Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/24

NEW IDEALS IN THE PLANNING OF for convenient opportunity to enjoy the beauty and wonder of the nature world, and for a more intimate knowledge of noble examples of human life and beautiful products of human work. As a result of this sort of planning, fine city streets, orderly railroad approaches, beautiful public buildings, open green squares and plazas, refreshing waterfronts, ennobling statuary, convenient playgrounds, numerous parks, parkways and boulevards, art museums, theaters, opera houses, and concert halls—all these things in Europe are free, or so nearly free that they are easily available for all the people. To furnish advantages such as these should be one of the controlling purposes of city planning, for they not only provide wholesome recreation as a relief from the grind and fatigue of the day's work, but they also make a definite and, in the long run, an indispensable contribution toward tomorrow's efficiency.

In the last few years a great change is to be noted in all parts of the United States. The field of collectivism is being steadily extended and its power increased. Dr. Charles W. Eliot in a volume entitled The Conflict between Individualism and Collectivism, describes this change in the following words: "The rise and growing power of collectivism in the American democracy is due to the same influences which have acted on the European nations, and especially on the English. These influences have been the development of the factory system, the creation of corporations with limited liability, the rise of numerous scientific and artistic professions, the exploitation of the natural resources of new countries or regions by capitalists coming from older countries or regions, and the creation of unprecedented inequalities as to comfort and wealth, not as privileges of birth, but as results, first, of the general liberty and the prevailing social mobility, and secondly, of the transmission of education and property. From all these