Raymond Unwin

“ It is therefore equally to the interest of the owner and the public to ensure the best type of development. Let us contrast the growth of Cologne with what has taken place in Chicago where a town of two million people has been developed at such a rapid rate that some still living can remember when there was only a settlement of a few hundred people there. This town has grown on a simple gridiron plan, if such can rightly be called a plan, dividing up the land into rectangular building blocks, of much the same size whether the land is wanted for factories or shops, palaces or cottages. ”

“ Let us once secure a well-housed city, and well-housed citizens will soon see that their civic centre is worthy of them. Now what is it that stands in the way of this proper housing? It is nothing but the idea that it is necessary for the benefit of some person or some class that the maximum number of houses possible shall be crowded upon every acre of land. If this is not done, we are told that building will not pay. It seems so obvious that the more houses you put upon an acre of land, the more economical use are you making of the land that few consider the question further ”

“ Your Manchester Society of Architects have already made sketches for a plan of a Manchester suburb which are no doubt known to many of you, showing the breadth of treatment, the careful consideration of the grouping of the buildings and their placing on the ground which must form part of the final stages of town planning, if the town is to become once more a beautiful place to dwell in; and it is as necessary for mental and spiritual health that man should live in beautiful surroundings as it is for his bodily health that he should dwell under sanitary conditions. ”

“ Even the income tax which is assessed on the whole of the tax-payer's income, irrespective of the class of property, only amounts to about £37,000,000 for the United Kingdom. We are therefore raising in rates from one particular class of property in England and Wales nearly double the amount that we raise by the income tax. If really disastrous effects follow from taxes upon one or other particular class of property, I think you will admit that it is rather wonderful that any of us have houses to live in or factories to work in. ”

“ If you compare the two diagrams illustrating the space occupied on every acre of ground by roads, by building, and by garden, in each case, you will see somewhat how this remarkable result comes about; how in the one case such a large proportion of the acre is occupied by roads, and you must remember that roads constitute the most expensive form of open space which it is possible to have, and the least satisfactory. ”

“ Factories and workshops have been dotted about wherever a bit of land could be obtained for the purpose, often dumped down to the ruin of some good residential district, and always so scattered as to involve much needless carting to and fro of the materials of industry, adding greatly to the cost of production, to the congestion of traffic, and to the expense of street-making, widening, and maintenance, thus directly crippling the efficiency of the industry, and by destroying the amenities of the homes of those engaged upon the industry, indirectly crippling this efficiency still further. ”

“ Town Planning, then, calls for a great co-operative effort to recreate in our cities worthy dwelling places for our social life. The individual must find his reward for sometimes sacrificing his immediate interests and predilections in the far wider opportunities which a co-ordinated development would afford, and above all, might I say here, he must learn to consume his own smoke literally and metaphorically. ”

“ Both builders and landowners have been very much disturbed by the powers given in the Town Planning Act to limit the number and character of the buildings which may be put upon each acre of ground; I think it can be shown that these fears are not justified, but on the contrary that the greater the number of houses crowded upon the land, the less economical is the use being made of it, the higher rate must the occupier pay for every available yard of his plot, and the smaller will be the total return to the owners of land in increment value due to building operations. ”

“ If at that time a plan for the growth of the city had been laid down, preserving some of the beautiful valleys along the water courses as permanent open spaces, providing for main radial roads leading out in different directions and allotting definite areas for manufacturing purposes, what a different place Manchester might now have been! Even the fine, straight Deansgate which figures on the old plan has not been carried forward, and anyone wanting to travel further in that direction must dodge about round corners and up side streets before he can again reach anything like a through road. ”

“ But there is this vital distinction between a small group and the large town: in the small group there is an intimate personal touch and personal understanding between all the different members of the community, whereas the larger the community becomes, the more attenuated must be the amount of personal contact, until, at quite an early stage, the members must cease even to recognise one another at sight. Now in all large associations a definite scheme of organisation is introduced to meet this difficulty. ”

“ You will, I think, be able to see that not only is there no real economic difficulty in reducing the over-crowding of houses upon the land, but there is equally no economic difficulty in providing all the open space that is desirable, not only around the town, but within the town; because, even from the point of view of the owner of land, very much the same increment value arises from a given population whatever the exact arrangement of it ”

“ It is difficult to see how we can have imagined in the past that it was safe to leave our towns to grow haphazard, the owner of each bit of land not only free to develop it just as he liked, without any central control, but even powerless if he wished to effect anything outside his own immediate boundary. ”

“ Unfortunately in the past, they have allowed the building blocks to be so covered with building that there is not enough space for air or light to reach to the rooms, much less for any garden space in which the children could play. They have now set themselves the task of providing a play ground of some sort within half a mile of every child's home in the city. Perhaps the most interesting point about these play-grounds is that they are becoming local civic centres; they are beginning to provide for Chicago that grouping and organisation of its mass of humanity which hitherto it has wanted. ”

“ When you want to erect a new municipal building or a new cathedral, having settled the requirements, practical or hygienic, that the building must serve, you call in the artist to give form to the building, that it may express by its beauty something more, something which throughout the ages every race of man has felt to be necessary to the completion of his work ”

