1 6 A War Memorial for Belfast. 



of the city by withholding land from the market for the higher 

 vakies which they might obtain after a few years. Having 

 bought a suitable strip, let the City lease it for building, 

 under careful supervision, in accordance with the City Plan. 

 Intelligent planning, on modern lines, will prevent waste of 

 capital expenditure in a multitude of ways ; and the public 

 ownership of the ground will enable rents to be fixed at a figure 

 which will not be inflated by private profiteering. AVithin these 

 limitations, it seems to me that private enterprise would still have 

 enormous scope for all the energy it is capable of exerting. In 

 private enterprise, I include Co-Partnership groups, and Building 

 Societies, as well as private firms and individuals. 



As regards possible alternatives, direct State building and 

 ownership appear to me to be out of the question : it is 

 physically impossil:)le for the Board of AVorks to do it, and I have 

 not the least expectation that Parliament intends to do anything 

 of the sort. Municipal building and ownership of the actualhouses 

 themselves might appear more likely, ])ut here again, I do not 

 believe that our Corporation is likely at present to take over the 

 building trade of the city as a going concern and run it from Done- 

 gall Square, — as well as a big rent-agency department. The plan 

 which has been officially adumbrated seems to be for the State to 

 lend very large sums of money to local authorities at a low rate 

 of interest ; and that, in turn, local authorities should lend the 

 same money to large numbers of property owners. I have only 

 this comment : unless the State insists upon a proper city plan, 

 properly supervised, upon the general lines indicated in this essay, 

 we are likely to find that, after the lapse of a few years, (l) the 

 property-owners have got most of th^ cash, (2) the city owns 

 neither the land nor the houses, and (3) the tenants are paying 

 high rents for houses little if anything better than they are 

 occupying to-day. 



My claim has been that, to a very large extent, we could 

 make city development pay for itself. But it is only fair to my 

 own suggestions to observe that there must necessarily be some 



