LINE DISTRIBUTION--THE LOGICAL OUTCOME
Civilization growing up in a separate and disjoined fashion has
resulted in a certain arrangement of the population upon the face of
the earth. At first savage men roamed the plains and forests seeking
food. The advent of civilization, industrial and social coöperation,
taught men the advantage of gathering themselves into cities. At first
these cities were provisioned from the country by means of humans
or animal beasts of burden, then water transportation caused the
development of greater cities on rivers and harbors. With the advent
of the railroad, together with the transportation agencies already
mentioned, the provisioning of cities became limited only by the
ability of the country district to support its own population and that
of the city.
The occupation of the city people was chiefly that of manufacturing,
trading and grafting on the farmer and on each other. The invention of
steam power made it economical to assemble workmen into large factories
which added another cause to the growth of cities. The use of this
steam power forced the city worker out of his home and into the more
economical factory, thus developing the factory system.
The continual growth of cities soon filled the land with large groups
of houses, crowding each other for room. As the houses were built
closer and closer together, the amount of light and air was shut out,
in order that the distance the workers lived from their work might not
increase. At first workers went from their work to their houses on
foot, later by means of the horse car, still later by steam car and now
the electric car is supreme. As these transportation facilities first
used to get provisions into the city and the manufactured product out
of it were utilized to get the workers to and from their work, the
houses began to follow the transportation lines.
_Transportation Determines the Form of Cities._
As time and the expense of transportation rather than distance were the
elements that governed the distance from the heart of the city that
could be used for workers’ homes, the utilization of fixed lines of
traffic resulted in the city building out along main streets, trolleys
and railroads. Along main lines of traffic, as between two important
cities, the population began to group itself into lines.
This is the state of the distribution of population to be found in the
world to-day. But the present distribution is imperfect. The trolleys
carry people to the street corner but make no provision for getting
them into their homes or for getting the meals on the sideboard, the
book from the library to the center table, or the camphor from the drug
store to the sick room.
The means of conveying the necessities of civilization is almost wholly
that of rails, pipes and wires. The former is the means of transporting
people and parcels, the second of liquids and gases, the third of
electricity in its various forms.
These mechanical servants have been placed in the streets which were
first built as roadways for carriages. In the streets, the pipes and
wires must be buried beneath the pavement at great expense. Through
these streets, frequently full of curves and angles which offer little
trouble to the free moving horse-drawn vehicle, the rails must be bent
and the cars slow down for curves. From beneath the pavement the pipes
and wires must be separately led into the basements of each building
and up through successive stories to the apartments above. Within the
building, separate vertical car lines called elevators, must be built
and city transportation becomes a matter of three dimensions with train
service running in from principal outlying points, cross-town trolley
lines and vertical elevators, all separate schemes of transportation
requiring changes and delays, endless duplication, colossal expense and
criminal waste.
Now rails, pipes and wires can be most economically laid in continuous
straight lines. In the case of railroads, the greater the speed
without stops the more the necessity for straight lines. A car running
at a speed of forty miles per hour has sixteen times the force for
derailment as a car at ten miles, and there is a like increase in the
cost in power and time to stop the car. Moreover, to be efficient the
railway should be where nothing will obstruct the passage of trains.
Pipes must be kept from freezing, live wires from giving shocks and
yet all must be available for new installation and repairs. None of
these needs are filled by present city conditions; all can be fulfilled
if the city is planned to fit the rail, pipe and wire civilization of
to-day instead of the pedestrian and equestrian civilization of the
past.
_Building in One Dimension._
The Roadtown is a scheme to organize production, transportation and
consumption into one systematic plan. In an age of pipes and wires,
and high speed railways such a plan necessitates the building in one
dimension instead of three--the line distribution of population
instead of the pyramid style of construction. The rail-pipe-and-wire
civilization and the increase in the speed of transportation is certain
to result in the line distribution of population because of the almost
unbelievable economy in construction, in operation and in time. The
people will return to Mother Earth because it is in every way desirable
for them to do so and not because some merchant prince, railroad king
or social worker says they ought to go.
In modern life an office building, store or apartment house is
considered especially fortunate if it has a rapid transit station
near or better still within the building. All the inhabitants of the
Roadtown will live upon the main line and be near the station. They
will live there because the utilities of civilization can be provided
there more economically than elsewhere. But the line distribution has
yet another significance of as great importance as the more safe and
economical distribution of people, parcels, fluids and electricity.
The development of cities was originally brought about by the desire of
men to get close together for industrial needs and social fellowship.
This same want for ready communication and distribution of men and
things I have shown can now be most completely fulfilled by the city
which will be strung out in a line. In other words, the very laws which
built the congested cities will, with the construction of the first
section of the first Roadtown, surely mark the beginning of their
gradual dissemination. Such a tendency can already be seen at work, but
its development has not progressed far because of the isolation of the
functions of house construction and horizontal transportation devices.
As soon as horizontal transportation is put in the house, the
skyscraper on its side, and is pointed towards the endless country
instead of up against the force of gravity, and the wonderful
transportation devices now available are installed, you will see the
cities spread out in lines amidst the fields and farms, as if by magic.
Indeed it will be the magic of economy, the natural force to which all
of humanity always promptly responds.
The height of the skyscraper is limited by the stresses and strains
on the steel, by the instability of the foundation, by congestion of
the elevators. The length of the skyscraper on its side has no limit
for it is built on solid ground, it has no lighting and ventilating
problems. Its transportation system by the aid of local and express
service, by the fact that it can run trains, not single cars, and can
run many trains following each other on one track and not require a
whole shaft for a single car as in the case of the elevator, removes
the mechanical limitation of length of the horizontal skyscraper. We
can build not only a thousand feet, but a thousand miles and have every
story connected with every other story by rails, pipes and wires.
_A Line of City Through the Country._
The Roadtown will start at the end of the present subways or other
rapid transportation systems of present cities or tap these lines
far enough out to get comparatively cheap land and build out in
the direction of other cities, passing near enough to the smaller
cities, towns and villages to summarily attract much of their
renting population. This movement will surely mark the “beginning
of the end” of such wasteful loafing centers for the few, and the
stagnant pools of wasted energy for the many. It will be a line of
city through the country. It will take the apartment house to the
farmer and incidentally free the farmer from the necessity of feeding
the well-meaning townsfolk who give him in return scant clothing, the
use of a hitching post for his team--sometimes; a place to get his
weekly paper and a little social fellowship on the sidewalk Saturday
afternoons. It will give the suburbanite all that he seeks in the
country and all that he regrets to leave in town. It will enable him
to play at farming, do real farming or retain his city job. The people
will go to the land and take the best things of the city with them,
take in fact all that is good in the city to-day and in addition much
that is now pigeon-holed as unused patents, because the conglomeration
of isolated homes and the crude horse paths called streets, owned by
“hold-up men” called politicians, do not permit of the general adoption
of these great inventions.