City planning, with special reference to the planning of streets and lots

Front matter

CORNELL -olTY

LIB] ITHACAr - .4853

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Preface

A BOOK of this kind, whatever its other deficien- •cies, must not be one of fine-spun theory. It must be practical, if it is to be serviceable. It must depend for value upon what it can draw from the experience of many cities in many nations, and from the thoughts of many practitioners. It must represent the slow fruition of years devoted, not to introspective study, but to research in places and books and records — and among the men who are doing the actual work of city building. There seems, accordingly, to be special need of making at the outset an acknowledgment of the principal sources of its inspiration.

The author would be glad if he could maJce that acknowledgment complete. To some extent the reader, in noting the authorities quoted and some of the picttires used, will perceive where thanks are especially due. But even so he will not know how hearty and generous, and how regardless of international boundaries, has been the co-operation extended.

VI

Preface

For the rest, the writer is indebted to five special sotirces of information, suggestion, and stimulus. One has been the pecioHar opportunity for intensive observation which has come from the fact that during recent years some thirty cities and towns, scattered from the Atlantic coast to the mid-Pacific, have called upon him to diagnose their particular needs as regards the city plan. A second source was Harvard University, where an invitation to be the university's guest, for the prosecution of postgraduate research work in city planning, through its School of Landscape Architecture, gave an opportunity for more systematic reading than the distractions of professional life normally afford. A third source was a European trip which differed from its predecessors and successors in that, immediately following the course of reading, it made its special objective an international town planning conference in London, where the general thesis of the volume, having been formally presented, was subjected to international criticism. That discussion was as stimulating and helpful as it was kind.

A fourth source of assistance, as regards the present volume, proved to be those college classrooms where the first edition of the book came into use. This has been especially true at the University of Illinois, the author having himself been privileged to conduct regular classes in it there. The questions and

Preface

Vll discussions of the classroom during several years have done at least as much for the author as they could have done for the students.

Finally, and doubtless of more importance than all the rest, has been the splendid and inspiring progress which everywhere is taking place in the fast unfolding science and eager practice of city building — progress in reasonableness, beauty, and fitness.

As a result of all this, the original book — published in 191 1 as The Width and Arrangement of Streets, in an edition which has been since exhausted — ^has been so amplified, revised, and rearranged that a reader will not be impressed by the presence of the old material. Yet it is all here — though buried under the new.

The book, as an exponent of the cause of more rational methods of street platting, has definite mission. But it is hoped that it will prove more than simply propagandist. It is designed, in insistence upon the less spectacular but more efficient phases of city planning, to help in a practical way the real estate platter — ^be he owner, dealer, city engineer, or landscape architect. Its theme is that in the platting of streets he will best serve himself who best serves his community. Thus it would promote good housing.

Two words of explanation must be added, as to the text, (i), The term "street" is used, it is hoped

VIU

Preface uniformly throughout the book, to refer to the whole public space between the lines of the abutting property on either side — not to the roadway only. This is in accordance with dictionary definitions and with the rtiling of American courts that "the street" is understood to include the sidewalks. (2), The section on City Planning Legislation, which is practically all new, seemed to be necessitated by the very rapid growth in the United States of that phase of the movement, and by the effectiveness of the machinery which this phase is now making available, not only for carrying out the city plan but for insuring better plans. When The Width and Arrangement of Streets was published, only fotir years ago, very little could be said on the subject of legislation. Laws on the subject have now so multiplied that their discussion here cannot be exhaustive. Yet it is believed that the section touches upon the most essential and suggestive of those measures which are a product of the present town planning movement.

C. M. R.

Rochester, N. Y.

July 30, 1915.

