NECESSITY FOR A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OF CITY BUILDING / 



streets. Certain residential sections are best served by shallow blocks and 

 comparatively narrow streets. Without a plan of building control that will 

 segregate the industrial from the residential sections, it is impossible to plan 

 a street and block system that will be suited to the requirements of the 

 various sections and to the uses that it is intended to serve. New York 

 City has suffered serious economic and social loss because its street and 

 block system built up on a distressingly standardized plan has not been 

 adapted to the particular requirements of certain types of industrial, busi- 

 ness and residential use. With the existing uncontrolled and haphazard 

 building development a uniform street and block system was the only one 

 that the city could properly adopt. 



Nelson P. Lewis, Chief Engineer of the Board of Estimate and a 

 leading expert on municipal engineering and city planning, testified to the 

 need of the segregation of industrial districts from the point of view of 

 improved traffic conditions, a convenient street layout and economic advan- 

 tage. He said : " This city has suffered tremendous losses by the inflexi- 

 bility of its street system, which instead of controlling a subdivision has 

 been controlled by the habit of creating lots one hundred feet deep, lying 

 between streets two hundred feet apart, and great enterprises, a number of 

 which were formerly located in the Erie Basin section of Brooklyn, finding 

 themselves hemmed in by rigid street systems to which more or less sanctity 

 was attributed, have been obliged to find new sites on the New Jersey 

 meadows. One conspicuous instance of this is the Worthington Pump 

 Works." 



The City's park system is valued at $673,000,000. Large additions to 

 this system will be needed to provide for the requirements of Brooklyn, 

 Queens and Richmond. Unless a park system can be located with reference 

 to the particular residential sections that it is intended to serve, its value 

 is greatly impaired. Various small parks and parkways have been located 

 in what have now become factory sections. A comprehensive plan of build- 

 ing control would have made it possible to have so located these parks 

 that their contribution to the public health, comfort and welfare would 

 have been vastly greater. 



The adequacy of the City's future sewerage system is also in large 

 measure dependent on the adoption of a plan of building segregation and 

 height limitation. The city recognizes that in order to prevent intolerable 

 pollution of the waters of the harbor it must adopt plans for sewage treat- 

 ment. Segregation of factories will facilitate the problem of sewage treat- 

 ment by making it possible to confine the special facilities required for the 

 treatment of certain trade wastes to certain factory districts. While the 

 height of buildings has comparatively little effect on the adequacy of a 

 combined system of sewerage, storm water and sanitary, it is of the very 

 greatest importance where a separate sanitary system is used. Manhattan 

 is undertaking in large measure a reconstruction of its sewerage system 

 and, in view of the necessity for the early adoption of sewage treatment, 



