“CITY BEAUTIFUL”

Taranaki Daily News, 22 July 1929, Page 11

“CITY BEAUTIFUL”

UNITED STATES SCHEME. HUGE DEVELOPMENT PROPOSED. The “City Beautiful,” with suburbs surpassingly lovely and a house for each family, are the main features of a wonderful plan for* the regnional development of New York and its environs which has been accepted by the Government of the State of New York. Two other States—New Jersey and Connecticut —are also directly concerned, and it is anticipated that their Governments will also endorse the scheme.

This regional plan is so extensive and involves so many considerations for the betterment of the people that the cost of preparing it exceeded £200,000. The vast amount of work entailed has been performed by a great committee, representing town and village planning experts and also every class in the community.” This committee has been meeting regularly for seven years, investigating physical, economic and social conditions. In the light of facts developed from a study of an area covering 5528 square miles, with New York as the centre, where 10,000,000 people live today, and where it is estimated over 20,000,000 will live by 1065, it has prepared plans for everyone to work comfortably and live happily, with all the room, air, and sunshine that nature demands. .

This vast regional scheme, witli New York as a super-city, necessitates for its undertaking the co-operation of 425 municipalities and acceptance by the public of many new ideas in reference to living conditions. These include recognition of aesthetic needs, new standards of beauty, and also improved communication in which it seems possible that -tho existing railways, tubes, and buses will be supplemented by air dirigibles, so that every part of the great region for which the planning is undertaken shall be efficiently linked for every purpose of modern life, in which speed is an essential clement. If the regional scheme is accepted there will be no more skyscrapers, except when surrounded by ample open areas.

The Russell Sage Foundation financed the work of study of “The Regional Plan,” and it is estimated that the developments contemplated, magnificent as they are, and creating new conditions of life for everyone, will entail no extraordinary expenditure. The plan can be made effective, it is reported by business and financial experts, by the same amounts as, if not less than, are already being.expended annually by municipalities in haphazard sectional developments, with recurrent actual losses due to uninformed and unscientific arrangements.