Introduction

CHAPTER HAGE

I. — ^The Purpose and Scope of the Book . 3

STANDARDIZATION IN STREET PLATTING

II. — Rectangular Street Platting: Its Origin

AND Justification 13

III. — The Standardizing of Streets ... 25

IV. — Economic Defects of Standardization " . 38

V. — Social Deficiencies of Standardization . 52

FUNCTIONAL STREET PLATTING

VI. — The Need, the Theory, and its Rationale 67

VII. — The Street System's Natural Divisions . 80

VIII. — The Location of Main Traffic Streets . 90

IX. — The Width and Development of Main

Traffic Streets 109

X. — The Platting of Minor Residence Streets

for High-Class Districts . . .127

XI. — The Platting of Minor Streets for Humble

Homes 147

XII. — Lot Platting for Humble Homes and

Factory Removal 163

X Contents

CHAPTER ^^°^

XIII. — Public Reservations Other than the

Streets • 182

XIV. — The Development of Residential Streets 209

CITY PLANNING LEGISLATION

XV. — Centralized Control XVI. — Control Beyond City Boundaries . XVII. — Excess Condemnation XVIII. — Various Methods of Street Widening XIX. — The Zoning or Districting System

Conclusion

255 265 277

XX. — The Test of City Planning — Limitations

and Benefits . . . . .291

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Plan of Brussels in 1572 . . Frontispiece

Typical Increase in the Intensiveness of the Use OF City Land 4

Plan by William Penn for the City of Philadelphia 18

The Lot Subdivision of a Typical New York City Block 18

The Checkerboard Plan which was Stamped on the United States by the Government System of Land Surveys

Typical Chicago Subdivisions of Five-acre Tracts

Typical Street of a Mediaeval Town .

A Rectangular Street System's Disregard of Exist iNG Roads and Buildings ....

The Cost of Rigidity of Plan

Streets Adjusted to Contours

The Unsympathetic Plan of a Domestic Street

A German Type of Handsome Street .

Sacrificing Comfort and Beauty for Width

Extra Space for Unused Road Leaves Little Space for Much Used Garden ....

20 22 28

40 40 42 48 54 54 xii Illustrations

PAGE

A Convertible Street, on which the Narrow Roadway CAN BE Easily Widened when Occasion Demands -58

The Cloth Fair. Middle Street, London . . 94

The Cloth Fair. East Passage, London . . 94

Highways Leading into Boston .... 102

Theoretical Plan of the Traffic Circulation of Berlin 102

An Intersection of Important Streets. . . 106

A Device to Secure Right-angled Street Crossings where a Diagonal Thoroughfare Crosses A Gridiron Street Plan ..... 106

Main Radial Thoroughfares of Different Widths . no

Car-tracks on a Central Reserved Strip in a Residence Street 114

Car-tracks on a Central Reserved Strip in a Business Street . . . . . .114

D . B . Niven's Plan for a Great Highway for London 118

Two-level Street on the Waterfront . .122

Retaining the Charm of the Country in the Street Layout 128

Fitting the Plan to the Contours . . .134

Two-level Street in a Residence Section . . 135

The Street Plan of Forest Hills Gardens . 138

The Effect of Placing Monumental Structures On or Off Grade Summit • . . . . 142

A Quiet Residence Section near a Large City . 142

Illustrations xiii

PAGE

A Plan for,a High-class Subdivision which is Typical 144

Plan for an Employees' Residence Section on the

Outskirts of a City 154

Allotment Gardens in the Middle of a Block . 168

An Arrangement for Community Tennis Courts . 168

The Placing of the House on the Lot . .171

Warding off the Tenement 174

The Tenement at its Best 174

Attractive and Inexpensive Streets of the Krupp Villages near Essen, Germany . . . -179

Attractive and Inexpensive Streets of the Krupp

Villages near Essen, Germany .... 180

Where a Street would be Expensive but a Park

WOULD BE Cheap. ...... 185

A Development that was Economical as well as

Beautiful 185

A Hillside Street Widened into an Outlook Point 194

Locating the Playground Inside the Block . 194

An Inside Park in High-class Residence Property . 196

A City Promenade — the New Walk at Leicester,

England 200

Centre Parking Planted with Flowering Trees . 202 A New Type of Minor Street Residence in a High-class Section 210

