Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/15

CITIES, TOWN AND VILLAGES the future. Many other examples might he given to illustrate this same point.

The emphasis, it would seem, needs to he placed less on the original plan, notwithstanding its importance, and more on replanning. The beautiful cities of Europe, those which are being held up constantly as illustrations of what modern cities should he, are, with hut few exceptions, the result of picturesque, almost accidental growth, regulated, it is true, by a widespread respect for art; but improved and again improved, replanned and again replanned. It is here that we fall short. Throughout the United States there are cities with comparatively easy opportunities to improve their water frontages, to group their public buildings, to widen their main streets, to provide in twentieth century fashion for transportation, and to set aside the areas necessary for recreation. Yet, until recently, the people of most of these cities have stood listless, without the business sense, skill, or courage to begin a work that must sooner or later be done.

Comprehensive planning, especially with our present limited city charters and the hampering laws of our states, can have only narrowly limited influence in larger places, relieving only the worst civic conditions, ameliorating merely the most acute forms of congestion, correcting but the gravest mistakes of the past. Wide, many-sided, imaginative planning, so far as very large American cities are concerned, must be confined for the present mainly to the extension of those cities and to the betterment of what are really separate communities on the outskirts. But with smaller cities—cities with a population ranging from 2,500 to 100,000—the case Is different. Comprehensive planning or replanning may be to them of far-reaching and per-