MAKING A CITY

Southland Times, Issue 19156, 28 January 1924, Page 6

MAKING A CITY

PAST AND FUTURE FORM. The disadvantages of very high buildings in a modern city were discussed in the course of a lecture before the University of Birmingham recently by Mr Raymond Unwin, F.R.1.8.A. These handicaps had become so fully recognised in America, he said, that zoning regulations limiting the heights were being adopted in all the cities with increasing rapidity. What was true in regard to the overcrowding of individual dwellings or buildings upon the land, or to the piling of atoreys upon building, was equally true of the undue crowding together of the different parts of the town. Growth by mere external accretion must lead to inefficiency in connection with anything which had even so much definite organisation as a modem town. That inefficiency not only affected the daily conduct of industry and commerce, but involved enormous waste of capital expenditure. Owing to the growth of the town by haphazard accretion on the circumference, the central area was constantly being hemmed in on every side, so that no part could grow except at the expense of some other part.