498 



NATURE 



[October 20, 1910 



academic element receded altogether, and the park 

 assumed a bank-holiday aspect. 



At night a vast Kommers of the entire body of 

 students took place in the Zoological Gardens. There, 

 under the strict regulations which tradition prescribes, 

 the ceremonies of the Bicrcomtnent were performed 

 for the edification of the initiated and the entertain- 

 ment of the foreign visitors. But the present writer 

 had to leave bv the midnight express, while the 

 ordered revelry was at its height. 



The foreign university delegates included Prin- 

 cipal G. Adam Smith (Aberdeen), Zeeman (.Amster- 

 dam), Sir J. J. Thomson (Cambridge), Mahaffy (Dub- 

 lin), Sir Donald Mac.Mister (Glasgow), Chwostow 

 (Kasan), Brogger (Christiania), Sir W. Ramsay 

 (London), Lord Strathcona (Montreal), President Had- 

 ley (Yale), President Butler (Columbia, New York), 

 Macan (O.xford), Poincar^ (Paris), Griinert (Prag), 

 Blaserna (Rome), Mittag-Leffler (Stockholm), Bernat- 

 zik (Vienna), and A. Meyer (Zurich). .Among the re- 

 presentatives of foreign academies and societies were 

 Thomsen (Copenhagen), Johannessen (Norway), Lord 

 Reay (British .Academy), Sir J. Larmor (Roval 

 .Society), Keen (Philadelphia), Montelius (Sweden), 

 Miura (Tokyo), and Bohm-Bawerk (Austria). The 

 (jerman universities and academies were represented 

 for the most part by their rectors or presidents. 



TOWN-PLANNING. 

 n^OWN-PLANNING has always had a fascination 



*■ for the sociological amateur, and the creation 

 of a model town is one of the most pleasing and 

 least harmful of LItopian dreams. Mr. Burns's Town 

 Planning Act is well-intentioned ; under the condi- 

 tions this is enough, for in the evolution of a town 

 the method of trial is inevitable, the problem solvititr 

 amhulando. The one thing needful is the guiding 

 idea, the working principle. 



The discussions at the Town Planning Conference 

 have been full of interest. There have been felicitous 

 analogies, ingenious suggestions, and brilliant fore- 

 casts. But it is a commonplace that the permancnl 

 institutions are those which have not been planned, 

 but have grown by a sort of felicitous adaptation, an 

 unconsciously purposive concurrence of atoms. 

 Throughout the conference it was taken for granted 

 that the town of the future will be evolved from the 

 town of the present by small, continuous modifica- 

 tions. Here is a curious analogy to Darwin's view 

 of the evolution of a new^ species, bv the summation 

 of small variations. .Again, throughout the confer- 

 ence there has emerged no master-principle, no archi- 

 tectonic impulse, for the guidance of those who will 

 .ipply the .Act. Still less possible was the emergence 

 of any universal and permanent plan. 



What is to be our plan, and what our principle for 

 the evolution of the tow^n of the future? Is the ideal 

 town to be a garden city, with factories in the country, 

 or a combination of gardens and factories? Mr. I,an- 

 chester has ingeniously explained the "West End" 

 tendency by suggesting that in the evening, when 

 work is over, one's steps naturally turn to the region 

 of the setting sun, and that this quarter therefore 

 is unconsciously chosen as the place of home and 

 relaxation. Or is the ideal town to be an aerial maze 

 of skyscrapers, overhead ways and wires, somewhat 

 as imagined by Mr. Wells? Will this have roof- 

 gardens? Will different forms of traffic be confined 

 to different levels? Or, again, will the citv be half 

 underground? Such questions would be futile, were 

 il not necessary that the working plan of the town- 

 planner must allow for all such eventualities. 



It is argued by many that plan must precede 

 NO. 2138, VOL. 84] 



structure. .As applied to individual units, this is a 

 truism, but it can hardy be applied to a complex 

 growth like a town. It involves the Platonic notion 

 that there is a pre-existing idea of a tow'n. But the 

 idea, that is, the plan, of a town develops with its 

 growth as surely as it originated with its inception. 

 The moral of this is that the plan which every body 

 of town-planners must work upon must be a dynamic 

 plan; a moving, shifting, developing, and shrinking, 

 growing and changing plan, the germ of which is 

 to-day's town conditioned by its environment. 



There has been, and will be for a time, much use- 

 less talk about town-geometry. The straight line and 

 right angle with which street-plans commence, to be 

 varied by curves, other angles, circles, and triangles, 

 according to the circumstances, are fundamental. 

 .Esthetic play with these elements is misguided in the 

 case of streets and areas, no less than in the case of 

 individual houses and blocks. For architectural 

 beauty should be a bv-product of adaptation of 

 structure and function. Town-planners need to keep 

 an eve on traditional architecture, which has long lost 

 this essential jirinciple. There is a real danger, in 

 the enthusiasm of a new movement, that the con- 

 ventional architect may create a body of useless ex- 

 penditure if allowed to indulge his unscientific ideal 

 of ornament for ornament's sake. He is really more 

 dangerous than the jerry-builder. In the one sphere 

 where he may seem harmless, if not desirable, the 

 designing of public buildings, he is really unnecessary. 

 .At the conference, engineers were conspicuous by 

 their absence, but in the town-building of the future 

 the engineer will be the main adviser and collaborator 

 of the builder. 



.As for a guiding principle in the working of a 

 dynamic plan, there is none, unless we say — science. 

 In the town, as in the house, ease of communication, 

 light, air, and sanitation are the essential needs which 

 scientific building has before it. There are no other 

 components of a golden rule. Continuously applied 

 when circumstances permit, these considerations will 

 gradually improve our cities as science advances. One 

 or two details are useful for discussion. It has long 

 been established that urban populations tend to be 

 more intellectual but physically more degenerate than 

 the rural. A'et East End populations, though de- 

 generate in some respects, have developed a high 

 power of resistance to insanitary conditions. Again, 

 there is some evidence that the town populations of 

 .Sweden, once a feeble race, have become, through 

 physical training and scientific environments, physic- 

 ally superior to the country populations, and as fine 

 a race as any in Europe. Parks and open spaces will 

 be permanent blessings, supplying a touch of nature 

 for the soul of the town dweller, though we niav come 

 to realise that we have over-estimated the value of 

 light, and may some day artificially purify our air. 

 Such suggestions as a great ring-road round London 

 — certainly concentric communication is defective — and 

 the removal of the great railway termini to one small 

 central area, must be balanced by the possibility of 

 the evolution of other methods of locomotion. Some 

 day London may need great open spaces for aero- 

 plane stages. 



Town-planning is a continuous process, and its re- 

 sults are in the future, and themselves to be super- 

 seded. But there is one sphere, more or less 

 untouched at the conference, which admits of imme- 

 diate attention. One of the great obstacles to pro- 

 gress is the slowness with yvhich new inventions are 

 brought into the personal environment of the mass of 

 the population. .A striking example of this is the 

 average house. But in the case of house-building, 

 which, after all, is the most important function of 



