SOCIAL CITIES.
“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be
planted and re-planted for too long a series of generations in the
same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so
far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed earth.”--“The Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
The problem with which we have now to deal, shortly stated, is this:
How to make our Garden City experiment the stepping-stone to a
higher and better form of industrial life generally throughout the
country. Granted the success of the initial experiment, and there
must inevitably arise a widespread demand for an extension of methods
so healthy and so advantageous; and it will be well, therefore, to
consider some of the chief problems which will have to be faced in the
progress of such extension.
It will, I think, be well, in approaching this question, to consider
the analogy presented by the early progress of railway enterprise.
This will help us to see more clearly some of the broader features of
the new development which is now so closely upon us if only we show
ourselves energetic and imaginative. Railways were first made without
any statutory powers. They were constructed on a very small scale,
and, being of very short lengths, the consent of only one or at the
most a few landowners was necessary; and what private agreement and
arrangement could thus easily compass was scarcely a fit subject for
an appeal to the Legislature of the country. But when the “Rocket”
was built, and the supremacy of the locomotive was fully established,
it then became necessary, if railway enterprise was to go forward,
to obtain legislative powers. For it would have been impossible, or
at least very difficult, to make equitable arrangements with all the
landowners whose estates might lie between points many miles distant;
because one obstinate landlord might take advantage of his position
to demand an altogether exorbitant price for his land, and thus
practically stifle such an enterprise. It was necessary, therefore, to
obtain power to secure the land compulsorily at its market value, or
at a price not too extravagantly removed from such value; and, this
being done, railway enterprise went forward at so rapid a rate that in
one year no less than £132,600,000 was authorised by Parliament to be
raised for the purpose of railway construction.[27]
Now, if Parliamentary powers were necessary for the extension of
railway enterprise, such powers will certainly be also needed when the
inherent practicability of building new, well-planned towns, and of
the population moving into them from the old slum cities as naturally,
and, in proportion to the power to be exercised, almost as easily as a
family moves out of a rotten old tenement into a new and comfortable
dwelling, is once fairly recognised by the people. To build such
towns, large areas of land must be obtained. Here and there a suitable
site may be secured by arrangement with one or more landowners, but if
the movement is to be carried on in anything like a scientific fashion,
stretches of land far larger than that occupied by our first experiment
must be obtained. For, just as the first short railway, which was the
germ of railway enterprise, would convey to few minds the conception of
a net-work of railways extending over the whole country, so, perhaps,
the idea of a well-planned town such as I have described will not have
prepared the reader for the later development which must inevitably
follow--the planning and building of town clusters--each town in the
cluster being of different design from the others, and yet the whole
forming part of one large and well-thought-out plan.
Let me here introduce a very rough diagram, representing, as I
conceive, the true principle on which all towns should grow. Garden
City has, we will suppose, grown until it has reached a population
of 32,000. How shall it grow--How shall it provide for the needs of
others who will be attracted by its numerous advantages? Shall it
build on the zone of agricultural land which is around it, and thus
for ever destroy its right to be called a “Garden City”? Surely not.
This disastrous result would indeed take place if the land around
the town were, as is the land around our present cities, owned by
private individuals anxious to make a profit out of it. For then, as
the town filled up, the agricultural land would become “ripe” for
building purposes, and the beauty and healthfulness of the town would
be quickly destroyed. But the land around Garden City is, fortunately,
not in the hands of private individuals: it is in the hands of the
people: and is to be administered, not in the supposed interests of
the few, but in the real interests of the whole community. Now, there
are few objects which the people so jealously guard as their parks
and open spaces; and we may, I think, feel confident that the people
of Garden City will not for a moment permit the beauty of their city
to be destroyed by the process of growth. But it may be urged--If
this be true, will not the inhabitants of Garden City in this way be
selfishly preventing the growth of their city, and thus preclude many
from enjoying its advantages? Certainly not. There is a bright, but
overlooked, alternative. The town _will_ grow; but it will grow in
accordance with a principle which will result in this--that such growth
shall not lessen or destroy, but ever add to its social opportunities,
to its beauty, to its convenience. Consider for a moment the case of
a city in Australia which in some measure illustrates the principle
for which I am contending. The city of Adelaide, as the accompanying
sketch map shows, is surrounded by its “Park Lands.” The city is built
up. How does it grow? It grows by leaping over the “Park Lands” and
establishing North Adelaide. And this is the principle which it is
intended to follow, but improve upon, in Garden City.
[Illustration: N^o. 4.
