the importance of all that they contribute to our life. The whole continuity and well-being of Society depends on their regularly carrying out their practical activities, perfecting their methods, carrying each steadily forward step by step, and building up the edifice faithfully, brick by brick.

Is it not just in this manner, however, that modern towns have grown to be what they are? Each enterprising industrialist, like the practical business man he is, accepting the conditions as he finds them, takes the best available plot at the price he can afford, on the fringe of the town of his choice. He finds that land speculation has already run the price fully up to the real value, and perhaps beyond; but balancing high price against a more advantageous position and a lower price against the inconveniences involved, he makes the best choice open to him. Thenceforth he devotes his whole energy and attention to working out his own particular project. This is the practical faculty, and it is invaluable; without it civilization could not continue to exist; but it is not enough. Indeed it is a great injustice to these same practical business men, who by their persistent plodding labour build up the edifice of the town, if their work is not guided by the creative vision and the imaginative plan. For this alone can make the best of the opportunities which their city affords, can set at their disposal not makeshift plots, but the most convenient sites and the greatest facilities for their projects which conditions and locality allow.

We are apt to draw too great a contrast between the practical man and the artist. The artistic faculty or temperament, which includes in greater or less degree the power to see visions of what might be, or be done, the desire to realise them, and the imagination to give clear expression to them, is one of the most practically useful endowments which men can be born with, if, according to the degree and character of its possession, they can be made to play their proper part in human Society. It is from the union of art and practical work that progress springs.

What we call the artistic temperament is not easy to define or generally understood, and the full faculties of the artist are only

possessed by a few of those who share the temperament. Some see visions, but have little desire to realize them, others want for energy, or have small power of clear expression. Because there are a few who not only see visions of great beauty, but have the exquisite power of expressing them in form or colour, in words or sounds, it has been too readily assumed that these forms of expression are the only ones suitable for the artistic temperament, and that it is the proper function of all who are so endowed, shunning practical affairs, to seek, however imperfectly, to express themselves in one or other of the fine arts. At least we see that hundreds of those who are blessed with some measure of artistic endowment waste their lives in producing secondrate pictures, poems or tunes. Meanwhile the practical affairs of the community lack the inspiration and the guidance which their imagination, if properly trained, might well be adequate to contribute; for imagination can be trained like most other faculties to useful ends.

City planning, it seems to me, is an activity which beyond most others depends for its success on the application of this faculty to the problems involved. Before we can safely, or fairly, leave the practical people to add building to building, street to street, or to devote their energies to perfecting the processes of their factory or the organization of their business, there should have been a vision of what the whole city might be, and a design or plan providing for the best grouping of the places for work, for business, for living and for play, to realize that vision. With the guidance and advice of the practical men, taking full advantage of their knowledge and experience, the men of artistic temperament should prepare the way, giving expression to their vision in a comprehensive design capable of realizing it upon the ground; and moreover doing it in such a way that the order, the relation between the parts, their proportion and grouping, will themselves become an expression of the life of the community in the form of a beautiful city.

There are those who do not realize this art side of City Planning, who think that a design can be compiled from scientific data, that the

planner can absorb the mass of statistical information which represents all the requirements of the various aspects of city life, and can provide for them one by one, ticking them off his list as dealt with. It is not so that great designs are made. The data and the statistics are required; the planner must indeed absorb them; but he must beware lest, instead, they absorb him. To help him they should as far as possible be put in graphic form, for in that form they can be most readily apprehended by the planner, so as to exert their proper influence on the formation of the mental picture or design. Even so seemingly simple a matter as a workman's cottage cannot properly be designed on the compilation system; the relation of the rooms, their several aspects, the planning of each, the relation of its doors, windows, fireplaces, cupboards and other fittings, constitute such a multitude of conditions which must be fulfilled that the compiling and ticking off process would be cumbersome even if it ever reached the right result.

The true architect does not work in this way; on the contrary he uses his imagination. All the time he is designing his cottage he is seeing pictures of the life as it will be lived there. He does not need to remember each point; he will for example place the cooking stove in relation to the window so that the cook does not stand in her own light, not because he remembers consciously that particular rule, but because to do otherwise would disturb the picture which he sees of his kitchen and the life in it. This is largely the process of design as contrasted with mere compilation; it consists in seeing the relations and proportions of all the parts which are to be included and in expressing these mental pictures in the form of the plan or design. It is swift in working, for imagination acts by flashes; but it is not easy, for the requirements and conditions must be so thoroughly known and intimately realized that they have taken their place in the mind, become as it were part of the instinctive properties out of which the imagination creates its mental image. It is this faculty of detachment from the details of the problem, this power to see the whole, to picture the life which is to be provided for, whether in the cottage or the town,

which alone can guide the planner and save him from being embogged in the mass of detail, the multitude of requirements, conditions, materials and processes which must find their place or fulfilment.

In city planning, even more than in building, does this mass of data become so great as to need the fullest exercise of the faculty of trained imagination to lift the designer clear of it, and enable him to see the town, and the life of the town, as a whole, laid out upon the particular site. If the town designer has trained his imagination, if he has watched all the phases of city life, brooded on them, entered sympathetically into the needs and limitations of each, and seen visions of how they might be helped, be made more efficient or more attractive, then all this life will have become part of his instinctive knowledge; and will help to mould and colour the pictures which his imagination will call into being. These visions of the artist must undoubtedly be guided and checked by the practical man and the scientist whose methods of work are different; but it is this artistic gift of creative imagination which alone can call forth from the mass of detail a true design, in which the various parts will take their place in appropriate relation one to the other, each having its proper share of emphasis and assuming its due proportion to the whole. It is this faculty which can call forth order, can translate the vision into fact, and from which there may spring that mysterious something added which we call beauty, the highest product of imagination, though as already suggested not by any means the only one.

It has seemed to me that we might expect to find among architects this faculty of design which we need. Their training is specially arranged to call out and exercise the imagination; and for single buildings they are seeking solutions to problems of a similar kind, though more limited in extent. But it matters little whether it is the architect, bringing an imagination already somewhat trained in the art of design, who studies all the conditions of town life and the problems which they present, or whether it is the city planner, already versed in the science of the subject, who, having the needed endowment of imagination,

cultivates and trains it until he too becomes a master of design, a creator of beauty! It is the application of the right faculties which matters; and the mutual appreciation and understanding of those who exercise them, when, as must usually happen, the possession of them is divided. I am contending for the recognition of the practical importance of the artistic faculty in human life; and the realization that City Planning is not only a science, but is equally an art, calling for the exercise of trained imagination and the creative faculty. For I believe that only in this manner can the city be planned so as to become a beautiful setting for our civic life, and to confer upon us the greatest benefits of communal culture.

EDITORIAL NOTE

The Editors of CITY PLANNING have been gratified by the many kind expressions of interest which the first issue of the magazine has called forth. Letters, some of commendation, some with friendly and constructive criticisms, have been received from various parts of the country. All such are very welcome, especially those containing specific suggestions, to which the editors will always give serious consideration.

After all, a new magazine is quite a venture, or an adventure,certainly for the editors and business managers, we hope also for subscribers and readers. It is pleasant to learn that President Coolidge, to whom an old friend sent a copy of our first number, expressed his sincere interest and good wishes, and felt that the magazine is "a serious and worth-while effort to command a wide national attention to a great series of questions to which the American people . . . need to give more and more consideration in the future." It is equally pleasant to have the hearty support of the civic officials and consultants who have already sent in news or promised articles for future issues. The editors are convinced that the adventure is going to prove a happy one.