Street with a Turn at the End . . . .212

The Grass Gutter 213 xiv Illustrations

PAGE

A Contrast in Walk Location . . . .216

A Grass Border Planted with Shrubs . . .216

A Private Driveway Breaks the Level of the Walk, WHEN the Walk is Next to the Curb . .217

A Walk at Higher Level than the Road . .217

A Sidewalk on One Side Only . . . .218

Where there is Little Walking One Sidewalk may BE Enough . . . . . ' . . . 218

Sidewalk Informality

The Economy of an Elevated Sidewalk . . 220

How Footpath Entrances Might be Marked.

(Three Views) 221

Economy of the Footpath when the Ground

Slopes Abruptly. (Two Views) . . . 222

Entrance to Vandeventer Place, St. Louis . . 224

A City Street in a Transition Stage . . . 272

Zone Plan of Cologne and its Suburbs . . 282

Introduction

Chapter I The Purpose And Scope Of The Book

TOWN planning includes three operations. The term is applied to the replanning of existing cities and towns, to the planning of new towns, and to a scientific platting of new sections of existing towns. The benefits that are sought by it are, in their turn, speaking broadly, three in number. They are an improvement in those circulatory conditions created by indirect streets and congested traffic, the betterment of social conditions in many directions — notably in that of housing, and an increase in the visible beauty and splendour of cities. Under these headings, gains are anticipated in economy, efficiency, health, comfort, and looks.

Of the three town planning operations, those which have to do with the planning of new towns and with the scientific platting of new sections of existing towns, are so akin that they are usually grouped. Their purpose, as respects typical urban evUs, is preventive. Thus we have city planning's two main divisions: The remedial effort, in town replanning;

and the preventive. Because of the many benefits expected from city planning, the demand for it has become far spread and vigorous. The belief is that in anticipatory work the proverbial ounce of prevention may be reasonably expected tq be worth at least the pound of cure.

The typical conditions which are to be corrected or forestalled by scientific planning include, specifically, those of streets filled with a traffic which they are unable to carry with safety and speed; are the housing of the poor amid surroviiidings injurious to moral, physical, and civic well-being; are the loss of opportunities for free and healthful recreation, on the part of adults as well as of children; are the lessening of industrial and commercial efficiency; the inconvenient location and the undignified crowding of public buildings; the higher cost of corrective as compared with preventive measures, and an economic waste resiilting from instability in the character of neighbourhoods. To do away with such conditions as these is the high purpose of the replanning of cities and towns, or of their careful planning at the start, and of a platting of their outlying sections which deals with those sections not as isolated vtnits but as parts of a whole.

It is clear that all these plans, town or city plans as they have come to be known, have to do with the urban framework, as this is made up of streets, a block. im clevzi^isid ohio Typical Increase in the Intensiveness of the Use of City Land- A Block in Cleveland, at Different Periods.

The Purpose and Scope of the Book 5

avenues, and open spaces of one sort and another. They may be said to treat of the skeleton of the city, of that which gives to the city its constructional form; and the expectation is that they wiU be determined by the needs, not of districts, but of the whole community. With such details as billboards, overhead wires, even with the exact makes of pavement, such plans primarily have little to do.

The advantages, which the plans are intended to bring to the community as a whole, should accrue to individuals of the community, irrespective of whether they are owners of land or are tenants. In the present state of society, land division projects which might do injury to landowners and home builders are not worth considering, even though they should be, conceivably, for the good of a non-propertyowning class. To be practical, town planning projects must be reasonable and considerate of all proper interests, whether they deal with the built-up portions of the city or with its outer fringe. We have to remember that "the idealism which is not practical is not ideal. "