ADELAIDE
SHOWING PARK LANDS ALL ROUND CITY, AND ITS MODE OF GROWTH.]
Our diagram may now be understood. Garden City is built up. Its
population has reached 32,000. How will it grow? It will grow by
establishing--under Parliamentary powers probably--another city some
little distance beyond its own zone of “country,” so that the new town
may have a zone of country of its own. I have said “by establishing
another city,” and, for administrative purposes there would be _two_
cities; but the inhabitants of the one could reach the other in a
very few minutes; for rapid transit would be specially provided for,
and thus the people of the two towns would in reality represent one
community.
[Illustration: N^o. 5.
DIAGRAM
ILLUSTRATING CORRECT PRINCIPLE OF A CITY’S GROWTH--OPEN COUNTRY EVER
NEAR AT HAND, AND RAPID COMMUNICATION BETWEEN OFF-SHOOTS.]
And this principle of growth--this principle of always preserving a
belt of country round our cities would be ever kept in mind till, in
course of time, we should have a cluster of cities, not of course
arranged in the precise geometrical form of my diagram, but so grouped
around a Central City that each inhabitant of the whole group, though
in one sense living in a town of small size, would be in reality living
in, and would enjoy all the advantages of, a great and most beautiful
city; and yet all the fresh delights of the country--field, hedgerow,
and wood-land--not prim parks and gardens merely--would be within
a very few minutes walk or ride. And _because the people in their
collective capacity own the land_ on which this beautiful group of
cities is built, the public buildings, the churches, the schools and
universities, the libraries, picture galleries, theatres, would be on a
scale of magnificence which no city in the world whose land is in pawn
to private individuals can afford.
I have said that rapid railway transit would be realised by those who
dwell in this beautiful city or group of cities. Reference to the
diagram will show at a glance the main features of its railway system.
There is, first, an inter-municipal railway connecting all the towns
of the outer ring--20 miles in circumference--so that to get from any
town to its most distant neighbour requires one to cover a distance of
only 10 miles, which could be accomplished in, say, 12 minutes. These
trains would not stop between the towns--means of communication for
this purpose being afforded by electric tramways which traverse the
high-roads, of which, it will be seen, there are a number--each town
being connected with every other town in the group by a direct route.
There is also a system of railways by which each town is placed in
direct communication with Central City. The distance from any town
to the heart of Central City is only 3-1/4 miles, and this could be
readily covered in 5 minutes.
Those who have had experience of the difficulty of getting from one
suburb of London to another will see in a moment what an enormous
advantage those who dwell in such a group of cities as here shown
would enjoy, because they would have a railway _system_ and not a
railway _chaos_ to serve their ends. The difficulty felt in London
is of course due to want of forethought and pre-arrangement. On this
point, I may quote with advantage a passage from the Presidential
address of Sir Benjamin Baker to the Institute of Civil Engineers, Nov.
12th, 1895: “We Londoners often complain of the want of system in the
arrangement of the railways and their terminal stations in and around
the Metropolis, which necessitates our performing long journeys in
cabs to get from one railway system to another. That this difficulty
exists, arises, I feel sure, chiefly from the want of forethought
of no less able a statesman than Sir Robert Peel, for, in 1836, a
motion was proposed in the House of Commons that all the Railway Bills
seeking powers for terminals in London should be referred to a Special
Committee, so that a complete scheme might be evolved out of the
numerous projects before Parliament, and that property might not be
unnecessarily sacrificed for rival schemes. Sir Robert Peel opposed the
motion on the part of the Government, on the grounds that ‘no railway
project could come into operation till the majority of Parliament
had declared that its principles and arrangements appeared to them
satisfactory, and its investments profitable. It was a recognised
principle in these cases that the probable profits of an undertaking
should be shown to be sufficient to maintain it in a state of permanent
utility before a Bill could be obtained, and landlords were perfectly
justified in expecting and demanding such a warranty from Parliament.’
In this instance, incalculable injury was unintentionally inflicted
upon Londoners by not having a grand central station in the Metropolis,
and events have shown how false was the assumption that the passing of
an Act implied any warranty as to the financial prospects of a railway.”
But are the people of England to suffer for ever for the want of
foresight of those who little dreamed of the future development of
railways? Surely not. It was in the nature of things little likely that
the first network of railways ever constructed should conform to true
principles; but now, seeing the enormous progress which has been made
in the means of rapid communication, it is high time that we availed
ourselves more fully of those means, and built our cities upon some
such plan as that I have crudely shown. We should then be, for all
purposes of quick communication, nearer to each other than we are in
our crowded cities, while, at the same time, we should be surrounding
ourselves with the most healthy and the most advantageous conditions.
