RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 95 



reduction in width would be to a minimum 38 feet to secure similar 

 results. 



In many small towns and rural districts a cheaper form of street 

 is made than in cities, but in numerous other cases the ambition of 

 the small municipality is to become a pocket edition of the city, and 

 to have the same kind of local improvements. Where the latter is the 

 case the cost of the improvements is as great or sometimes greater 

 than in the city. 



The cost of one expensive street 66 feet wide, including a 9-inch 

 sewer, in Ottawa in 1916, was $27;50 per lineal foot. The street pave- 

 ment consisted of asphalt on concrete foundation 28 feet wide, the side- 

 walks were in cement, each 5 feet wide; the remaining of 28 feet was 

 left as boulevard in front of the properties. The capital cost of these 

 improvements in respect of lots having 25 feet frontages was thus 

 $343.75. There has to be added to this amount certain costs incur- 

 red by the city, and chargeable to the inhabitants at large, including 

 the cost of making the intersections ; it would therefore be reasonable 

 to estimate that in a city area it might require $350 to provide local im- 

 provements for a 25-foot lot fronting on a 66 foot street. This sum 

 would be much increased if the whole 66 feet were paved and a back 

 lane had to be constructed at the rear of the property, as is required by 

 law in western sub-divisions. If the cost of the land is added, it 

 means that from $700 to $900 has to be paid by a working man for 

 a properly improved lot in a city area. The result is that his capital 

 is mostly absorbed in expensive street improvements and in land, 

 leaving a totally inadequate sum for the erection of his home. That 

 is why so many local improvements remain unmade and so many 

 homes have to be left in an insanitary condition. In England the 

 cost of local improvements and land combined do not usually amount 

 to more than twenty-five per cent of the total cost of the home; on 

 this continent, owing to the combination of inflated land values 

 and costly local improvements, these two things often cost more than 

 the actual house. 



The items of expenditure which require to be incurred by a work- 

 ingman who builds his own home on a typical lot in a medium sized 

 city in Canada and in England, respectively, may be set out as follows : 



CANADA ENGLAND 



Cost of lot 25x100 ft. at $15 per Cost of lot 16x156* ft. at 5 l-3c 



ft frontage = 2500 ft $375 per ft. =2500 ft. say $134 



Capital cost of local improve- Cost of local improvements 



merits (66-ft. street) at $8. . . 200 (36-ft. street) at $4 64 



$575 $198 



Add cost of dwelling, say 1,000 Add cost of dwelling, say 1,377 



$1,575 $1,575 