It is with plans that have to do with the outer circuit of the city, with that belt which the influence of the city's growth is transforming into subtirban property and absorbing for residence purposes, that this book will attempt particiilarly to deal. The subject may seem restricted, but it is to be observed that the city has no financial investment so large as that represented in its streets — ^usually twenty-five to forty per cent, of the whole land area — and that no items in its expenses reach a larger total than those for the construction and maintenance of streets.' Still more important, the streets' location and development touch closely the life of every person who lives in town. In fact,

the most important features of city planning, [it has been well said,]* are not the public buildings, not the railroad approaches, not even the parks and playgrounds. They are the location of streets, the establishment of block lines, the subdivision of property into lots, the regulations of buildings, and the housing of the people.

In discussing the platting of streets, it has seemed necessary to plead for less standardization, for wider main streets, and for the narrowing of those which have little traffic value. As the first and third points of the discussion have received in the past but scant popular consideration, the author has thought best to focus particular attention upon them. No claim is made to originality in the ideas, or that the arguments of economy and of social and functional adjustment will be novel to those who most have

' In New York City, where the typical platting devotes but 30% of the total area to streets, it was stated in 1913 that there were, in that one city, "2677 miles of streets," of which the estimated value, including the improvements, "was $9,469,000,000— one-fourth of the value of all the farm land in the United States.''

' John Nolen in Madison: A Model City.

The Purpose and Scope of the Book 7

studied town and city planning. It is hoped, however, that they may prove helpful in suggestion to some who, without previous opportunity for extended study, are taking in hand, in the platting of subdivisions, the actual work of city extension.

An attempt has been made, while presenting the matter simply, to look at the problem broadly and honestly. This has rendered it impossible to disregard widely prevailing methods or to consider the residence street alone. In the outer rim of cities the minor street is dependent for its life upon transportation facilities, and these piust be offered by main highways. Thus, in order to take the broad view, much must be considered besides the problem of a street by itself. One street, though every perfection were given to it, would bear only such relation to the whole street system as would a patch on an old-fashioned and outgrown garment.

It might be said, indeed, that the average modern city has in its street system a garment so restricting it as to need entire replanning and recutting to make it comfortably serviceable and really up-to-date. Until this fact is recognized, all civic improvement work can be hardly more than an attempt to adapt an ancient and womout city form to new and tremendously insistent municipal requirements. Most significant is such a reflection. It means that however important civic improvement may be, it does not strike at fundamentals until it deals with the street plan. The same is true of slum eradication and of housing reform. "To place housing before town planning, " a writer has said, "is to sew on your buttons before you cut out your cloth. " '

While all this is strongly beUeved, there is no wish to emphasize unduly the current widespread town planning movement. The book is presented, on the contrary, with the hope that it may be of value in the course of normal and ordinary city development. Hence the purpose of the volume is not to give the history of town planning, not to contrast the romantic and classical schools of it, but simply to help in a practical way regarding one important phase of it — a phase which concerns not merely every owner of real estate but every citizen. And since the main arguments represent not the faith and theory of one man only, but the belief of the students of town and city planning in all nations which are considering the subject, the book's message is given with abounding confidence.

It is not surprising that there is need for a book on the platting of streets. In the last fifty years cities have undergone more change than in the preceding two thousand. This is partly due to the removal of the encircUng walls with which old-world cities were .encompassed for defense. It is more largely due to

» Editorial in The Town Planning Review, July, 1912.

The Purpose and Scope of the Book 9

the rise of manufacturing, to the growth of traffic, and to that development in the means of transportation which has permitted the cities' wide extension. George Washington, it has been pointed out, had no other means of transport than had Homer — the legs of man and horse, oars, and the sail. One is impressed by contrasting a busy street of modem London with the same street of a hundred years ago, when once a week the lumbering stage coach woke echoes that had slept for many days and then wotdd sleep again. A new, insistent, and complicated demand has been made upon the streets of cities; and it is little wonder that there has developed a possibility of iniproving on the first impulsive attempt at its satisfaction.