Some of my friends have suggested that such a scheme of town clusters
is well enough adapted to a new country, but that in an old-settled
country, with its towns built, and its railway “system” for the most
part constructed, it is quite a different matter. But surely to
raise such a point is to contend, in other words, that the existing
wealth forms of the country are permanent, and are forever to serve
as hindrances to the introduction of better forms; that crowded,
ill-ventilated, unplanned, unwieldy, unhealthy cities--ulcers on the
very face of our beautiful island--are to stand as barriers to the
introduction of towns in which modern scientific methods and the aims
of social reformers may have the fullest scope in which to express
themselves. No, it cannot be; at least, it cannot be for long. What
Is may hinder What Might Be for a while, but cannot stay the tide of
progress. These crowded cities have done their work; they were the
best which a society largely based on selfishness and rapacity could
construct, but they are in the nature of things entirely unadapted
for a society in which the social side of our nature is demanding a
larger share of recognition--a society where even the very love of self
leads us to insist upon a greater regard for the well-being of our
fellows. The large cities of to-day are scarcely better adapted for
the expression of the fraternal spirit than would a work on astronomy
which taught that the earth was the centre of the universe be capable
of adaptation for use in our schools. Each generation should build to
suit its own needs; and it is no more in the nature of things that men
should continue to live in old areas because their ancestors lived in
them, than it is that they should cherish the old beliefs which a wider
faith and a more enlarged understanding have outgrown. The reader is,
therefore, earnestly asked not to take it for granted that the large
cities in which he may perhaps take a pardonable pride are necessarily,
in their present form, any more permanent than the stage-coach system
which was the subject of so much admiration just at the very moment
when it was about to be supplanted by the railways.[28] The simple
issue to be faced, and faced resolutely, is--Can better results be
obtained by starting on a bold plan on comparatively virgin soil than
by attempting to adapt our old cities to our newer and higher needs?
Thus fairly faced, the question can only be answered in one way; and
when that simple fact is well grasped, the social revolution will
speedily commence.
That there is ample land in this country on which such a cluster as
I have here depicted could be constructed with _comparatively_ small
disturbance of vested interests, and, therefore, with but little need
for compensation, will be obvious to anyone; and, when our first
experiment has been brought to a successful issue, there will be no
great difficulty in acquiring the necessary Parliamentary powers to
purchase the land and carry out the necessary works step by step.
County Councils are now seeking larger powers, and an overburdened
Parliament is becoming more and more anxious to devolve some of its
duties upon them. Let such powers be given more and more freely. Let
larger and yet larger measures of local self-government be granted, and
then all that my diagram depicts--only on a far better plan, because
the result of well-concerted and combined thought,--will be easily
attainable.
But it may be said, “Are you not, by thus frankly avowing the very
great danger to the vested interests of this country which your scheme
indirectly threatens, arming vested interests against yourself, and
so making any change by legislation impossible?” I think not. And
for three reasons. First, because those vested interests which are
said to be ranged like a solid phalanx against progress, will, by the
force of circumstances and the current of events, be for once divided
into opposing camps. Secondly, because property owners, who are very
reluctant to yield to threats, such as are sometimes made against
them by Socialists of a certain type, will be far more ready to make
concessions to the logic of events as revealing itself in an undoubted
advance of society to a higher form; and, thirdly, because the largest
and most important, and, in the end, the most influential of all vested
interests--I mean the vested interests of those who work for their
living, whether by hand or brain--will be naturally in favour of the
change when they understand its nature.
Let me deal with these points separately. First, I say vested-property
interests will be broken in twain, and will range themselves in
opposite camps. This sort of cleavage has occurred before. Thus, in the
early days of railway legislation, the vested interests in canals and
stage coaches were alarmed, and did all in their power to thwart and
hamper what threatened them. But other great vested interests brushed
this opposition easily on one side. These interests were chiefly
two--capital seeking investment, and land desiring to sell itself.
(A third vested interest--namely, labour seeking employment--had
then scarcely begun to assert its claims.) And notice now how such
a successful experiment as Garden City may easily become will drive
into the very bed-rock of vested interests a great wedge, which will
split them asunder with irresistible force, and permit the current of
legislation to set strongly in a new direction. For what will such an
experiment have proved up to the very hilt? Among other things too
numerous to mention, it will have proved that far more healthy and
economic conditions can be secured on raw uncultivated land (if only
that land be held on just conditions) than can be secured on land which
is at present of vastly higher market value; and in proving this it
will open wide the doors of migration from the old crowded cities with
their inflated and artificial rents, back to the land which can be
now secured so cheaply. Two tendencies will then display themselves.
