Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/23

CITIES, TOWNS AND VILLAGES illustrations of our neglect of easy and inexpensive opportunities to give individuality to our cities. There is likewise failure of the people to express themselves and their ideals. As our interest in human life is in the distinctly personal, so is our interest in towns and cities. We should have a local concept. We should cherish a love and pride in local conditions and local achievements. Civic art furnishes the most available and most adequate means of expressing these local customs and aspirations. In a word, we should frame a concept, an ideal of what we wish the city to be, and then we should make it one of the controlling purposes in the development of the city plan.

Another broad purpose that should control all city planning is a more sensitive regard for the common welfare. We need to make many improvements for the benefit and enjoyment of everybody, for the common good. Strong, selfish, almost unchecked individualism still has its sway in our cities, and many of the evils which better city planning may help to correct are due to this cause. For example, the faults of the street system, the ignorant and ugly condition of waterfronts, the failure to link various agencies for transportation, the unsanitary and demoralizing influences of slums—these represent the neglect of any large planning authority to control and check rank individualism and to exercise collective power in the name of the entire community. In this respect how striking is the contrast between American and European cities. About fifty years ago, Europe began the improvement, replanning, and reconstruction of her cities to meet the requirements of modern life. Each city acting with strong, well-regulated collective power, endeavored to provide facilities for wholesome physical exercise, for transportation, for good homes,