Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/449

 THE FIRST GERMAN MUNICIPAL EXPOSITION 435

with closely built houses, and tiny crooked streets. New streets adequate for modern needs have to be cut through these masses

as in Frankfurt 'a. M., Nurnberg, Darmstadt, Dresden, and Halle, for example. Hamburg has bought out picturesque, dirty houses, razed them, and rebuilt the new district with modern buildings not nearly so picturesque, but far better for the health and welfare of the whole community. Nurnberg has preserved, on historical and artistic grounds, two old towers which stand directly in the way of traffic. To atone for this, however, she has tunneled through the adjoining buildings, and has run the streets through. Sidewalks represent a comparatively recent differentiation of the street surface. Some boulevards have equestrian paths, bicycle paths, etc. As modes of locomotion increase and traffic further differentiations of the surface of thoroughfares may well be expected. In Germany the street- car tracks represent such a differentiation one not yet clearly marked in American cities. This problem of caring for the vari- ous traffic of the future various in speed, in type, in purpose

is already being considered by the city builders of today, that the work of correction may be less for their successors than it has been for them.

The municipality cares not only for the great thoroughfares, however, but also for the minor streets. These minor streets, including residence streets, not serving as main thoroughfares where speed and ease of movement are necessary, may well be curved, or at least slightly out of the straight line. The slightly bending street has a great deal in its favor. In the first place, it is really a necessity where there is rising ground, in order to make the grade easy. In the next place, it renders impossible the wind's sweeping down a street, carrying ever-increasing clouds of dust with it. Then, too, it gives opportunity for tak- ing account of sunshine and shadow not leaving miles of houses with never a ray of sunshine in their front rooms. A curving street gives a curving building line with a house front- ing northeast or northwest, for example, rather than due north. This arrangement has also its aesthetic side, as the eye always has a new picture presented, instead of following interminable