Survey of City and Regional Planning in the United States, 1924 A Letter from President-Emeritus Eliot The Responsibilities of Realtors in City Planning . Architectural Imagination in City Building Published Quarterly at Augusta, Maine, by CARL RUST PARKER, Business Manager BRADFORD WILLIAMS, Advertising and Circulation Manager 75 cents a copy, $3.00 a year (Foreign $1.00 a copy, $3.50 a year) Copyright, 1925, by Carl Rust Parker. Application made for entry as second class mail. CITY PLANNING VOL. I C OFFICIAL ORGAN AMERICAN CITY PLANNING INSTITUTE QUARTERLY APRIL, 1925 EDITORIAL CITY PLANNING IS COOPERATION ITY PLANNING is the job of the whole community. No. I City planning of some sort is going on whether we know it or not, whether we wish it or not. Every man who determines the shape or the use of anything in a city is to that extent a city planner. But if we plan each for himself alone, we are like plants springing up too thickly and without choice of soil, each using most of its force in struggling with its neighbors and with bad conditions, rather than in producing its own fruit and its own beauty. So when we say good city planning, we mean merely our best reasoned attempt to give every city activity a fair chance, with the least number of misfits and the least amount of wasteful competition. Our present way of living in this country is not an invention, it is an evolution. It has come to its present state through many centuries of experiment. It is far from ideally perfect, but on the whole it works. We should test our proposed improvements and regulations, then, by the question: will they work? That is, will they work, human nature being what it now is, and will they work as a part of the great experiment in government to which we are now committed, and which has not ye reached the limit of its useful growth. No one man can answer even his own particular question from his own experience alone. Each specific problem is a part of the problem of our whole civilization. A city planner, therefore, is not a godlike person who from his infinite wisdom vouchsafes remedies for human ills. Rather is he an erring and humble man, doing his best to record the tentative necessary decisions of a large number of his fellows on common affairs. These decisions will be good just in proportion as they make use of all the knowledge in the whole community, wherever found. This magazine is published in the hope that it may provide a place where city planning progress may be recorded and new ideas discussed, so that each one of us may find something useful to himself in the experience of others, and contribute something from his own experience for the common good. 1 DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY January 20, 1925. Mrs. Henry V. Hubbard, My dear Mrs. Hubbard: I have your letter informing me of the establishment of CITY PLANNING as the official organ of the National Conference on City Planning and of the American City Planning Institute. I am a firm believer in city planning as a means of eliminating waste, raising living standards, and of achieving higher standards of community life. Good city planning is one of the first obligations which we owe to the future as part payment of our debts to past generations. I hope that CITY PLANNING may serve a useful purpose in this most essential field. Yours faithfully, HERBERT HOOVER D PERSEVERANCE IN CITY PLANNING By CHARLES H. WACKER URING the fifteen years that I have been chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, it has naturally been my good fortune to come into contact with most if not all of those interested in the American city planning movement. From all the intercourse which I have had with other city planners one fact stands out preeminently in my mind; and that is, that as a general rule the fundamental necessity of persistency in city planning effort is not appreciated at its full worth by those interested in municipal betterment. Practically everyone realizes the value of having a good city plan; one that is comprehensive, carefully worked out, and a scientific solution of the problem how to secure orderly, harmonious and economic physical development. In fact it is axiomatic that the very first essential for proper city growth is that sort of city plan. But just the fact that such a plan exists is not in itself all-sufficient for city planning accomplishment. The second fundamental is, in the language of our commercial friends, to "sell" the plan. It must not only be sold to the municipal officials and resold every time these officials change as a result of elections, but it must also be sold to the people. They must first be convinced that the plan is good; next that it is necessary; and finally, that they want the benefits that will accrue from carrying out the plan more than they want the money it will cost them to make the improvements proposed in the plan. Enthusiasm and support are easy to arouse and win in the beginning when a plan is being formulated, and even in the early days when the whole plan or any feature in it is offered for public approval. It is often possible to accomplish many improvements before the first blush of enthusiastic effort has worn off. Unfortunately, however, the larger improvements cannot as a general rule be accomplished so easily. |