“ At any rate, compare this with the way in which the public now has to pay for every site for a school or other building it requires, for every strip of road widening, for every scrap of open space, play ground or park, just because it does not look ahead and provide for development, but waits until the ground is covered with buildings and has reached almost its maximum value before it makes these provisions. ”

“ At first no provision was made for open spaces, main wide roads were not then thought of, and the result has been perhaps the greatest aggregation of disorganised units of population that have ever been brought together. Chicago, which contains within itself a wonderful amount of public spirit backed by true American energy, is now seeking at enormous cost to rectify these mistakes and has indeed done great things already. ”

“ In other words, our over-crowding system of development is so absolutely uneconomical, it wastes so much of the land in roads, that actually it would be possible, giving the landlord the same total return in increment from every house that is built and paying exactly the same for the streets, to provide the plot of land of 261 square yards for 81⁄2d. ”

“ There can be no doubt, for example, that if we abolished rates, and put the whole of the local government taxes upon ground rents, though the tenant might not have to pay for his house quite as much in additional ground rent as he saved in rates, and though for a time many owners of ground rents would be hard hit by the change, still the land-owners would in the long run be able to transfer much of that tax back again upon the tenants in the form of increased ground rent. ”

“ Moreover, the low-lying meadows and valleys following the rivers and watercourses, just the part of the land which is least healthy for building purposes, and the most expensive to provide with sewers, would be most suitable to preserve as open spaces, playgrounds, and pleasure walks which often need not be wide in extent; and so naturally the dwelling suburbs would be located on the high and healthy grounds. The tops of the higher hills to which water cannot often without special expense be supplied could again be reserved as open tracts of country for common enjoyment. ”

“ A town plan can assist industry by reserving definite areas for industrial purposes, by arranging for the provision adjacent to these areas, of all the required facilities, such as railway carriage, water carriage, ample siding accommodation, space for needful warehouses, bonded stores, etc., and finally by securing, within easy access, adequate areas upon which those engaged in the industries can live under circumstances which will make for health, amenity, and the greatest efficiency. ”

“ No provision whatever has been made for expansion; roads that must obviously at an early date need to be widened to accommodate growing traffic, have been allowed to be lined on each side with property built close up to the road. Railways have been allowed to hem in the town without any effort having been made to forecast its development and provide for the necessary bridges and other requirements for expansion, thus throttling the town and its traffic in many directions. Cottage property has been allowed to spring up along the margins of railways and canals. ”

“ The local authority is put in a favourable position for making such agreements, because it has not only power to restrict within certain limits the use to which the owner may put his land, but it has the power very greatly to facilitate development by the suitable laying out of roads, by prohibiting objectionable buildings on adjacent property, and by modifying many existing restrictive by-laws which have been made to suit other conditions of development. ”

“ This sort of thing has been going on in nearly all our growing towns for want of the Town Extension Plan; and most of this confusion and loss to the community can be avoided by such a plan.
It is true that you cannot foresee exactly what the development of a town will be; that you may possibly provide for a wider street than will be required; that you may reserve an open space for a park on a site where as it turns out only a sparse population will settle ”

“ Town planning can provide for the better distribution of the population and the more economical use of land. Just as it will avoid overcrowding in some directions, it will avoid the useless waste of land which often takes place in other directions, because areas, otherwise available for dwellings, are ruined by adjacent factories, or because considerable areas are constantly being left without proper facilities of access. ”

“ The city of Düsseldorf began seriously to plan for its extension in 1888, and has therefore had some twenty -four years experience of this work. As a result of previous extravagance in the width and number of roads, the cost of the development of land has so increased that it is becoming less and less possible to build self-contained houses within the city for people of moderate means; and there has resulted a tendency for the people to be crowded into huge blocks of tenement and flat dwellings. ”

“ It is very remarkable that our country, which has for a century and a half watched the wonderful economies and the great progress which have resulted from the application of proper organisation and foresight to the carrying on of great industrial concerns, is only now beginning to realise that there may be some need to apply similar principles of foresight and organisation to the development of our great industrial centres, our towns and cities. ”

“ One other objection to the wider distribution of the population may be raised, namely, that we shall so largely increase the size of our towns as to add very greatly to the problem of locomotion. Here again the difficulty is much less than at first sight appears, for we find on examining towns and comparing the average total population per acre with the population per acre in the congested districts, that, in many cases, it is not the average that is seriously wrong, but that there is acute local congestion. ”

“ It is for you as citizens loyally to support the action of your representatives, and to give them hearty and enlightened encouragement to carry forward town-planning schemes for the area around Manchester, to a degree which will secure for you the utmost benefits which it is possible to obtain under the present Town Planning Act ”

“ The next point of vital interest is that we shall secure proper homes for the people. Until town planning has done this, until the people of a city have homes fit to inhabit, in surroundings which will provide health, comfort and beauty, it is too soon to consider ambitious schemes for remodelling the central area of the town. ”