A City's Dream of a City.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 17, 24 April 1912, Page 33

A City's Dream of a City.

By

ERNEST POOLE.

RROM our airy pinnacle, high above, we were looking down into the city. “In less than a hundred years from now,’’ said the engineer beside me. “such cities as 'the one down there will have vanished from the civilized world, remembered as monstrosities, replaced by other cities. ..which will be to Paris as Paris is to this.” He belonged to that new profession of rude, gigantic surgery which in recent years has suddenly come into prominence in scores of our crowded cities and towns. For the past twelve months he had been employed to diagnose a city, to find where and how to operate, and to draught a plan for the city’s future growth. His offices were perched at the top of twenty-two storey building. And we had stepped out on the roof to have a look down at his patient. I’he patient seemed in great distress. 11 avy columns ami billows of smoke n -e up from every direction, rose up and whirled and eddied, and settled in slugs' ii. sprawling clouds that veiled and befouled the light of the sun. Noises n -e. The very air was alive with a tnuffh’d, quivering roar. And, looking down through the scurrying smoke—at the st eets that were long, tumultuous tides or people and things; at the buildings of all shapes and ages squeezed and " ged together into a grimy, mammoth hi e, some of them suddenly towering a- though for a breath of air—the whole a eet of the mass below was that of <■' gestion and fever. Cities fit to live in.” the engineer be- ". “don’t grow by themselves. They e to be made, moulded, planned to S' humanity’s needs. They are being made in Europe. Paris didn’t j ‘ grow by itself. It has already 1 n remoulded several times. Napoleon fl rd, in two short years spent fourteen hi dred million francs in opening bouleis. radial avenues, and streets —and th work in Paris is by no means ended It has been the same in Vienna: th' German cities have taken it up; even 1,1 ’ London has become fearfully busy °t ate. And now over here, in at least a ore of cities, the work has already I' -tin —the work of moulding our cities 111 tead of allowing our cities to mould us. Hie health of a city.” he went on. "bke the health of your body or mine, depends on its circulation—that is, its v, 'ins and arteries —its streets. In this c >ty the circulation is clogged. “Look down again and you will see that all its streets run due north and south or east and west, with rectangu-

lar blocks between them. We call' it a •Gridiron City.’ The first and chief promoter of the Gridiron was no les a man than William Penn. Having seen the tortuous, winding streets of the ancient cities abroad, he decided that crooked-

ness was a work of the devil, and that in decorous Philadelphia the blocks should all he squares. It seemed a sensible idea. The newer American towns began copying Philadelphia. Soon it became the regular thing. And now at

least nine out of ten of our cities and towns are of the Gridiron type. •’Tin* dreary ugliness of the scheme, the monotony of hundreds of blocks all "ha ped exactly alike—is only a part of the trouble. The most serious part i> this: Down there in the heart of the city today are nearly a million |>eople. workers and shoppers who will >OOll Im* going borne. Half of them, at most, those whose home" lie dm* east or west or north or south, will have direct routes home. But the home" of the other half an* north-east, north -west. southeast. south-west—and to picture tin* homeward route of this hickless half million, you need only imagine an immense field two or three miles square, over which \on wish to go from tin* northwe-t to tin* southeast corner. Nou are n«>t allowed to cut straight across. You arc forced to take a zigzag path or else wo all the way around. ••So .much for William Penn’s idea. About a century later, another American planned a city. His .mi met was George Washington —ami he was an engineer. So far-sighted a builder he was that his conception for the capital, worked out by Major 1/ Entant. was an object of amusement to short-sighted men for generations and is now a model for all' of us to follow. “To follow —not to copy. For we are beginning to learn these days, that every citv has its own topography, its own peculiar needs and possibilities. and therefore must be studied by itself. “But to clear out a city, relieve its congestion, the plan of our first great engineer is acknowledged now as t In* best by authorities the world over. Io treat tin* heart of the town as the hub of a wheel, to open up broad diagonal thoroughfares (like 'tin* spokes of a wheel) straight out in all directions to tin* regions where the people dwell this is the idea in the rough, to Im* varied according to need. Ibis radical scheme has already been adopted in part in many big cities of Europe. And a study of the plans recently put upon paper for a scon* of American cities will show an almost universal agreement that these