Yet, though the author has endeavoured to make his criticisms constructive, he realizes that rules to govern generally town development are most difficult to entinciate. In recent years, the curse of city building has been too much adherence to fixed rules. In cities of different purposes — as industrial, commercial, capital, or residential — different groups of considerations deserve most deference; in cities of like purpose, no one street pattern shotdd be generally applied. To impose on a site, without regard to its topography, any preconceived system, is to be false to the true principle of design.

So, finally, the book is presented with no illusion as to its providing a panacea for every anatonaical ill that towns are heir to. But perhaps — ^to stretch the patent medicine simile a little further — ^it mayhave an invigorating tonic value. There are some things as to street platting which it were better for the city, better for the tract developer, and better for the lot buyer or tenant to have more clearly understood. The author has endeavoured to state these. With that purpose, Chapters III-VI, inclusive, consider the defects appertaining to the usual present practice of street design and the advantages that must accrue from a closer adjustment to function. Thereafter come constructive suggestions, and then there is a rSsume of the legal devices to promote wiser planning.

The latter is a record of achievement, and to that extent is fvdl of encouragement. Not only shall we see that the common manner of street platting is wasteful and irrational, but we shall find that gradually a better system has been evolved, and that in law and ordinance we are swiftly gaining the power to realize it. In these facts, as will be some day better appreciated, there are good tidings for millions of people.

Standardization in Street Platting

Chapter II Rectangular Street Platting: Its Origin And Justification

BEFORE we theorize as to an ideal system of street platting, it is proper to consider the very widely accepted present plan of streets that cross each other at right angles in a monotonous and regiolar pattern. Presumption must be strongly in favour of such a plan. It is simple, is easy to design, is readily understandable, and is capable of indefinite extension. Furthermore, and this is exceedingly important, it is economical of btiilding area — ^both in the amount which is rendered available and in the shape of the plats. Finally, the plan has been in use so long that its origin is lost in the imcertain dawn of history. If there were a plan that is better, would not the world have discovered it long ago?

When one considers the tremendous stakes — ■ financial, social, and civic — ^that are at issue in determining the street plan of a city, is it not reasonable to think that the problem must have had earnest study? May we not feel sure that the plan which the old world started and which the new world, accepting, applied with intenser rigour, is the best plan practicable? Clearly, the burden of proof is upon those who would criticize it.

The origin of the rectangular plan goes back, it has been said, to the dawn of history. Rectangular, though an unusual descriptive term, is a better one than gridiron or checkerboard, because more inclusive. The gridiron plan is a rectangular pattern in which the blocks are long and narrow, as typified by much of the street system of New York; while/ the checkerboard (called in England the chesst^oard plan) is a rectangular pattern in which the blocks are square, as typified by parts of the plan of Philadelphia and Chicago.

Herodotus states that Babylon was built foursquare, with straight streets that were either parallel or at right angles to one another. The adoption of its plan is said to have been due to a woman. Queen Semiramis; but even this may not have been the origin of the rectangular street system. Some Chinese towns, that are prestimably two or three thousand years old, show rectangular platting; and a comparatively recent excavation, revealing traces of the village occupied by the workmen who built the pyramid of lUahun, indicate that it also was "laid out symmetrically, on rectangular lines."

In short, without going now into the history of town planning, without noting the oft recurring interest in it which has marked the course of civilization, or the special developments which different nations and different times have contributed to the science, or art, of civic design, it is enough to saythat its dominant principle has been the straight line and the right angle. The origin of these need not much concern us. They constitute so simple and obvious a device that any child might have made use of it. Doubtless, therefore, its ancestry goes back to the childhood of the human race, when people first began to dwell together in companies.

