Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/14

NEW IDEALS IN THE PLANNING OF is the most notable illustration. But it is seldom possible to foresee with accuracy the future of a town or city, or to plan for it from the beginning. The complex influences which determine the selection of the sites for towns and cities and the locations of the first streets and buildings must usually be left to work out their results. The opportunity deliberately to lay out new towns and cities is limited and probably always will be. When, however, a small population has been attracted to a town by natural causes and there are indications that because of situation, climate, the trend of trade and commerce, or other forces, an important city is to be established, then, if action is taken soon enough, it is entirely practicable to replan the town so as to provide satisfactorily for its future. There are scores of cities in this country with a population today of 25,000 that will have 50,000 in a generation or less. We can realize this fact more vividly if we look back fifty or sixty years. The average increase for all cities in the United States during the decade from 1900 to 1910 was 31.8 per cent. The gravest neglect is the failure to replan and replan to meet increased demands, to readjust and readjust, to use art and skill and foresight to remodel existing conditions and also to mold and fit for use the new outlying territory about to be occupied. The men who laid out the first streets in London or Boston, for example, provided for the needs of their time with considerable common sense. They could scarcely have been expected to foresee the requirements of a large city. But their successors, who, many 1 generations afterwards, vetoed Sir Christopher Wren's plan for the improvement of London, and still later the suggestions for the betterment of Boston's city plan after the fire of 1872—those men displayed a lack of good sense and judgment in providing for their own time and an even greater lack of foresight and public spirit with regard to