What of the city? America's greatest issue-city planning, what it is and how to go about it to achieve success

Front matter

WHAT OF THE CITY?

What of the City?

America's Greatest Issue — City Planning

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Starting with a Right Understanding . . . i IT The New Profession — City Planning . . .18

III What Is City Planning? 28

Chapter I Starting With A Right Understanding

WHEN I was on the witness stand in the famous Twelfth Street widening case in Chicago, an attorney who was fighting the city, somewhat disturbed by my answers to his questions, finally stopped short, approached the witness stand and, with a menacing look and threatening gesture, asked, "Are you an architect?"

"No, sir."

"Are you an engineer?"

"No, sir."

"Are you a mechanic?"

" No, sir."

"Do you call yourself a city planner?"

"Yes, sir."

"How is that?"

" My identification with city planning is promotional, not technical. My profession is scientific promotion."

" Aha," questioned the lawyer, " scientific promotion, is it ? Well, perhaps you will tell the court in what fancy school you learned this fancy profession ? "

I replied, to the merriment of the audience and apparently the amusement of the court, whom I was momen-

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tarily in fear would fine me for contempt, "Largely in the school of experience."

That word caps the whole category of city planning — human experience. More experience and less theory is what is most needed to advance city planning everywhere in America. The lawyer moved that the court strike out all testimony of the witness on the ground that he was not qualified to testify because he was not an expert. The motion was overruled by the court, who admonished the attorney to be less captious and querulous, with the statement that one who was qualified to speak as an expert was one who had given a sufficient length of time to the specific study of an object or a condition to have established and classified knowledge concerning it.

Again that definition of science puts to rout impractical theory. Science is knowledge established and classified. That is just what is lacking in the aggregate of city planning experience in America.

The importance of promotional and educational effort, I regard as of the first magnitude in all city planning endeavor. It is basic and indispensable.

In 1909, three weeks prior to the presidential election, at the close of the now historic annual dinner of The Chicago Association of Commerce, at which the speakers were the leading candidates for the presidency of the United States — Charles H. Taft and William J. Bryan — Charles D. Norton, afterward secretary to President Taft and later Assistant Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, approached me with a query which later lead to an offer to take over the work on the Plan of Chicago, then the exclusive promotional property of its sponsors, The Commercial Club. Mr. Norton had in mind my identification with this work for the sole purpose of assisting in "putting the Plan across." I was then the general manager of The Chicago Association of Commerce.

This was two years prior to the organization of the Chicago Plan Commission, which body was created by the City Council of Chicago as the guardian and promoter of the Plan. Later, when a second offer came to me, this time from Charles H. Wacker, the newly appointed permanent chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, it was accepted. This accounts for my identification with city planning work. To clarify the atmosphere in possible technical quarters where there might be a desire to rule out my testimony, as in the case of the disturbed opposing attorney, I make clear the fact that I am not a maker of city plans — merely a promoter thereof. In addition to that, I may take strongly to preaching and possibly some teaching before I get through. I strongly suspect that I shall enter both the field of the clergyman and the pedagogue; the reasons for so doing will manifest themselves as we proceed. This reminds me of the occasion when I was delivering an address on scientific promotion before the students of a certain university. The dean of the College of Commerce, when I had closed, rose and said, "Well, fellows, I guess we have now had enough preathing and we will conclude the program with a few remarks from our worthy president." But it was a different conclusion than the one the dean expected. The president was scarcely upon his feet when he shot out, "Dean" — and I shall never forget the menace in that

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word "dean" as he said it — "let me remind you now and for all time, in the presence of these students, that no teacher is a great teacher unless he is a preacher, and that no preacher is a great preacher unless he is a teacher."

Much teaching is necessary in advancing city planning. I am not certain but that there is necessarily much preaching.

There is no mystery about city planning. This book is not written for those who would have us believe that strange and peculiar qualities have been bestowed by an all-wise Providence upon a select few in the profession, gifted to enlighten the world by befogging the real city planning issue.

City planning is a simple, common sense procedure to make conditions more livable for the dwellers in cities. A single paragraph can describe what must be done to produce desired results.

