OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 



63 



contented and self-respecting if he and 

 his family have to live in squalid and 

 unsanitary hovels. It is not reason- 

 able to expect him to have the quali- 

 ties of a good citizen if his surround- 

 ings are such as no owner of a valu- 

 able animal would tolerate. 



In the past, great numbers of work- 

 ers have submitted to live in wretched- 

 ness because of the scantiness of their 

 earnings and the fierceness of com- 

 petition ; but this is the class that for- 

 ever seethes with discontent, that pro- 

 duces so many enemies of organized 

 society, that fills our jails and costs us 

 so much for reformatories and police 

 forces. Americanism cannot be born 

 and nurtured in squalor and misery, 

 and patriotism and other civic virtues 

 are the reaction of benefits, not of hu- 

 miliations. A man will be grateful to 

 a community for the advantages he 

 has received, not for the privations he 

 and his have endured. 



CITY PLANNING 



The A. S. L. A. urges on all citizens, 

 whether active in municipal affairs or 

 not, the importance of proper planning 

 in the creation of new systems of streets 

 and other open spaces and in addition to 

 existing ones. The future convenience 

 and efficiency of village or city for busi- 

 ness, recreation or residence, as well as 

 its possibilities of beauty are in propor- 

 tion to the forethought expended on its 

 plan. 



COMMENT.^RY 

 As the whole is greater than its 

 parts, so the planning of a city is of 

 greater importance than the planning 

 of its units. On the disposition of its 

 streets and other open spaces depend, 

 not merel)' the traffic conditions, the 

 convenience and economj' of time and 

 effort of all who travel on wheels or 

 on foot, the facilities both for business 



and pleasure, but the location of every 

 building put up in the future, with 

 its relation to all the other buildings. 

 In fact, the working of the city as a 

 vast machine for business and recrea- 

 tion depend on the forethought with 

 which it was originally laid out. 



It does not require a trained ob- 

 server to see that in many of our cities 

 the time and energy of men and ma- 

 chinery are wasted in incalculable 

 quantities in travel by indirect routes, 

 up and down steep grades or on con- 

 gested streets ; that a bad distribution 

 of streets produces as a corollary a bad 

 distribution of buildings, producing 

 congestion in one place, and unoccu- 

 pied or badl}' occupied land in another, 

 inflated values in one locality and un- 

 duly low ones in another; in one part 

 abnormal activity, in another abnorm- 

 al stagnation. 



It is a matter of almost universal 

 experience that, at least in our larger 

 cities, the lack of proper planning in 

 the beginning has resulted in many 

 evils now apparently past correction, 

 which are only endured because the 

 cost of correcting them seems too 

 great to be borne ; and that tedious 

 and costly processes of rectifying some 

 of the mistakes of the past are going 

 on in many places which could have 

 been avoided by a few strokes of a pen 

 impelled by the right kind of reason- 

 ing when the city existed only on 

 paper. 



For the lack of such forethought, 

 innumerable towns and cities have 

 street systems arranged with economy 

 of nothing excepting the thought giv- 

 en to their design. In construction, 

 maintenance and e.xpenditure of time 

 and energy by the traffic on them they 

 are endlessly lavish. Parks and 

 other open spaces are too few, too 

 small and ill-distributed ; and the city 

 structure is so monotonous and un- 



