Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/53

 walks down a street, one gets a view between the houses—a view generally embracing greenery and trees. There too, even the smaller houses are not machine-made to a pattern, but have individual character, possess gardens, and are situated near large open spaces of green. Now this contrast gives occasion for reflection. It reveals to us the existence of an essential element in satisfactory housing conditions of which, until recently in England—though the case has long been different in Germany—practically no account was taken. I refer to the satisfactory arrangement of the various houses of which a town or village is composed. Such satisfactory arrangement, we are coming to see more and more clearly, is of extreme importance. It is not merely a matter of the aesthetic sense of a few superior persons. It is a matter of the character and of the health of the people as a whole a matter in a way even more significant than the internal arrangements of factories, because it affects not the workers only, but also their young