Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/17

CITIES, TOWNS AND VILLAGES serve its natural features, echo its business purposes, express its wealth, give form to its traditions, ideals and aspirations. A city plan worthy of the name would tend to check haphazard drift which is apt to make a city commonplace. It would hold up a worthy and distinctive ideal toward which all improvements, no matter how small or unimportant themselves, would ultimately contribute.

The first step in the replanning of towns and cities is a careful study of the underlying conditions—physical, business, and social conditions—a study that is often termed "a city survey." Whether a survey of such conditions or indeed the preparation of the plan itself, should be undertaken by private or public authority, cannot be answered dogmatically. Local circumstances may usually be left to determine this question. Such work is undoubtedly public work, and yet the appreciation of its need and value is apt to arise at first in a comparatively small group of persons, often a group not entrusted with public power. Reports and plans are often made for voluntary organizations of public-spirited citizens who believe that in this way they can contribute to the public welfare. The movement for city planning is thus following the precedent of other movements, for with but few exceptions advances in the United States have first been undertaken by private individuals or organizations, and first paid for by private funds.

The landscape architect or city planner is apt to begin his work for a city with a request for a topographical map. He finds, almost invariably, that there is no such map. If a park is to be laid out, a private place, or oftentimes even a garden, a topographical map, giving exact information as to the form and shape of the ground and