Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/52

NEW IDEALS IN THE PLANNING OF

The principal elements that make up a city plan are the streets and roads, the street railways, the steam railroads, the waterways and waterfronts, the parks, playgrounds and other public open spaces, and the various public or quasipublic structures. In a comprehensive analysis of the subject from this point of view, there should also be included the subject of land subdivision and the restriction of private property, which embraces in its most complete form building zones or districts and the limiting of the area, bulk and use of buildings.

In building a city the first act usually is to lay out some kind of street system, and although a good street system is of primary importance to convenience and economy in a city, its establishment has not usually been presumed to involve any special knowledge or skill beyond that of the surveyor, nor any different point of view from that of the real estate promoter. Most of the city planning in the United States has been undertaken with the proprietary point of view. It has been done for the owners of the land largely with a view to early and profitable sales. Not only that, but the methods, traditions and habits created by these private owners have dominated in measure the official city planning agencies which later became established in cities. These public agencies have often, in fact usually, had insufficient