REGIONAL PLANNING AROUND WASHINGTON

Regional planning is just what the National Capital has everything else but,except city planning, which has long been equally conspicuous by its absence.

Witness a famous plan by L'Enfant covering one sixth of the present District of Columbia, a gridiron plan with radial arteries superimposed. Witness this plan geometrically extended to the north until halted and disbanded on straight line boundaries at 45° to the gridiron lines; and, to the south until stopped by the River Potomac. This Potomac, in devious ways, has served its country well. Witness the northerly boundary; on an imaginary line, a great boulevard going from nowhere to nowhere else regardless of topography, or passing interest or of any objective except the great Northwest, advancing until it reaches the imaginary diagonal of an imaginary square where it executes a "Left turn,-March!" And heads for the great Southwest.

"Napoleon had an army of a hundred thousand men

He marched them up a hill, and then he marched them down again." Napoleon knew what he was doing. So did L'Enfant. But neither one would have so absolutely disregarded contours, lines of communication, differentiation in development, common sense and other ingredients of planning-city or regional.

What happened in the Great Beyond? For years, nothing; then mushroom communities, sans souci, sans coördination with District plan, sans building regulations. Finally, to the north, a "Maryland Suburban Sanitary Commission" to look after water supply and sewage disposal—and incidental to these utilities, the adjustment to them of street layouts-good, sensible residential streets adapted to contour but not related to the District scheme. Finally, to the south-nothing until this very day. And what is happening now is merely a realization of error manifested in depreciated real estate values from which Virginia citizens committees are groping to extricate themselves; with more than an even break that their corrective measures will be small town stuff moved by the leading realtor and seconded by the local gardener, instead of broad guage planning by trained men.

The net result is this: whereas one would naturally expect, in approaching the National Capitol, to thrill at some magnificent distant vista of the glowing dome or the aspiring shaft, in reality the approaching pilgrim honks his devious passage through ambiguous village streets inquiring which way to turn next. From the Proud North, he finally lands by a roundabout way at a radial avenue leading directly to the Capitol itself and marked by a lovely yellow brick comfort station planted in the center of the parkway; from the Proud South, by a desperate spurt, he breaks through the dusty brickyard zone and the smelly refuse disposal zone and then dodges a trolley pit just when he is beginning to breathe freely once more. Or he may, perchance, find the costly new bridge dropped by one governmental agency as a direct challenge to another and to the State of Virginia to find ways for traffic approach. This coördination in planning is a great game, especially if you play it with a deck stacked by existing conditions.

It is no longer a new thing, the concerted effort of the civic groups and of the planning professions begun last year to correct these flagrant violations of planning in the National Capitol. The Architects, the Landscape Architects, the Engineers, the Town Planners, the Garden Clubs of America, the American Civic Association-all, through their national organizations are working for the enactment of legislation to bring the best planning talent of the country to the service of the country, as a free offering, to correct the existing conditions as far as may be possible and to prevent the repetition of similar errors.

A new movement is being started by the Washington Park Commission to set up an informal committee of various local interests to meet immediate conditions and to stimulate interest. In so far as this is regarded as a step towards larger things, it should have wide support. But if it offers any such unauthorized, unregulated and belated coöperative effort by the very agencies responsible for the mistakes of the past as a substitute measure for the best that the Nation can give, then it is just as much a small town proposition as the village cure-all who knows all that is necessary of “artitectur, landscape artistry and city plan layouts."

And yet, there is a field for the activity of any man or woman in the development of the National Capital-—and that is by helping to place responsibility in responsible hands and in upholding them. The Unknown Soldier belongs in heart to many a proud mother; the greater Capital of the future, the Capital that even now is bursting with its possibilities, that stimulates pride in country, may yet result from the effort of some unknown man or woman who believed and gained expression for his convictions through the one needed voice in Congress.

This is the time. The opportunity will come at the next session of Congress in the measure for "The Federal City Planning Commission."

HORACE W. PEASLEE, Chairman,

American Institute of Architects' Committee on Plan of Washington and Environs.

TOWN PLANNING IN FEDERATED MALAY STATES

Recent developments in town planning in the Federated Malay States were referred to by His Excellency the High Commissioner (Sir Laurence Guillemard) in his annual address to the Federal Council at the close of 1924 when he stated: "The publication of the town planning rules on September 18 this year marked another important and essential step forward for bringing into operation the provisions of the Town Planning Enactment, 1923. Various improvements and results obtained to date in different parts of the Federation show that the Government has already made considerable advance towards the carrying-out of its permanent town planning policy. This policy is consistent with similar developments in Great Britain and other parts of her overseas dominions, and is destined to have a far-reaching influence in promoting much desired improvements in the urban life of this country."