radial thoroughfares must Ih> ploughed out here. "Carefully study a city's needs, map <»ut these vital eb.nnel- along -trategic lines and you have a basic plan tor your traction scheme to follow. "The city of the future will have no elevateds, no unsightly train yards no trolley lines, no long lines of Mattering truck- and drays. I ts people, and its tle.ght as well. will be t raii-|-orte*l underground. lhe ground beneath the city will lie honeycombed with subways, one. two. three tiers deep. lhe lailroad- from outside will conic in underground, will connect at their terminals with the local subways, and their passengers and freight will thus be taken to their destination- or transferred to other terminal- or docks. without crowding the surface streets above. This subway system will not on ' absorb the railroad traffic; it will also give -wif. and easy egress in the rush hour- at night to those who work ill the heart ot the city feeding into the great radial subways which will run ou’ward by the -hottest routes, that is, under the radial avenues that I have already described. Die population will then naturally tlow outward to those suburban zones where the citv’s future millions are to live. "And in these outer regions of homes the bulkier- of our cities will hate a: last a free hand. No remoulding, no

job started wrong. Thev will be ade take a fresh start. to plan before " growth begins. There will careregulat ns, as there are in cities to keep the real-est n proper mnds. to pr ■ '•■nt the ere 'ion of block upon bb-ek of 1. sunless tenements, t keep th - and fa.-ti.rie- t-- di-tri t- of then ‘ ' vision for '' - ' ’ ts. Tht ■ • ■ _ is. ra ' - ", ' ' ■ i --■ mt. < ■ "it. it- girdle I ’ k r.t n. 1 > - - • . ■ is p]a ’iring t.. ' is park. Imtgine . ' - eg ns ; . ■ ; ■ • nst me. f the "Another inspiring possibility in this

of the future is the location of pu ►- !:<• buildings. How many noble structuies. erected every year—Government

,|J city administration, liirartes. museums, churches, opera houses. 1 like —are robbed of half their

effect by wretchedly cramped surrounding by our old friend, the Gridiron scheme. lhe plans of our newer citie-.

and of the outer regions in old ones, will allow ample room for all these public centre-. They will face out upon

I a k-_ oi lake or river fronts. upon l-i.bln- squares or playgrounds: or. better Still, they Will stand at the end ot broad boule'aids. with vistas like that in lari- from the Are de Triomphe down the thumps Elysees. Iheie will be smaller community centres as well. The old idea our fathers conceived of grouping public buildings around a village ‘commons’ will be revived in another form. Scattered at close intervals all through the dwellin'region- will l x - small jxirks and plav' giounds of anywhere from five to a hundred acres each, like those with which in the last six years the South side of Chicago has been studded. Here will be gathering places of many kinds to accommodate both young and old in the neighbourhood around—public schools, kindergartens and creches, gymna>ium>. s a imming pools. and baths, ball field-, -and courts, -mall lagoons, band stands. public libraries. club room-. hall for music, lectures, da mi’-, and other social gatherings ■ all those ditlerent forces, in brief, Celt make tor a wholesome eommunitv lite. A wild vision you may call it. a vi-iou ot -onie age remote. But in the t hicago playground- you mav see these community centres to-day—for there they have all come into lite in the -pace of six -hort years." I'or -onie moment- I gazed reflective!' down into the billowy -moke and tin mon-trotis grimy ma— below. ■A\ !i going to pay for .ill this?" I a-ked. I turned and caught in the en jiiit't'r - ,i riiriou- (|uizzical light. r«»r a moment.” he said. “I thought you believed that I was one of th<»*e men vailed dreamers. ’’ ' s, “ l i’"t .<t all ! ” I stoutly replied. "\ on are a practical man.” But I could teel that over my face th-' had crept a guiltv look. The engineer <miled. J 'Je changes 1 have been speaking ot. he -aid simply. ”are going to pav for themselves.” "How ? ” "As they have done in Europe. The

