Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/461

 THE FIRST GERMAN MUNICIPAL EXPOSITION 443

Thus may be seen what a complicated machinery there is in the German city and what strict oversight the municipality exercises. Of course, the centralization of such great and minute power in one body of men will make for extreme conservatism, at the same time that it secures for the city a harmony and unity which it would otherwise, perhaps, lack. In Augsburg there is an "Order for the Preservation of the Architectural Picture of the City as a Whole," which, aside from any advantages or dis- advantages it may accompany, is an index.

The olden city was an agglomeration of which the house was the unit. The modern city has the street as its unit. It is the collective effect of the street, not the individual effect of the house, which the board of public works seeks. To secure this effect the community must act in unison, not leaving it to each individual builder to build his house as high or as broad, as far from the building line or as near to it, as he wishes ; to pave the street and clean and light it, or to leave that all undone; to make his house dangerously weak, of easily combustible mate- rials, or without such provisions of light, air, and cleanliness as to make it unsanitary and unhealthful thereby endangering the health, not only of its inmates, but of the community at large. The community takes charge of these matters, and also requires that the style of the building shall be such that it may harmo- nize with the street-picture. The street belongs to the city; and so close is the organic connection which exists that the city logi- cally claims the right to decide upon the erection, alteration, or removal of everything connected with the street. In such cities as Niirnberg and Hildesheim, which are living largely in the past, the street-picture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is preserved, and all alterations or additions to such street-picture must be harmonious. We shall return to this in discussing municipal art, but the point here made is that the community does, in Germany, have oversight even to this extent. We have already seen how the department of public works has charge of laying out streets. All additions are subdivided and mapped out on definite scientific principles, and with a regard for the artistic side proportional to the development and