HOUSING REFORM FORD. 749 



building, tenement construction, or building to the lot line is not per- 

 mitted, and frequently only 40 per cent of a lot may be covered. 



The constitutionality of the zone system has been tested in Boston, 

 which has two zones, one for building 125 feet high maximum, and 

 the other with a maximum of 80 feet. More elaborate zoning is now 

 in practice in Minneapolis. 



A zone 83^stem would inevitably involve the districting of factories 

 if the welfare of the community is to be conserved. Where factories 

 and tenements are mingled, the gases may render living conditions 

 unhealthful or unpleasant. German cities very generally restrict 

 their factories to quarters of the city in which available transporta- 

 tion facilities can be rendered of the best, and to quarters from which 

 the prevailing winds will carry the smoke, dust, gases, and noise 

 away from the city. 



DECEIS TRALIZ ATION OF INDUSTRY. 



One other adjustment of the factory and cottage home is ordi- 

 narily termed industrial decentralization. In England especially 

 housing reformers have agitated for the removal of factories from 

 cities into the open country where land is cheap and abundant, where 

 transportation facilities can very frequently be rendered of the best, 

 and where each worker can live in a cottage home. Such industrial 

 communities may be established cooperatively, as in the case of the 

 British '' Garden City," or may be established by the owners of fac- 

 tories, as is the current American practice, the houses in this case be- 

 ing erected by the manufacturer either to rent or to sell on easy terms 

 to his employees. 



THREE METHODS OF REDUCING THE COST OF SUBURBAN LAND. 



Cottage construction for workingmen is impossible at present wage 

 rates unless land can be procured which is both accessible to work 

 and cheap. Much of the suburban land in American cities is being 

 held vacant to-day by speculators in the hope of reaping a large in- 

 crease in land values. Accessible land is not easy to procure in small 

 parcels. There are several ways, however, in which it may be ren- 

 dered more available. German cities, for example, quite generally 

 buy up their suburbs and then sell the land in small plots under heavy 

 restrictions as to its future use or transfer, or else lease this land to 

 home builders on long-term leases. By this means suburban land 

 prices can be kept low, the city receiving the miearned increment of 

 its land in the form of enjojonent by working people of its proper 

 usage for homes, instead of receiving it in the form of taxes or rents. 

 The city of Uhn, Germany, between the years 1891 and 1909, thus 

 pu-rohasecl 1,208 acres of knd for $1,090,000, and sold lO-l acres under 