The object of this book is, first, to acquaint the people in cities with their necessary and important part in the realization of a city plan and, second, to tell the professional city planner how to go about making the plan which he has drawn in the workroom an accomplished thing. It is hoped that it may help to establish a national conception of city planning, and to firmly fix in it the factors of education and promotion. These must go forward, hand in hand, and first, before city planning results can be had. In America the ballot box must go before the city planner. Recognition of this, and comprehension of what it embraces, will spell success. The reverse will show only disaster. There will be no marked accomplishment in city planning in the United States

Charles H. Wacker, permanent chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission.

until promotional effort of the right sort is employed. The reason for this is shown in the many things that must be undone, as well as the many things that must be done. Aerial navigation in the vast domain of theory and mystery has no place in the promotional branch of city planning. All that is needed is to keep our feet close enough to the ground to have something solid to set them down on when we grow tired of theory gone wrong on the rocks of practical facts.

We shall come to what city planning really is in another chapter. Meanwhile, in some of its aspects, it may be likened to the age-old pagan query — "Whence did I come; why am I here ; where am I going?" Mortal man has troubled himself in vain through all the ages to solve these questions. The best answer is«in the example of Him who in His short earthly career was too busy going about doing good to find a place to lay His head.

Whence did city planning come?

The oldest known thing gleaned from archaeological research pictures the grouping of public buildings around a civic center. Belshazzar of ancient Babylon was devoted to the material progress of his people, and under his administration the people were cleanly, as by law they were forced to bathe three times a day and their health did not suffer in consequence. Astronomy, arithmetic, and the alphabet all had their beginnings in Babylon. There the hour was first divided into sixty minutes. Babylon had a regular postal delivery, a sewage system, banking houses, and strict laws protecting the common citizen from oppression by the rich and powerful. There is strong proof, according to historic authorities, that

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the wise men of Babylon had some knowledge of electricity, and, arguing from this theory, it is advanced that the famed " handwriting on the wall " was projected upon a plaster surface by some mechanism kindred to the modern magic lantern. In our time stereopticon pictures are effective in showing the people the handwriting on the wall of modern-day unpreparedness, those things which augur for good citizenship, wise ruling, and livable conditions in cities.

National safety means much more than military efficiency. It means putting the nation and its resources into the best possible condition. It means safeguarding the public health of the people in cities. It means obedience to the primary instincts of self-preservation, which is quite as inherent in nations as in men. It dictates the wisdom of making ourselves ready and able to meet whatever exigencies may arise. It means putting the nation into the best possible condition as to material, men, -and measures for the well-being of all the people.

The wisdom of this the chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission attempted to show the Secretary of War in 19 1 6, when requesting a permit to build bathing beaches along the " filled in " Lake Front, so the masses could enjoy what the Babylonians were ordered by law to take three times daily. This is what he said:

A Washington dispatch appearing in the Chicago papers stated that five hundred men had been added to the ranks of the army during two weeks' recruiting, and that this number was accepted from among more than two thousand applicants for enlistment. The number of rejections is alarming. What is the cause ascribed for the ineligibility of seventy-five per cent of all those offering their services? Fifty-three per cent of the people of the United States now reside in cities. Does this not augur for more ample means for the healthful recreation of the people in cities? If physical deterioration is the principal cause for this wholesale rejecting of recruits, then indeed is our country face to face with another crisis which also demands preparedness but of another sort : preparedness for the conservation of the public health of our citizens — the nation's greatest asset. While we as a nation are making our plans for naval and military preparedness, should we not also make plans for preparedness in other directions which fundamentally affect our nation? Preparedness for the safety of the health of our people is graphically — almost dramatically — illustrated in the desire of Chicago to turn its great Lake Front into playgrounds for all the people, a permit for which is necessary from the United States government.

It would be interesting and valuable to review the experience of the War Department since this early and small beginning in raising an army. Such investigation would reveal a very alarming depleted physical condition among the hundreds of thousands called and examined for military service. As one writer puts it, " A distinguished f>eace promoter boasted in our ante-war days that if America was threatened, a million men would spring to arms overnight to defend her." Based on the courage and patriotism of the nation, he was doubtless right but, as this writer pointed out, "between willingness to fight and fitness to fight is set a gulf broad and deep." Samuel Hopkins Adams, in Collier's, told the story of making our army "fighting fit" and in reply to this prophetic enthusiast, said :

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Ten thousand army medical experts can now attest that if the prophet's million unsifted fiat defenders were put to the test of ordinary routine — let alone full military service — without long and painful preparation, the first fortnight would find half of them in hospitals, half of the remainder disqualified for duty by minor ailments, and most of the residue discharged or dead. Five per cent, perhaps, might measure up untrained to the purely physical demands of soldier life.

