Civic center

“ The idea of a civic center is admirably illustrated in Mayan cities, particularly those of the first brilliant period. The principal structures are built around courts or plazas and there is usually an artificial acropolis which is a great terraced mound serving as a common base or platform from which the individual pyramidal bases of several temples rise. ”

“ Give the city a proper sphere of local autonomy. Co-ordinate the departments of government, so as to establish responsibility and secure harmonious action. Simplify present city organization without destroying the two branches of government. Introduce new and improving methods, such as non-partisan primaries, civil service, uniform municipal accounting, and publicity of proceedings. Remedy bad social and economic conditions. Arouse civic interest. Do this, and there is no necessity for such a radical and revolutionary change as the universal adoption of a commission form. ”

“ Rural consolidated school buildings ought always be planned for civic centers as well as school-houses. They ought to provide a large assembly hall where community gatherings may be held. They ought to provide a large and well equipped gymnasium where both children and adults may enjoy athletic contests and indoor games. These buildings ought to be open to the people every evening during the week if the attendance warrants.108.One mark of good citizenship is the respect shown to emblems of authority. ”

“ Such a Civic Centre or nucleus for the co-operation of all societies and agencies, social, moral, intellectual and religious, would stand to the civic authorities much as the spiritual power stands to the State. A federation so constituted would be the Civic Church of the city; and the State without the Church, is the body without the soul. ”

“ And underneath all these associations and organizations it is easy to discover the growth of a distinctly civic spirit, also manifest in special movements and conditions. The endeavor to build in one group buildings so important as a county court-house, a city hall, a public library and others reveals the willingness to surrender individual advantages to the public weal. The attempt to deal largely and justly with all municipal franchises proves the presence of a desire to serve all as well as each. ”

“ Without forgetting the many institutions and workers in almost all departments of the field of civics, the rise of definite surveys and of scientific groupings like this Society, without ignoring also the many admirable workers and institutions of social endeavour, and their progressive integration into Social Unions, Institutes of Service, and the like, I may be permitted to press for the need of uniting both types, the scientific and the practical, into a single one—a civic museum and active centre in one. ”

“ That the Nation's Capital should be made a model for other municipalities is an ideal which appeals to all patriotic citizens everywhere, and such a special Commission might map out and organize the city's future development in lines of civic social service, just as Major L'Enfant and the recent Park Commission planned the arrangement of her streets and parks. ”

“ How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and our practical policy—i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service, how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both? ”

“ The trend of the decade here, too, is obviously toward system,—toward a municipalization of lower courts, an expansion of the health service, an association of charities, a city system as against a vestry system of schools, a civic improvement commission that will focalize public sentiment in all movements for municipal improvement. ”

“ Municipal reform. — Instead of "going into politics," the Alliance will aim through this committee to separate municipal elections from state and national politics. It will insist on the official fitness of candidates, oppose incompetent and corrupt men, and sustain the constituted authorities in a faithful administration of the public service. 11. Civic improvements.—Most cities in the United States are in need of public baths and lavatories. Many young and growing cities neglect to make adequate provision for parks until it is too late. ”

“ And does not his popular park at times come near giving us a vital indication of the needed modern analogue of cathedral and forum? Civic development is thus no mere external matter, either of "Haussmannising" its streets, or of machine-educating its people; the true progress of the city and its citizenship must alike grow and flower from within albeit alive and open to every truly fertilising impulse from without. ”

“ What seems to be most needed is, that the admirable work done in certain districts should be universalised and made equally effective in all quarters of Greater New York. The need for making general or universal the best work done in certain localities, points to the need of some central body, like the Civic Federation or Citizens’ Union, or Civic Centre, which would cover the same area as the civic administration, and within which it would seek to secure for all voluntary effort the same system and regularity and universality that is attained in the municipal service. ”

“ In another too many organizations have rent the life of the town, until a common meeting-place is needed to win back the town's dignity and its unity—its sacred unity. And in these days of social readjustment the blunders committed because some folk are the first by whom the new is tried and some are the lingering last by whom it is laid aside would be far less frequent, the Social Center Idea maintains, if there were some place for general discussion of new community and State measures besides saloons and partisan political meetings—if there were a citizens' forum. ”

“ Until the Common Council—composed of representatives each directly elected by ward or district, and held personally responsible by the citizens in that ward for the efficient and honest discharge of his municipal duties—is restored to its natural position as the source and seat and centre of civic authority, it seems to me that we shall continue wandering in the wilderness. ”

“ Neighborhood organization must be the method of effective popular responsibility: first, by giving reality to the political bond; secondly, by providing the machinery by which a genuine control of the people can be put into operation. At present nearly all our needs are satisfied by external agencies, government or institutional. Health societies offer health to us, recreation associations teach us how to play, civic art leagues give us more beautiful surroundings, associated charities give us poor relief. ”

