LAND SUBDIVISION 293 



be regulated or prohibited, at least in front of the houses, in the inter- 

 ests of beauty and uniformity of appearance. The location of tele- 

 graph poles and similar structures may be restricted or determined. 



These various restrictions which are fixed by the land company 

 are almost always arranged to endure for a limited time only. It 

 is obviously impossible to predict in most instances, for more than 

 twenty or twenty-five years in the future, what the desirable use of 

 a given piece of land may be, and it is therefore too great a burden 

 on the land to fix its use by legal restriction for a longer time. In some 

 communities it may prove feasible to arrange for further continuance 

 or change of the restrictions at the expiration of this time by majority 

 vote of the owners.* 



In all the attempts of the land companies to assure the excellence 

 and stability of the development under their charge they are laboring 

 under two disadvantages. They have control only of a portion of the 

 neighborhood and they are not themselves able to predict or directly 

 to influence the development of neighboring property. When they 

 have sold the last of the land, the}' have relinquished all power over it 

 except as it is bound by the temporary restrictions in the deeds, and 

 there is no organized body to take their place in caring for the property 

 as a whole, except as this may be done by the community at large. 



It is evident that the city has this power, and our cities are beginning, Districting 

 for the first time in any large way, intelligently and systematically 

 to exercise it. The city may determine on a plan for the future develop- 

 ment of all its holdings, it may make regulations for the uses of these 

 holdings, confining different uses to their appropriate places, and, as 

 the city wields a permanent authorit}^, it may at any time modify the 

 details of its regulations, bearing still in mind their main purpose and 

 their part in the general scheme. 



In the districting laws with which we in this country are becoming 

 f amiliar,t in the greater repression by community authority of individual 



* This point is discussed in the Proceedings of the National Conference on City 

 Planning, 1916, in Financial Effect of Good Planning in Land Subdivision, paper by J. 

 C. Nichols, p. 91-106, discussion, p. 106-118; and Districting through Private Effort, 

 by Alexander S. Taylor, especially p. 180-183. 



t Cf. footnote on p. 281. 