Naturally the American army could be depended upon to take care of itself, but at what expense of effort and time was it necessary to make it fighting fit. This was accomplished, seemingly, with incredible speed and almost miraculous results, but how infinitely better it would have been could proper measures have been employed in the cities for the physical well-being of the people prior to this emergent need. The war has taught us many valuable lessons — none of greater worth than the lesson in preparedness in building a stalwart national physical manhood by making living conditions in the cities the best possible. Brilliant exploits have been achieved and more brilliant things may follow if a proper survey of conditions in cities may be had and a remedy provided, insuring a permanent, virile, and capable people. When the history of the war is written there will outstand against all other achievements the remarkable contribution of the United States in organizing an army of four million, the building of thirty-five enormous cantonments, the equipment of the army and the transportation of 2,225,000 soldiers three thousand miles across the Atlantic which ended the war, all in the incredibly short time of eighteen months. Nothing in the history of the world is comparable to this thing and that was done in a pacific country where the very idea of foreign invasion was considered as almost entirely out of the question.

Something of the genius, the dispatch, and the completeness of this great achievement, if brought to bear upon the great civic issue — city planning — would effect similar noteworthy results and our nation would indeed be invincible.

Why city planning is the greatest issue of the United States today is patent on the face of things. The tendency of mankind is to gather together in close contact, a trait which has always existed but is operating today more strongly than ever before in history. All over the world there is an astonishing and unparalleled movement of people toward cities. Naturally this movement ils bringing up new problems in municipal government and new tasks in social science, or the science of maintaining good health and good order among people of different races when brought intimately together. The civic problems confronting the people a generation ago were very simple as we regard them looking back from today — namely, to supply gas (later electric light), water, adequate schools, and scientifically equipped institutions for the sick and the improvident. These were their major concerns. We consider need for God's sunshine, air, sanitation, relief from congestion, facilitation of traffic, housing of the poor, organized charities and more ample means for healthful recreation — in a word, public improvements and more attractive surroundings

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for the multitudes swarming to the cities. Belshazzar did not have these conditions in his time, but problems he did have, and the manner in which he met and mastered them puts modern municipal rule to blush.

American cities have arisen to the rule of lack of foresight and haphazard development. Babylon and Athens are examples of what was accomplished to serve the interests of the people in their far-off day. What we must do in America in this, the twentieth century, is to discover the nature of our needs, and how these may be satisfied.

What are we doing? Where is city planning going? These questions confront us. Many are answering them like the country editor in the generous old day of free railroad passes. He applied to the headquarters of a certain railroad for a pass to a distant city. Instead of receiving it, he got this message : " What is your paper and where does it go?" Promptly the editor replied: "It is devoted to the interests of my community; it goes everywhere; it will go to blazes if you do not send me that pass."

Before the Great War city planning was going to blazes in a hundred directions in America because the experience and need of our day were ignored, and in their stead were advanced ill-considered procedure and frequently more ill-considered plans. The war put a temporary embargo on nearly everything of civic importance. Now that it is over it will be followed by the reconstruction period.

The war ended, new and stupendous problems confront the nations of the world. The reconstruction period is upon us with its vast, varied, intricate, and tremendously burdensome problems requiring solution. When the tremendous program of reconstruction is finally approved and launched, an exacting and long-drawn-out period of procedure must, of necessity, be undertaken the world over. Fundamental is the important question of the welfare of the people in the cities. Especially does this apply to America, where public improvement projects of local character were almost entirely abandoned or subordinated to the national needs.

Cities of the United States discovered soon after the nation's entry into the war that they no longer possessed the power to decide questions and launch action on their local improvement projects upon their own initiative. This, if done at all, they soon realized could be accomplished only by the decree of the national authorities. Seemingly this procedure was desirable in the United States — the richest and most resourceful country in the world — although there were many evidences of progressive action upon municipal improvements in the countries of England, France, and Germany, where the war burden and sacrifices of the people were infinitely greater and much longer sustained.

Whatever new and continued burdens may be placed upon the people of the United States growing out of the readjustment following the war, the betterment of the conditions of the people in the cities must early be given masterful and aggressive impetus. The vast program of public work either in the making or partially under construction before the war must be reassembled and prosecuted under the new urge that has grown out of the war.

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Conditions in the cities due to rapid growth and ill-considered development that had forced their attention upon the people in American cities not only could not, during the war, be improved, but on the contrary have become aggravated. No time should be lost in picking up and binding together the broken threads of municipal advance in matters affecting the general good.

