Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/50

NEW IDEALS IN THE PLANNING OF city," the best example of which is Letchworth, England. The founding of Letchworth was undertaken in the belief that the problem of the housing of the industrial classes, which is agreed to be one of the pressing problems of our modern civilization, could only be attacked successfully by a fundamental change in our methods of urban development. The existing methods of haphazard building, which resulted in a few years in the creation of new slum areas, were not only socially bad, but expensive. The increasing wealth of the country, the growth of population, and the extension of trade, were responsible for this urban development, but it was clear that some new method had to be adopted if the new areas were to be anything but gigantic mistakes and burdens for future generations. The garden city of Letchworth is not a fantastic or impossibly idealistic scheme. It is simply town building according to modern town planning knowledge. Among the most interesting publications on this subject are Garden Cities, by Ebenezer Howard, the founder of Letchworth, and a more recent volume entitled The Garden City—A Study in the Development of a Modern Town, by C. B. Purdom.

Cities distinguished by size afford examples of types involving planning of our largest cities or groups of cities, as in metropolitan areas, or smaller cities with a population in the neighborhood of 100,000, or towns, and even villages. The planning and replanning of the smaller cities takes on added importance when we consider how great is their number, the population affected, and their relative rates of increase. Of the total population of the United States, according to the census of 1910, more than one-half, or 53.7%, is still rural; only 46.3% is urban. Of this 46% more than one-half, or 25.5% of the total population, is included in towns and