URBAN COMMUNITY PROBLEMS 779 



the prices paid are the real value of the houses. At the same time, 

 we forbid the letting of unhealthy tenements, as we forbid the sale 

 of poisonous mushrooms, and here is the result. Some house-owners 

 whom we compel to repair their houses prefer to sell these to the 

 town or to builders who will hasten to demolish them. Thus, 

 sooner or later, the plan of rectification will be carried out, the filthy 

 buildings being either reconstructed or removed for widening the 

 street or the square. Such is our method of rational transformation. 



" Our old quarters require a plan of rectification, the new ones one 

 of extension, stating how they must be laid out and comprising 

 the streets, the public gardens, the parks, the athletic grounds, the 

 future schools, hospitals, and other official buildings. The area of the 

 open spaces is always in proportion to the importance of the quarter 

 they are intended to serve, and we endeavor to have many of them 

 rather than a few big ones. 



"The building of the federal city, now Washington, under the 

 inspiration of the French engineer, Major L'Enfant,has been to us an 

 object-lesson. The thoroughfares and streets were traced according 

 to ' celestial observation,' says the original plan of 1792, so as to 

 assure an equal distribution of the sun's rays between the two sides 

 of houses. We do not exactly follow the directions N-S, W-E of 

 the compass; in drawing our streets, where we have more freedom 

 of action than in laying out avenues (these being often a result of 

 circumstances) ; we take the line N-S with an inclination of 19 degrees 

 toward N-S S-W. Roman cities, as archeologists assert, already 

 presented a fixed orientation. 



" But the crucial point of our campaign was reached when we had 

 to draw up our Building Code. We were met by violent prejudices. 

 We insisted on limiting the height of houses as a primary condition 

 of health. Being requested to make an exception for the business 

 quarter, we turned a deaf ear. We remembered having seen elsewhere 

 in ' sky-scrapers,' offices situated above the tenth story, where gas 

 or electricity was needed at mid-day. We declined to consider 

 modifications of any kind. Had we proposed setting the quarter 

 on fire every twenty years, we would not have elicited a more indig- 

 nant outburst. What? No sky-scraper? And why? And how? 

 Are they to be doomed in cities where land is worth its weight in gold? 



" We believe that the exorbitant price of city land is the outcome of 

 the free hand given to builders, that if lower houses were the rule, 

 houses would', nevertheless, be required and found, and that if land 

 went cheaper, the calamity would not be a national one. We were 

 surprised to find citizens in favor of houses whose height is injurious 

 to the public health. We could not help exclaiming in our turn: 

 'And why? And how? What should we be guided by? Private or 

 public interest?' 