The world momentous fact has been clearly realized that a coalition of all the nations must be established looking to such readjustment and material modification of military and naval strength as will forever assure the peace of the world and its freedom from further warring strife, if civilization is to be kept from slipping back into such darkness as for six hundred years encompassed the world following the fall of the Roman Empire. Not only has the imperative need of such action been developed but scientists have gone much further than that in indicating the desirable, if not probable, need of a combination of the nations to conserve the man power, money power, and material resources of the world so that human progress may again assert itself and be sustained until the light of freedom from the toils of devastation is again unquenchably all aglow.

In all of its appalling vastness nothing is so urgent for the reestablishment of the prosperity of the people in the United States as a quick and vigorous resumption of activities on municipal improvement projects in accordance with well-ordered local plans. Of essential importance looms the need of restoring and conserving the depleted physical strength of our hundreds of thousands of returning troops who were heavily drawn from every section of the country, their reemployment where possible in the ranks of labor, the use of steel and other materials sorely needed in many directions and provision for the humanitarian relief of the stricken families of our soldiers who, more than ever, will require better facilities for healthful recreation and other means for their normal rehabilitation — all of which is a matter of local obligation and performance.

Sternly facing the facts due to the Great War, it perforce must be admitted that if the condition of the people in the cities which required urgent attention before the war was admittedly bad, it is obvious that these conditions will multiply many fold after the war. Now more irrevocably than ever it must be realized that the prosperity of the people in the cities — and in consequence the prosperity of the nation, for the majority of the people live in the cities — depends upon well-ordered municipal development. This can best be brought about through such remedial measures as ample means for healthful happiness in the open both within and without the city limits, relief from congestion, facilitation of traffic, proper housing and scientific districting, with its many practical provisions. In the wake of this constructive program for the good of the people in the cities there must also follow improved facilities for industrial or vocational education, and more reachable general educational opportunities and their stimulating and wholesome influences.

Naturally the Great War retarded city planning everywhere in America. When the United States entered the war, the city of Chicago, after eight years of work upon

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the Plan of Chicago under the direction of the Chicago Plan Commission, was engaged in the development of public improvements which, when constructed, together with land purchases, would amount in the aggregate to more than $150,000,000. Other pending recommendations by the Plan Commission involved a further outlay of ten to fifteen million dollars. The value of these projects completed would add scores of millions additional. The improvements under way — under actual construction or far advanced in procedure — were the widening of Twelfth Street, railroad viaduct, and new bridge, a part of the central street quadrangle ; the widening and extension of Michigan Avenue across the Chicago River, including, a two-level structure and double-deck bridge, also a part of the central quadrangle; the west side Union Passenger Station and freight terminal projects, including the widening and grading of Canal Street, a two-level street and double-deck bridge over the north branch of the river; the building of several new bridge approaches and bridges, approach tracks, approach yards and general terminal layout; the Illinois Central terminal plans; the building of 1,280 acres of Lake Front parks and waterways in connection therewith ; the extension of Ogden Avenue for two miles, connecting that diagonal- thoroughfare with Union and Lincoln parks; the acquisition of thousands of acres of forest preserves ; the purchase of a two-block west side post-office site on Canal Street; and a good roads system connecting the forest preserves and adjacent suburban highway systems.

Other recommended projects were — the widening of

Western Avenue, the principal west side through thoroughfare; and the reclamation, double-decking and widening of South Water Street — now occupied by a produce market — to form a part of the central quadrangle. Work was actually begun on four of these projects and procedure far advanced on all the others excepting the latter two. The war almost entirely stopped everyone of these improvements. The signing of the armistice brought "about an immediate and vigorous resumption of activity on all these projects, which had been unavoidably delayed by the great world conflict.

Almost immediately following the signing of the armistice the Chicago Plan Commission issued its now famous " Reconstruction Platform," calling upon authorities and citizens alike to get behind the twenty-three improvements projected in the platform. Its appeal was primarily based on the need for providing work for returning troops, to safeguard labor in a possible period of depression, and as an economic necessity in the construction of a series of city improvements which, if speedily realized, woultl save the city untold millions of dollars in the future in repairing the mistakes of shortsightedness.

