TOWNS AND INDUSTRY. 
average) gives 1,600 persons to the acre. Compare this density, for 
instance, with— 
Hampstead Garden Suburb (London). (Maxi- 50 persons per acre. 
mum density in any one area of workmen’s 
cottages.) 
London slum eT a oe = 400 ” 
Berlin slum nee 0 Aw mrs 2.0.0) +s ” 
Naples slum 5 as dn oe Ab 7 of) 
Chippendale slum area (Sydney) be ee 324 44 
Fitzroy slum area (Melbourne) Fe St 220 As D 
City of Unley (Mixed class residential area, 9 i +) 
Adelaide) (General average.) 
When the plan is examined it will be noted that each air vent 
shaft (4.0 x 2.6 x 8 stories in height) has to provide light, air, and 
ventilation to 16 bathroom-lavatories, each measuring, on the average, 
6 feet x 6 feet. How can we fight “Spanish influenza” or other 
epidemics if this kind of housing “reform” is to be permitted? 
ECONOMIC EFFECT OF OVERBUILDING. 
These conditions approximate some of the worst forms of tenement 
building known in Europe. Their multiplication in large cities have 
resulted in an intensification of the problems of infant mortality, deple- 
tion of physique and public health, immorality, tuberculosis, epidemic 
diseases, and other costly and wasteful evils due to bad housing. They 
are a prolific cause of industrial inefficiency, strikes, drunkenness, and 
social unrest generally. It may be argued, of course, that the 
building of such residential flats in isolated groups for the 
accommodation of particular classes of people could not lead 
to the same results in Australia. In the initial stages of 
replacing self-contained houses by residential flats, the argument might 
superficially be true, as it appeared to be once upon a time in Germany, 
Italy, and France and American cities. But the incidence and experi- 
ence of modern land and building speculation in all these countries 
(where transfer and site ownerships are not encumbered to the same 
degree as in England) show that isolated groups of flats do not remain. 
Wherever they are resorted to under speculative enterprise, economic 
pressure, both in land and building values, is increased. Owners of 
house property in built-up areas find it more profitable to replace the 
older forms of housing (at present common to all Australian cities) with 
flats. But the flats, originally designed for people of fortunate cireum- 
stances, tend to depreciate with the growth of the city and the increase 
in tenement building. As these people remove to other quarters, other 
classes take their place. It becomes only a question of time, in certain 
districts, when flats are converted into appalling tenement slumdom. 
Maines New York, Chicago, Glasgow, Berlin, Paris, Hamburg, Rome, 
vc., &e. 
There have ‘been present in Sydney and Melbourne for some time 
now those conditions of growth in the modern city whereby the ‘ransi- 
tion from self-contained houses and garden spaces to flats and intensive 
overbuilding and overcrowding becomes economically inevitable. The 
process has made considerable inroads in Sydney. It is taking root 
also in Melbourne and Adelaide, also other cities. The adoption of 
regulatory measures is highly expedient in the interests of national 
economy and welfare, and for the purpose of promoting health, con- 
venience, amenity, and conservation of human resources. 
TIT 