famous Kmgstrasse in \ lenna. Kings way in London, in Paris the Avenue de I’Opera were all made to for themselves by one very fair and simple device. The city condemned and purchased not only the land for the street itself but also a broad strip of la ml on either side. When the wide and beautiful street was completed, the city sold the adjoining land at triph* and quadruple the prices for which it had been bought, and the money thus secured was enough to meet the cost of the entire improve inent. “To whom was any injustice done? To the former property owners ? Not at all. They received fuil value for their holdings- 1 mean they received what their holdings were worth before the* city made the improvement. The city had made it, they had not. And the city, like any other business corporation. simply took the values that it had made. “'rhe whole thing comes down to this.” he concluded: “Shall the whole growth ot the city be left to go on helter-skelter for the immediate profit of a few individuals. no one of whom has first in mind the good of the city as a whole ? Or shall the city map. which tamely follows, be changed to the city plan, which leads —leads by slow, progressive changes to the ideal city far ahead, where health and convenience and beautv will be forever secured ? “In this story of dreams you propose to write, my dream is simply this: Ont of chaos—order. From a map —a plan.” “All this seems rather far away.” 1 had come to the small consulting room of a friend of mine, a physician, who lived and worked in one of those tenement districts where humanity is packed in tight, two thousand to the block. He had come from a round of professional calls. It was late at night. And to strike at ome to the subject. I had been sketching for him. in the rough the engineer’s gigantic dream. “That chap works up on the mountain peaks.” the doctor said, half smiling. “Down here in the jungle it’s hard to see so far ahead. ” Just a few minutes ago,” he

continued. “I was with a man who is going to die. He is going to die because, since the day six years ago when he came over from Russia, he has spent his days ami a part of his nights in a dark, germ-breeding sweatshop and his sleeping hours in an equally dark, germ-breeding tenement room, lit* is dying from tuberculosis. Meanwhile, in his bedroom ami the kitchen close adjoining, his wife and her old father

ami five ill-nourished little children have been packed in beside him. breathing day and night, for some eleven weeks, the foul, germ laden air. S<> tuberculosis spreads. “Of course your engmeer is right. To get rid of disease you must clear mu tin* cities, open them up to the sun and air. the two great microbe killers. But there are other dreams in which some of us indulge.

“He looks from his pinnacle through a field glass, s<» t<» speak. ami the things that he sees art* tremendous. But down here in the jungle. I look into a microscope. and the things I see are small. His vista is of boulevards, great public buildings, parks. Mine is of objects infinitesimal. invisible to the naked eye—microbes by the billion, waging through the years a war unseen, unheard but never ceasing day or night.

"In thi* invi*il»lv war. we are *eardiing out those microbe* frivndh to the hu man rave ami aiding them in the *trug gle to exterminate their toe*. Already, through quarantine, we have barred out or impi i*on«* I the most *avage of the eiirmv cholera. for in*tame. la*t any man who ha* lo*t hi* faith in humanity** prog re** read the <l<**<ript ion* of scenes not more than a hundred year* ago. a whole <-it\ driven mao with fear by a • liolria epidemic. *cetie* of terroi and death have forever p.i**ed a wav. "Through quarantine and vaccination we have practically put an end to the lavage* of *mallpo\. Inoculation with triendlv germ* i* now doing the *\une for diphtheria. Xml in the years not 1(1 very clo*e ahead, pneumonia, typhoid, t iibei ciilo*i*. cancer, and other invading microbe horde* will b,- repelled b\ similar mean* until in the course of a hundred years these plague* will. I believe, have become as rare as leprosv and other *vourges ~f the past. "And we *hail do more, in this citv of the future. We *hall eradicate blindness. deafness. We shall do away, to a large extent, with the deformitie* seen