“ Yet whichever of these motives leads us to the schoolhouse or the community building, the result is always the same—a closer forging of the neighborhood bond. Whoever takes the initiative in organizing the Community Centre—a parents’ association, a men’s civic club, a mothers’ club, a committee of citizens, the city council, the board of education—the result is always the same, a closer forging of the community bond.
The Community Centre movement has made rapid progress in the last ten years. All over the country new Centres are springing up constantly. ”

“ We will increase publicity of and education in the law, intensify education about citizenship, and promote the values of socialist democracy, the rule of law, freedom, equality, equity and justice. We will coordinate development of urban and rural communities and promote the healthy growth of civic organizations. ”

“ Civic advance in general, and municipal efficiency in particular, are the result of a combination of forces, of which higher standards of public opinion and lofty civic ideals are the most important."
Another sign of the times is the formation of organizations like the League of American Municipalities, the State Leagues of Municipalities, the American Society of Municipal Improvements, the National Association of Municipal Electricians, the various societies of fire and police and other municipal officials. ”

“ And so it may be in Garden City. There will be discovered many opportunities for public service which [87] neither the community as a whole, nor even a majority of its members, will at first recognise the importance of, or see their way to embrace, and which public services it would be useless, therefore, to expect the municipality to undertake; but those who have the welfare of society at heart will, in the free air of the city, be always able to experiment on their own responsibility, and thus quicken the public conscience and enlarge the public understanding. ”

“ The question of adhering strictly to the principle that every Spiritual Assembly must be composed of voting members living within the civic limits of the town, and that the Bahá’í Community of that town must likewise be composed of residents within its civic limits, is of the utmost importance. ”

“ Thus it is that the most active of these organizations in all parts of the United States are identifying themselves with the American Civic Association and appointing committees on such special improvements as parks, streets, illumination, nuisances—the billboard and smoke—and lending material assistance to those committees in carrying out various plans for the physical development and upbuilding of their cities. ”

“ This District, the seat of the national councils, and the common property of the whole republic, is by the constitution of the country, under your immediate care, and exclusive government—and to the combined wisdom, patriotism and prudence of your honourable body, is the common mind turned, with intense anxiety, knowing that nothing can exempt any portion of us from the shame and mortification that may attach to the character of its public laws and institutions; while nothing can prevent their participation in the splendour and renown of its wisdom, prosperity, and happiness. ”

“ Professor Geddes glanced at the opening civic future, "the remoter and higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and correspondingly needed foresight and statesmanship involve," the possibilities which may be easily realised if only there be true civic pride, foresight, and unflagging pursuit of a reasonable ideal.... It remains to be seen what our cities will become when for some generations the same spirit of pride and reverence shown by old families as to their possessions has presided over all civic changes and developments.... ”

“ With the steady growth of our great cities in population and political power, the question of wholesome State legislation in matters affecting their civic and moral wellbeing, is one of no249 less importance to rural communities than to the cities themselves. Controlling power is already drifting cityward in many States, and rural voters who have not contributed to the creation of right civic conditions in our great municipalities may soon find this power used to their own serious injury. ”

“ Civic improvers will find their ideals more realisable as they recognise the complex unity of the city as a social development of which all the departments of action and thought are in organic relation, be it of health or disease. The view of theoretic civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed in many cities being begun. ”

“ The Social Center, then, is the place in any community where the people of that community meet, discuss, enjoy, co-operate upon a common ground as citizens in a democracy, as members of a neighborhood, as human beings, without regard to party, creed, class, or difference of possession. ”

“ Wherever it has been put into the constitution of a state a larger municipal vision has been created and a new brand of municipal administration has appeared. Thus it is a significant fact that many of the most advanced forms of city government have grown up in the cities which have enjoyed constitutional home rule. Given the right to determine its own destiny, the city becomes the hope, instead of the despair, of democracy. And the test which democracy receives will be a fair one. ”

“ He feels an interest therefore, and a responsibility which the voter in no other land in the world feels, and the town-house is an education to him in the art of self-government which no other country affords, and because of it the town is an institution teaching how to maintain government, local, state, and general, and so bases that government in self-interest and beneficial experience, that it is a pledge of security and perpetuity as regards socialism, communism, and as it would seem every other revolutionary influence from within. ”

“ In some of these respects, as in the exercise of the police power, the care of the public health, the administration of charity, and the administration of local justice, the municipality is actually the agent of the State, and discharges duties of interest to the State at large; in others, as in the furnishing of water or light, the State permits the community as a whole to act as a local organization for the satisfaction of purely local needs of interest to the community only. ”

“ While townsmen were forced at every turn to discover and justify the limits of their privileges, or while controversies raged among them as to how the government of the community should be carried on, there was no lack of political teaching; and all questions “touching the great commonalty of the city” for whose liberties they had fought and whose constitution they had shaped, stirred loyal citizens to a genuine patriotism. ”