The F.M.S. Government Gazette of 28th November, 1924, announced the statutory appointment of Mr. Charles C. Reade A.T.P.I. as Government Town

Planner under the new Enactment. Mr. Reade (who was formerly associated with the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association of Great Britain) went to the Federated Malay States early in 1921 at the invitation of the High Commissioner and with the aid of the present Chief Secretary (Sir George Maxwell, K.B.E., C.M.G.) has since taken a responsible share in securing legislation relating to Town Planning, Valuation of Land, etc. Previously he held the position of Government Town Planner, South Australia, between 1916-21 when a Department of Town Planning similar to that in the Federated Malay States was created and which is now in operation. The Secretary of State for the Colonies of Great Britain (The Rt: Hon: E. S. Amery, M.P.) has since confirmed the new appointment of Government Town Planner, Federated Malay States on a permanent and pensionable basis.

Between April and August Mr. Reade has been visiting the principal cities of China, Japan and the United States* before going on holiday to Great Britain for the remainder of the present year. Mr. S. K. Sibbald A.M.I.C.E., A.M.T.P.I., will act as Government Town Planner during his absence.

TRAFFIC PROBLEMS STIMULATE CITY PLANNING

In a rapidly growing number of cities and villages, where city planning has not heretofore appealed greatly to the conservative and “hard-headed" majority, acute problems of traffic relief and highway safety are forcing a new point of view. Aroused by costly congestion in the streets or by an intolerable increase in traffic accidents and deaths, official and unofficial groups are struggling to find the way out. And they are acquiring a liberal education in the process. The sequence of events, especially in the smaller cities and larger villages, is likely to be something like this: The chief executive of the municipality, with some inkling of the complexity of the problem, summons a group of public spirited citizens and asks them to serve as the Mayor's Committee on Traffic Relief. When the members begin to analyze the task assigned to them, they discover that they must give thought both to (1) traffic regulation and (2) traffic facilitation. They then discover that both of these main subdivisions of the problem must be further subdivided for adequate consideration. Traffic regulation is found to be partly a matter of control through (I-a) traffic ordinances and rules and (1-b) mechanical devices and traffic officers; and (1-c) a matter of the education of automobile drivers and pedestrians as to proper use of the streets. Facilitation of traffic also divides itself into subdivisions,—— (2-a) making the best use of existing highways, and (2-b) providing increased space for growing traffic needs.

When this stage of the discussion has been reached, if there is someone in the group who has given an occasional thought to city planning, he will point out the fact that the proper development of a highway and transportation system is the most fundamental basis of a city plan. If the municipality already has a city *CITY PLANNING expects to publish Mr. Reade's impressions of American cities in the January issue.

planning commission, which perhaps has been slumbering more or less on its job, he will urge that the new Committee on Traffic Relief, instead of duplicating the work of the City Planning Commission, should appoint a sub-committee to confer with the latter in behalf of more effective consideration of problems of traffic relief. On the other hand, if no official city planning body already exists in the municipality, it will be recognized that a unique opportunity is now afforded to create public opinion for the appointment of such a commission.

The Traffic Committee, official or unofficial, which attempts to cover all five of the phases of the problem just analyzed, will be assuming too great a task; but in many of the smaller municipalities it would be possible for such a committee to render exceedingly valuable service under the first four headings, and to become a stimulating force for adequate consideration of subdivision (2-b) by a city planning commission which shall employ expert advice for study and action in behalf of a comprehensive city plan.

H. S. B.

NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON STREET AND HIGHWAY

SAFETY

The second National Conference on Street and Highway Safety under the auspices of Secretary Hoover will be held in Washington in November. The four committees of the Conference met in Washington the latter part of July to prepare reports. These committees and their chairmen are as follows:

Committee on Uniformity of Laws and Regulations, General Nathan W. MacChesney, President, National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Chicago; Committee on Enforcement, Hon. William McAdoo, Chief City Magistrate, New York City; Committee on Causes of Accidents, Dr. Walter V. Bingham, Director, Personnel Research Federation, New York City; Committee on Metropolitan Traffic Facilities, Hon. F. A. Delano, President, American Civic Association, Washington, D. C.