Other than the war, an additional cause of delay has been public misunderstanding of the purpose of city planning. In the beginning it was a mistake to signalize a city plan as "The City Beautiful." It is thus designated in America wherever city planning crops out. A city plan worthy of the name should be called "The City Practical." The term "beautiful" inspires objection at the outset by creating misapprehension. It is a strong stock phrase to be ridiculed and scoffed at by the pro-

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fessional agitator. "Beauty doctors" this class like to call city planners. " The City Beautiful " is a misnomer because real city planning is more practical than beautiful. It aims at betterments and attractive conditions, not beauty which, however, follows as a natural result. It is a great step forward to anticipate the objection of the incredulous by avoiding the possibility of confusion in the minds of the people and by starting with the right name for the Plan. It has required, where serious work has been done, much patient effort to get the people to span the chasm between the practical ideals of a comprehensive city plan and the wretched order of physical development so unfortunately prevalent in American cities. Hence city planning effort has been called an idle dream. Fortunately enough already has been accomplished of a practical, worthwhile nature to forever take city planning out of the atmosphere of a talk plan or a picture plan.

Vastly more will be accomplished when the cities in the United States which have started begin to realize the practical truths and necessities which underlie the whole progress of successful city planning endeavor.

For twenty-five years I have been advancing things by the power of persuasion. For eleven years I have been professionally employed in public work — work where public spirit, vision, men, moral suasion, persuasion — in a word, organized effort, projected by educated enthusiasm— were dominant requisites.

For eight years I have been aiding in directing the furtherance of the Plan of Chicago. The views I shall advance in this volume are the results of my experience.

My business is to say what I believe, based on my own' experience and observation of the experience of others. Whether this pleases or irritates is not my business.

With Romain Rolland — I know that, "Words once uttered make their way of themselves."

In the undeveloped soil of American city planning, I sow them, hopefully expectant of the harvest.

Chapter II The;new Profession City Planning

SINCE city planning has become so heralded in America, something like two hundred cities have entered the arena, garbed in some sort of planning toga. Most of these have but fragmentary plans. Some have only park plans; others civic center plans; others transportation plans. Some few have single street improvement plans. All is called city planning and that is exactly what it is not.

A street widening unrelated to any other improvement or purpose is not city planning. The mere development of a civic center without a comprehensive study of the entire city is not city planning. These may, in the rapid development of cities, be city " unplanning."

The reason for such little progress in city planning as was actually made in pre-war times was more often due to the wrong way of going about it than to bad planning. Too many planning boards have been made up largely of technical men who had no knowledge of promotional methods and no resourcefulness in educational work. There has not been realized that no matter how effectively developed on paper, city planning can only be accomplished by especial promotional effort, nor was there even guessed the many and peculiar ramifications of such endeavor. This fact is clear in the many failures that have resulted. City planning advocates must come to realize this truth and follow its tenets.

Ignorance of the value and the part promotional work has had in successful city planning is nowhere better illustrated than in the survey of a certain Englishman who made an investigation of the subject in the United States in 1913. He published the results of his research in a leading technical magazine of London. His article dealt only with theoretical deductions of experts, technical drawings, and studies, and very little with actual accomplishment. His mention of Chicago was interesting for what it included as well as for what it did not include. He gave liberal mention to a host of technical experts and "other experts who have concentrated their attention to details or special aspects."

City planning promotion had no place in his article. Nearly all of it was devoted to the accomplishments made in Chicago, so little could he find in other cities, but not a word did he mention of education, procedure, or the promotional efYorts that made the Chicago work possible. The fact that most of the experts referred to had had no actual experience in things done seemed not to concern this writer. Apparently he was more interested in theory than accomplishment. Either he overlooked or thought it unnecessary to mention what Chicago has effected, not a pardonable blunder because of the very large part the promotional work has had in Chicago's achievement on its Plan.

"City planning" has become a fad. Some cities have no plans — only a desire to catch the fad and become

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engaged in planning something ; anything so long as they can get in the picture. Others have passed the first inoculation of the bug and have appointed their commission, given it a few hundred dollars and set it adrift. It hasn't' money enough to sail far nor does it know what port it is bound for. It only knows that it is a " city planner " because it feels the motion of the waves.

Then there are a large number of cities, yet unkissed by the bug, which are frantically endeavoring to attract him. This urban impulse of the day is breeding a horde of city planning fledgelings. These are naturally recruited from the ranks of architects and engineers. There are some good men in the field, but not many. The technical man thoroughly competent to be trusted with a commission to advise the city and prepare plans for it is rare. I know but few such men in the United States.