to-day. And a*, through the work of the engineer*, the air and tin- light of heawn flood* in. and the -unle— tone nient buildings are replaced by beautiful. vv hole*onie holm * the *vience of city hygiene will also have made gigantic stride*. I'ae problem* of sewerage and of water *upp’.y . of milk, of meat, of every kind of food and drink will have adequately solved. Ami with p.ii« foot! an i drink, with sane, wholesome living, and with our m robe armies ..f dvfcm-e to the average person • • • • giv en fiom ten t.. lift.-. : year* of ad led life. X ' •_ ■ -jo en a uindan.-e of lift . K. . ;hr *izr. the *tren_'th. tin vitality of oar ode* vv II ■e .-mm«-ii*t-lv in •• •i-e i. ’ 10110 bo»li c *. Ireaatiful. healthy Imhl.c* that * 'he »ml of mv part of \oiir dream.*’ me lav* .ift«a tbi* I Weir to the laboratory of a man in hi-jh repute for "Mv dream of a nature city.” hr replied "and by mi dieam I mean the v i*ioii of all tb»- nien oit of waose united w.»:k th. jieat inventions oine—- ■' 1 d: earn SO lit ■ -I |y W Id an 1 I old t hat t will *taogei .-veil yoll. Ihe whole s•- - . - that jive it life, C. * homes. J, woeial iabit*. cilium ii.it \ iuh * and i*tom* ail are in lily hand*.” Tin *tajjered.” I admitted Now I’ll explain.” the little man went on. "Fir*t. have a look at the indu*tr»e* that give io a city the means

■ :irr "' l a » now some 2..W acres of l-irks i-i • vi.b-.l the Municipal i\.ainr.-*iOii..|- < p, v.» o < t- P \r -.n i - n- »• •»• »-i - < ‘‘ ‘ ‘ iV’L , 1 >5 >tein of ~ , • it.tuT ve.it*. 1. extends over miles of countrv. Before the n : m- hnil.krs .H.k |...*>rs*ion .he nd wa* covered with shanties and dirty dwellings occupied mainly by negroes.

of life—the Coal Trust and the Meat Trust, for example. What a howl you writers have set up about the grip of monopolies on this fair land of ours! XX hat’s coal good for? Heat. How many years do you think will pass before we discover other heat producers, make heat almost as cheap as air? And where then will your grip of monopoly be? As to meat, do you think that the human race is forever going on butchering cattle. hogs, and sheep—bleating, squealing, bellowing at the rate of a million or so a day? Doesn’t that seem just a bTt barbaric? And when the chemist has once learned how to make a substance far better than animal flesh, more nutritious and more palatable—where will the grip of the Meat Trust be? "Now take the Greedy landlord. XX hat are most city buildings made of? Brick ami steel. XVho imide steel? The chemist. Ha* the chemist stopped, do y<»u think? I< hi* job in the world envied—or is-it just beginning? The price of steel is high. Monopoly again. But how about concrete ami all the other *ubstances to he discovered Us time goes on—each one cheaper ami stronger ami more durable than the one before, until in a generation or two the cost of our oflices. <hops ami homes—ami also their rents—will l>e less than half what they are just now? But city rents, you may say. depend mainly on land values. The landlord is another chap with a hard monopolist grip. \\ t- want to live in cities, ami he ita< grabbed the land. But suppose we find in tlie course of years, that we can live wherever we please, on the inoun-

tains, at the seashore, and come to the city in less than an hour, by an almost miraculous trip through the air. What then will become of the city landlord’s grip? "I confess," he went on. "that all this talk of the engineer about new streets and subways bores me to extinction. Useful enough in its way. 1 suppose, but to the inventor who looks far ahead what mere makeshift all this seems. In less than a hundred years from now. people will travel over the earth or the water or through the air above at a speed of at least two hundred miles an hour, and with a safety compared to which our present railway travel is sheetslaughter. "Now go back to coal. It heats our homes and offices, drives our machines—and also covers the city with the foulest soot and grime. But in the future city, and the beautiful suburbs all around, the rumbling, clattering coal truck will be replaced by a modest unobtrusive wire running underground. Through this wire will pass, form some huge central dynamo plant, an electric current — power. This power will heat our homes, light our homes, dean our homes, cook our food, black our boots, carry us upstairs. slave for us in a hundred ways. Every machine in the city will be run by the same tamed giant. In this city today there is a law that no man may keep hogs in his back yard or in his house. In the years before us the same law will apply to coal, which is worse than forty hogs. And the cities of the future will have not so much as a wreath of smoke between them and the heavens.’ Having gathered these various dreams, it suddenly occurred to me that some of the other sex might have visions, too. I betook myself to a woman friend, who was both a mother and an educator of

