Page:Old Towns and New Needs.djvu/86

 You will, I think, be able to see that not only is there no real economic difficulty in reducing the over-crowding of houses upon the land, but there is equally no economic difficulty in providing all the open space that is desirable, not only around the town, but within the town; because, even from the point of view of the owner of land, very much the same increment value arises from a given population whatever the exact arrangement of it; and if you reserve a belt of park, two or three hundred yards wide, between the town and the adjacent suburb, it simply means that you have extended the area of land which benefits by building increment as much farther out as is represented by the land which you have reserved unbuilt-upon nearer in.

One other objection to the wider distribution of the population may be raised, namely, that we shall so largely increase the size of our towns as to add very greatly to the problem of locomotion. Here again the difficulty is much less than at first sight appears, for we find on examining towns and comparing the average total population per acre with the population per acre in the congested districts, that, in many cases, it is not the average that is seriously wrong, but that there is acute local congestion. Town planning can provide for the better distribution of the population and the more economical use of land. Just as it will avoid overcrowding in some directions, it will avoid the useless waste of land which often takes place in other directions, because areas, otherwise available for dwellings, are ruined by adjacent factories, or because considerable areas are constantly being left without proper