with equal and determinations take up the
task of making them lvable The great metropolis of the
middle West with its Chicago plan" is showing the
Why should be generally followed under the auspices
Of those useful organizations which thus far have
nzed only the industrial and commercial phases of civic
progress!
Plans little less than mile long
Shore viii be laid sixty feet wide
at arenow On