Page:Report of the Park Board 1903.djvu/69

 constructions which would be entirely unnecessary on gently sloping land. The money thus spent is to all practical intents and purposes, so far as the benefit to the community is concerned, absolutely thrown away. If it had not been spent in this way, the chances are that it would have been spent in some way that would have had more rental and taxable value and would therefore have been worth more to the community. Speaking in a general way, it would certainly be a very profitable investment for the city, therefore, to take these lands out of the market for residential purposes, and use them for pleasure grounds for the benefit of the citizens at large, and for the particular benefit of adjoining properties above and below. In that case all those who would otherwise have built houses on these uneconomical sites will build them elsewhere, and with easier conditions will build handsomer and better houses, or more of them, greatly to the benefit of the taxable valuation of the city. Little account is usually taken by assessors of retaining walls, steps and such like constructions by which steep grounds are fitted for use; hence money so spent practically escapes taxation, to the loss of the city and without any particular gain to the owner. But, aside from the difficulties of fitting such land for those who build residences upon them, there is to be considered the enormous and disproportionate expense of preparing such lands, by means of streets, terraces, etc., either by the original owners or by the city, and the subsequent great expenses incident to maintaining streets on such necessarily steep grades. If many of the streets are made with such steep grades as have already been adopted in many instances, as seems certain to be the case so long as they are originally laid out by the property owners, there will be for all time to come a vast amount of inconvenience, and not a little danger to people using the streets, and a great, although indefinite cost in wear and tear of vehicles and horses. Moreover, such streets are extremely ugly in the way that almost anything that is ill-adapted to its purpose is ugly.

There is another valid objection to building on such steep lands where the sub-soil conditions are such as they prove to be on some of these hillsides, namely, the liability of landslides. The landslide which occurred back of and partly in City Park, covered many acres and ruined for building purposes a good deal of land which had already been prepared at considerable expense by grading and otherwise for sale in small lots, is only one illustration well known to the citizens of what is liable to occur at many places on these steep hillsides as soon as the natural conditions begin to be interfered with extensively by the grading of streets and terraces. This objection to steep land ought to weigh much more strongly with intending purchasers than