Courtesy St. Louis City Plan Commission

INTEREST OF THE ENGINEER IN CITY

PLANNING

By M. N. BAKER

Associate Editor, Engineering News-Record

HOUSANDS of engineers in the United States and Canada are

doing work for municipalities or for public utility companies. Most of these engineers are directly concerned with one or more elements of city planning. All are in some degree affected in their professional work by city planning or its lack. Few have a daily realization of these facts and fewer yet are alive to the nature and importance of city planning as a whole.

Through no fault of their own, most engineers employed regularly or occasionally by cities, or working for utility companies, have confined their efforts to a single element of the city plan, even though in the course of years they have dealt with many different elements. Even so, comprehensive city planning, or its lack, affects them and their work at every step, for in the absence of planning that embraces all the elements of the city plan, working out the elements separately must be largely guess work. This becomes clearer when the benefits of zoning are considered. How can paving, or sewers, or water-works, or parks, or transportation, or lighting or telephones be planned to meet the needs of a city twenty to fifty years hence unless it be known what sections are to be devoted to business, to manufacturing, and to residences of the various classes? Each element of the city plan is affected by the other elements. And yet, save for recent exceptions, the water-works engineer or other specialist is compelled to work with little or nothing in the way of a general city plan, making the best guesses he can as to the future development of other city plan elements that are bound to affect the particular class of municipal improvement on which he is engaged. The penalties of such lack of correlation are becoming evident the country over. Engineers are realizing them now as never before. As this realization grows, so will there be growth of interest by engineers in city planning.

There has been a tendency in some quarters to blame engineers in the municipal service for contributing so little to city planning. Some responsibility for this they must bear, but to make this heavy would be unjust. The truth is that, partly because comprehensive city planning until of late has been non-existent and partly because so little governmental power and responsibility is placed upon engineers, the engineer engaged in municipal work, whether as an official or a consultant, has had no chance to do anything but work piecemeal. In but few cities is the municipal engineering work centralized. Many who bear the imposing title of city engineer are little more than givers of lines and grades, makers of estimates and, in effect, chief administrative clerks for one or more city departments. Under such conditions, engineers can not be held responsible for absence of comprehensive city planning.

A new conception, a new theory and practice of the place of the engineering department in municipal administration, is needed. When that is effected, the interest of the engineer in city planning and his part in the practice and progress of the art will be greatly increased.

C

THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND

CITY PLANNING

By JOHN IHLDER

Manager, Civic Development Department, Chamber of Commerce of the United States

ITY PLANNING has become a business proposition.

Business men and business men's organizations were interested in

it in the early days when it sought to win approval under the title "city beautification". But in those days their interest though genuine was superficial. They took a legitimate pride in their home towns as they did in their individual homes, and when they had a surplus were inclined to be generous in their expenditures. The home town represented them to the outside world. Favorable notice reflected credit upon them. Civic beauty was a business asset. So they supported with considerable enthusiasm plans for civic centers, handsome boulevards and park extension.

Of course, being business men, they considered ways and means, and weighed increased values against increased bonded indebtedness. Their enthusiasm, in other words, was tempered by practical considerations and so differed from that of the chairman of an early city beautification meeting when he rebuked a cautious soul who had inquired about cost. "I am ashamed", he exclaimed, "that such a sordid thought should be expressed on an occasion when we are gathered to promote the beauty and the glory of our city. Were the beauty that was Greece and the glory that was Rome founded upon such calculations?" The business man's point of view is that they were, for he knows that beauty and glory seldom grow out of bankruptcy.

It is certain that those who first took up city planning on a practical basis were business concerns like the traction lines and the telephone companies. They had to plan extensions years in advance and, in order that their planning might fit with fact, they studied city growth and development. To be sure they usually accepted tendencies in city growth as they found them, but inevitably their studies raised questions.