235 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
PARK AREAS OP LONDON. 
The population of the city (31,083) is indicated by the inner circle, 
and the population of the county (4,433,018) by the outer circle, on the 
assumed scale of 20,000 people to the square mile. 
with the park areas shown in black, ofifer a striking 
comparison, but the relative meagerness of the Phila- 
delphia parks become more manifest on comparing the 
population of the two places, as indicated by the size 
of their respective circles. On the Boston map the 
inner ring represents the population within the mu- 
nicipal limits, but the larger circle represents the popu- 
lation of all the thirty-nine cities and towns that go to 
make up the Metropolitan District, and even that total 
is considerably short of the population of Philadelphia. 
The comparison of London with Philadelphia is in- 
teresting, because in London we have the result of a 
wholly unplanned growth and a collection of public 
open spaces very few of which were secured by de- 
liberate municipal action. Just as Boston was assisted 
by the peculiarities of its topography which delayed the 
spread of buildings into certain areas until the commu- 
nity awoke to the need of holding them permanently 
open, so London has been assisted by certain peculiari- 
ties of mediaeval land. tenure by which, through a blind 
conservatism rather than through any foresight, the 
people have continued for centuries to withhold from 
productive occupation great numbers of uncultivated 
and almost unused commons or “wastes,” and also cer- 
tain ancient royal hunting grounds, with the result that 
as London has spread over and absorbed village after 
village, the old commons have remained as public open 
spaces, and still beyond the limits of the present vast 
population other such “outer parks” exist, although in 
the absence of a well-planned distribution we cannot 
say that there is any outer system. 
Around Paris similar causes have led to the un- 
planned provision of a great reserve of public open 
spaces, in this case mostly national property, the re- 
mains of the royal domains of the past. Greatly as the 
population of Paris still exceeds that of Philadelphia, 
the provision of park areas far more than outweighs 
it. And the striking feature about the comparison is 
the abundance of outer parks about Paris, and the al- 
most complete absence of outer parks about Philadel- 
phia. Paris is growing" into a region better provided 
with parks than the present city, while Philadelphia is 
growing into a region in which neither the peculiari- 
ties of the topography nor the inheritance of a feudal 
past has fixed any limits to the uninterrupted spread of 
brick and mortar. 
If you are to have such reservations you must make 
them deliberately, and pay for them out of the wealth 
which an otherwise unencumbered land will bring 
you in. 
It has been stated in connection with the Philadelphia 
Parkway project that if Fairmount Park were extended 
to the city by an adequate connection, such as that pro- 
posed, so as to bring it into a relation with the city 
comparable with that of the Bois de Vincennes and 
Bois de Boulogne to Paris, a comparison of the park 
areas and populations would show Paris to have “an 
acre of park for 495 people and Philadelphia an acre 
to about 3(X) of population” ; or, to put it in other 
words, that Paris has only 88 square feet of park to 
each man, woman and child, while Philadelphia has 
about 145 square feet. This conclusion, however, ap- 
pears to be based upon figures which credit Paris only 
with those parks lying within the boundar}- of the 
Department of the Seine — within the county line, so 
to speak — whereas practically the whole of the outer 
park systems of Paris lies outside of that arbitrary 
boundary. 
For the purpose of showing more clearly the ratio 
of park area to population, I have prepared a couple of 
diagrams. The first of these shows by the height of 
the trees the amount of park area per capita in 1900 in 
Philadelphia, Boston and Paris. To avoid misun- 
derstanding, I have reckoned the ratio for Boston and 
. Paris first for the central portion only, that is to say, 
in the case of Paris reckoning only those parks which 
lie within the boundaries of the Department of the 
Seine, and in the case of Boston reckoning only those 
parks that lie within the city limits, comparing with 
PARK AREAS OF PARIS. 
The population of the city (2,511,629) is indicated by the inner circle, 
and the population of the Department of the Seine (3,308,007) hy the- 
outer circle, on the assumed scale of 20,000 people to the square mile. 
