RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 43 



years new industrial development in rural areas will take place, — 

 and should be encouraged to take place to a greater extent than 

 hitherto. The better planning and direction of these new develop- 

 ments by rural municipalities is greatly needed in the interest of 

 increased production and rational development. 



In addition to the industrial growth which is taking place within 

 rural areas as a natural outcome of rural development, there is a 

 strong tendency in Canada, as in England and America, for large 

 manufacturers to move from large urban centres to rural and semi- 

 rural districts. The improvement in railway systems in territory 

 surrounding large cities, the development of the hydro-radials, and 

 the making of good roads, together with the increased pressure of 

 taxation in congested centres, are all contributing to a new movement 

 of industries and population from large cities to rural and semi-rural 

 areas. The same tendency in Great Britain has influenced urban 

 and rural development in that country for the past 20 years and was 

 the chief argument used to secure the necessary support to enable 

 the first Garden City to be established in England. In the United 

 States the increase of workers in thirteen large cities was only 40.8 

 per cent in ten years, whereas it was 97.7 per cent, in the semi-rural 

 zones surrounding these cities during the same period. Mr. Graham 

 Romeyn Taylor, in Satellite Cities, describes this movement as a 

 "sweeping current," which is being accelerated by all that is being 

 done to improve transportation. (Figures 4 and 5.) 



In Canada the same movement has begun, and we find satellite 

 towns and industrial villages growing up in the open country around 

 the large cities of Montreal and Toronto, and a more rapid increase 

 of population in the outer than in the nearer suburbs. When the 

 United States Steel Corporation came to Canada, it selected a site 

 and purchased farm land in a purely rural area outside of Windsor, 

 Ontario, to erect its plant and build its own town. 



This question of industrial decentralization is of importance 

 from the point of view of rural development. It is a natural and grow- 

 ing tendency, and as such indicates the practicability of artificially 

 promoting industrial village centres and rural industries. Under present 

 conditions decentralization does harm to production around cities, 

 since it is accompanied by the worst and most intensive forms of 

 land speculation., which means that great areas of land are sub-divid- 

 ed and exploited for building that should be left in cultivation. It 

 is also harmful from a sanitary point of view, owing to the fact that 

 the rural authorities often look upon these encroachments of urban 



