HOUSING EEFOKM FOBD, 751 



RESIDENTIAL STREETS. 



Residential streets are often rendered costly through unnecessary 

 width and through the expensive provision of curbs and sidewalks. 

 Some residence streets must be used for a fairly large local traffic. 

 Others are by their very nature and direction precluded from such 

 use. A careful study of this problem will indicate that in certain 

 suburban residential quarters the width of streets might easily be re- 

 duced to the provision of a 16 to 22 foot roadway flanked by grass 

 strips. By establishing a building line on each side of such roadway 

 at some distance from the street, it would be possible for the city to 

 widen its streets without serious expense if that should ever prove 

 necessary. The provision of sidewalks on both sides of the street is 

 also not invariably necessary in suburban quarters where a street is 

 purely local. If the street is developed only to such degree as to ren- 

 der it adequate for its local service, the cost of street construction will 

 constitute a much less burden upon home owners. 



SIZE AND SHAPE OF LOTS. 



There are several serious disadvantages in having lots of uniform 

 shape. In the first place a popular prejudice is created for the 

 prevailing deep and narrow lot which is not easily dislodged, and 

 the poor man who wishes to build a cottage home is socially con- 

 strained to purchase a lot 100 feet deep whether he needs so much 

 land or not. It is, perhaps, the safest thing for a city to have stand- 

 ard lots, at least in the heart of the city, until the science of lot dis- 

 tribution and usage is developed. It is not easy to make a definitive 

 prescription for the employment of lots of any other specific size 

 which would be more satisfactoiy for all purposes. But the lack of 

 elasticity in present lot shapes and sizes is fraught with serious 

 consequences. The 25 by 100 foot lot can not be used economically 

 for workingmen's cottages. It is wasteful of land at the rear, for 

 the American workingman will not ordinarily start a garden as will 

 the English or Italian. It is parsimonious of land at the sides of 

 houses, especially if built in the two-flat style. It becomes impos- 

 sible to construct two-flat houses on lots of this shape which will not 

 be too near to the lot line and thus to neighboring houses. 



If the arterial streets of a city are broad and sufficiently straight, 

 and there are occasional broad cross streets within the residential 

 zones, it should be possible to plan much of the remaining residential 

 land with narrow dirt sti'eets for local service purely, often, perhaps, 

 with one sidewalk or none, grass strips and tre^s at the sides, and a 

 building line for houses on abutting lots. These streets might wind, 

 which would enhance their beauty; and if on a hillside, ought to 



