THE ELECTRIC CAR AND THE HOUSING PROBLEM.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 11992, 9 October 1906, Page 4

THE ELECTRIC CAR AND THE HOUSING PROBLEM.

Thb effect of the electric car on the housing problem in Glasgow is becoming rapidly more marked. Glasgow is, of course, a city of flate; there the flat-dweller » the rule, and the man with the self-con-

tained house and garden very much the exception. The prevalence of the flat in Scottish cities is held by some to be due to the ancient friendship with France, which has certainly left traces in the Scottish dialect, and may well have influenced the social habits of the people. Possibly, too, the abundance of etone may have suggested, as it made possible, the erection of lofty buildings at a time when the steel girder was unknown. But with the coming of the electric car another tendency has manifested itself. The speculative builder has been turning his attention to the cheaper land of the suburbs, and on it are arising row after row of villas and cottages with garden, plots, conforming more closely to the English model. The pity is that the garden city or garden suburb' movement should not have been in a more forward state before its ally, the electric car, came on the scene, for then what, is being done in a haphazard and promiscuous manner might have been organised to the lasting benefit of the population. Meanwhile, unlet property .in the city itself is on the increase, and though the fall in rents has not been very decided the tendency is certainly downward. On the other hand, rates do notifall, and as the city worker and dwelling watches the wellladen cars taking suburbanites home to districts where the rates are lighter, a sense of grievance springs up .within him. Why, he asks, shauld the dweller in the suburbs share all the advantages of the city and yet escape its rating burdens? There follow, naturally, movements in favour of annexation, and so it is that when some remote and primitive village sees the electric wire being uncoiled along the road it knows that the tentacles of the city are about to grasp it. '