no small repute. To her I set forth my story. And the woman seemed amused. "You think they are not practical, these dreams?” I asked. “Practicalshe answered. “Fearfully so! Practical and businesslike, plain, hard common sense! Your great engineer laid down at the start the principle that a city is like an animal body. A our physician, your chemist—all seem to agree with the engineer. A city is only a body, they say. Give it proper hones and flesh and arteries and veins, keep out disease, give it plenty of sleep and food and drink, parks in which to exercise, aeroplanes in which to soar—ami the vision is complete. "But is it only a body? In this beautiful wholesome shelf of a city, with its noble public buildings, its boulevard-. Hs parks and playgrounds, gardens *tudde»l with homes, homes free from every disease but old age — is there to be no growth inside? No growth of spirit ami of mind, no new hopes ami longings, no hungry strainings upward to ideals? What of the future citv’s «oul ? “A soul that is fit to dream with doesn’t just grow. It has to be made.

his sound* impractical, does it not? If so. 1 am delighted. How is this living soul of the future city to fie made? ■‘Mainly. 1 believe, by the mother*, through their children. Of course, I admit there will lie other ways, other powers at work. When the problem of mere physical life is settled for all classes, the haunting dread of poverty left forever behind. and when on the other hand, the community, as it surely will, lay* heavy restraints on the men whose one purpose in life is to amass huge fortunes; when .Money eomes down from its high altar- then other gods will surely arise. Hut 1 like to begin at beginnings. And 1 believe that the beginings of all this mighty change in men are to come first in the children. “1 believe that as the years go on we mothers are going to change. And still we shall be mothers, and still we shall have homes. 1 cannot see how I have been weakened as a mother by going out into the world of schools and there learning the most intelligent ways of educating my child- 1 feel sure that women are to go more ami more into the world outside the home, receive from the world some real knowledge of its vital growth, themselves take part in that vital grow th, and perhaps give more than they receive—recall the needed memories of a forgotten Christ, gather other inspiration* out of the living Past, crowd bitterness and greed out of this fierce battle for life, and bring in higher motives. But first of all and foremost, their work is to be the old one, the task of moulding the children who are to make the men and the women of our future city. Mothers have done noble work in the past. But 1 feel sure that their power in this service is to be multiplied tenfold. “What a task it is! In the city of New York to-day are some eight hundred thousand little children, most of them the children of inpouring immigrants from almost all the nations of the earth. What a field for mothering here, what a chance for women who want to serve the city! Most of it is done of course, by the immigrant mothers themselves. There are stories in plenty which should be told of their fierce struggles to give to- our tiniest immigrants the fair start in a free country which they themselves were denied. - ““But they need trained help, these mothers. Ami this the city in recent years has just begun to see. Some seventy years ago. a powerful newspaper in New York denounced as a “wild agitator" a man who was making speeches in favour of tree public school* Such schools would pauperize the race. wrote the indignant editor. Sm-h school* would discourage initiative responsibility of parent*, and thrift. But seventy rear* have passed—and we have changed our minds. "We have gone farther. As bv careful step* we have widened the province of the school, oi, r eyes have slowlv opened to a curious fact — that, far from pauperizing the race, all that the city can do to build up free of charge tlio bodies and minds of its children tend* to lift them farther ami steadily farther out of the pauper class. "Following this principle, we have begun to act against the labour of children in factories, shops, and mill* and

mines. \Ve ire fighting the city street, with all its unwholesome influences. by the playground, the park, the summer school. “1 see a great awakening, through the generations ahead, to all th* higher thing- in life. 1 see a new citizenship that shall take pride in the city, its purity and its honour as well as its beautiful homes and streets. 1 see among all the men and women a risen intelligence, new hungers, new ideal-. “And out of these 1 see great men arising—not only men of power »n wrestling the riches out of the earth, but men -and women, too —who will give expression to the riches of our spiritual life. 1 see in these great public build ings. these libraries, these concert halls, these theatres and galleries erected by your engineer—scenes to be remembered for centuries to come. Multitudes of people motionless and silent, reverent, enraptured listening to the opera. the symphony, the drama that on this night i- added to the treasurers of the race In the galleries—the pictures; in the libraries—the books. The work of the giants of a new race—all emerging, as

the\ must, from the new coniniumtv life*. “The city of the future must indeed be -trong in body. But my dream of the city that i- to be is it- mights li\ nig -oul."