More important, consequently, than the origin of the rectangular street plan is the persistence in its use. Long after Babylon, but five centuries before the Christian era, a group of Grecian architects, under Hippodamus, made use of the rectangtilar method when platting the streets of Pirenne, Piraeus, Alexandria, Antioch, and other cities. In the colonizing of conquered territory, we are told that parties were conducted by State officials to a selected spot in the new country where each was given "a numbered square. " Later stiU, under the Roman empire, the military origin of many towns predestined them to a regular platting. They were laid out like camps — sometimes, indeed, as camps — ^by soldiers whose natural impulse was to arrange the people in serial rows.

During the Middle Ages the few towns built were generally small. But

in the thirteenth century, [says Inigo Triggs,] no less than fifty towns were founded by the English in Aquitaine and Guienne, within the same number of years, all of which were laid out, wherever practicable, upon a definite system, and formed an essential part of the wise and far sighted policy of Edward I. . . . These towns were regular and symmetrical; the streets were wide, open and straight, crossing each other at right angles only. . . . By this means each plat of ground was of a uniform size and shape, a parallelogram with one end facing a principal street and another a lane.

When the revival of classical architecture came, the rectangular plat made by right-angled streets was found best adapted to the classic f agades, and the plan received a further impetus.

But it is in America that the persistence of uniform right-angled streets has been most marked. Here the universality of the plan's adoption, and the rigidity of adherence to it, has been such that Europeans, forgetting the long history of rectangular street planning, refer to it now as "the American method. " What is the reason for the respect which Americans have shown for this system, when planning innumerable new towns on all kinds of sites?

At the beginning of American history, William Penn may be found making a checkerboard plan for Philadelphia. This was in 1682. As Penn laid out his city on a site of which he himself said, "Of all places in the world I remember not one better seated," the typical blocks were fovir hundred feet square — i. e., the boundary streets enclosed a tract fotir hundred feet each way. These boundary streets were fifty feet in width. The only variation was that an extra width was given to the two streets which intersected in the middle of the tract — ^the Broad and Market Streets of today; and that a comparatively large number of squares were reserved for parks — a costly procediure, owing to its absorption of good building land. Accordingly, that practice was not long continued by the growing city.'

As the city grew, other changes took place. The large square blocks were frequently subdivided. This was usually done by carrying two streets through them, from north to south, so changing the checkerboard to a gridiron and establishing that shallowness of lot which is today the special pecviliarity of Philadelphia platting. Other variations developed; but through them all the rectangular system, either as checkerboard or gridiron, has persisted. The plan was adopted also by the thirty or more outlying towns and villages, which gradually arose around the city and which have been since absorbed by it. Yet these were located in picturesque country of.

' Had the proportion of open space to building plats been continued at the same rate as in Penn's scheme, there would have been two hundred and eighty small parks in the city plan of Philadelphia at the beginning of the twentieth century, instead of the forty-five wfiich it actually contained.

greatly varied topography. Thus, as an example, the plan of Philadelphia, made as it was by one of the greatest men of his day for a town that became the largest in the cotmtry, exerted a widespread and tremendous influence.

In 1807 it became necessary to plan for the extension of New York north of Foiorteenth Street. At that time the United States contained only two other cities of considerable size — Philadelphia and Boston. Between the convenience of the straight streets and regular pattern of Philadelphia, and the narrow, winding, cow-path streets of Boston, no comparison was possible. It was practically certain that a regular plan would be adopted. A commission was appointed to make the street extension plan — ^the first City Plan Commission in the United States — and though it included eminent men, the tradition is that finally, wearied with long discussion and' the pleadings of special interests, one of the commissioners picked up a mason's wire screen — ^for the Commission met in an unfinished building — placed it on the large map of Manhattan that lay upon the table, and said, "Here is a plan. Let the larger, vertical wires represent the north and south avenues, and the frequent small cross wires the streets that go east and west"; and that with no more to-do the plan was adopted. The avenues were made a hundred feet wide; the cross streets, sixty feet; and the

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F-/FTE.ENTH ST.

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The Lot Subdivision of a Typical New York City Block, IN THE Borough of Manhattan.

"The gridiron plan."

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