The first will be a strong tendency for city ground values to fall,
the other a less marked tendency for agricultural land to rise.[29]
The holders of agricultural land, at least those who are willing
to sell--and many of them are even now most anxious to do so--will
welcome the extension of an experiment which promises to place English
agriculture once again in a position of prosperity: the holders of city
lands will, so far as their merely selfish interests prevail, greatly
fear it. In this way, landowners throughout the country will be divided
into two opposing factions, and the path of land reform--the foundation
on which all other reforms must be built--will be made comparatively
easy.
Capital in the same way will be divided into opposite camps. Invested
capital--that is, capital sunk in enterprises which society will
recognise as belonging to the old order--will take the alarm and
fall in value enormously, while, on the other hand, capital seeking
investment will welcome an outlet which has long been its sorest
need. Invested capital will in its opposition be further weakened
by another consideration. Holders of existing forms of capital will
strive--even though it be at a great sacrifice--to sell part of their
old time-honoured stocks, and invest them in new enterprises, on
municipally-owned land, for they will not wish to “have all their
eggs in one basket”; and thus will the opposing influences of vested
property neutralise each other.
But vested-property interests will be, as I believe, affected yet more
remarkably in another way. The man of wealth, when he is personally
attacked and denounced as an enemy of society, is slow to believe in
the perfect good faith of those who denounce him, and, when efforts are
made to tax him out by the forcible hand of the State, he is apt to
use every endeavour, lawful or unlawful, to oppose such efforts--and
often with no small measure of success. But the average wealthy man
is no more an unmixed compound of selfishness than the average poor
man; and if he sees his houses or lands depreciated in value, not
by force, but because those who lived in or upon them have learned
how to erect far better homes of their own, and on land held on
conditions more advantageous to them, and to surround their children
with many advantages which cannot be enjoyed on his estate, he will
philosophically bow to the inevitable, and, in his better moments, even
welcome a change which will involve him in far greater pecuniary loss
than any change in the incidence of taxation is likely to inflict. In
every man there is some measure of the reforming instinct; in every man
there is some regard for his fellows; and when these natural feelings
run athwart his pecuniary interests, then the result is that the spirit
of opposition is inevitably softened, in some degree in all men, while
in others it is entirely replaced by a fervent desire for the country’s
good, even at the sacrifice of many cherished possessions. Thus it is
that what will not be yielded to a force from without may readily be
granted as the result of an impulse from within.
And now let me deal for a moment with the greatest, the most valuable,
and the most permanent of all vested interests--the vested interests of
skill, labour, energy, talent, industry. How will these be affected? My
answer is, The force which will divide in twain the vested interests
of land and capital will unite and consolidate the interests of those
who live by work, and will lead them to unite their forces with the
holders of agricultural land and of capital seeking investment, to urge
upon the State the necessity for the prompt opening up of facilities
for the reconstruction of society; and, when the State is slow to act,
then to employ voluntary collective efforts similar to those adopted
in the Garden City experiment, with such modifications as experience
may show to be necessary. Such a task as the construction of a cluster
of cities like that represented in our diagram may well inspire all
workers with that enthusiasm which unites men, for it will call for
the very highest talents of engineers of all kinds, of architects,
artists, medical men, experts in sanitation, landscape gardeners,
agricultural experts, surveyors, builders, manufacturers, merchants
and financiers, organisers of trades unions, friendly and co-operative
societies, as well as the very simplest forms of unskilled labour,
together with all those forms of lesser skill and talent which lie
between. For the vastness of the task which seems to frighten some of
my friends, represents, in fact, the very measure of its value to the
community, if that task be only undertaken in a worthy spirit and with
worthy aims. Work in abundance is, as has been several times urged,
one of the greatest needs of to-day, and no such field of employment
has been opened up since civilisation began as would be represented by
the task which is before us of reconstructing anew the entire external
fabric of society, employing, as we build, all the skill and knowledge
which the experience of centuries has taught us. It was “a large order”
which was presented in the early part of this century to construct iron
highways throughout the length and breadth of this island, uniting
in a vast network all its towns and cities. But railway enterprise,
vast as has been its influence, touched the life of the people at but
few points compared with the newer call to build home-towns for slum
cities; to plant gardens for crowded courts; to construct beautiful
water-ways in flooded valleys; to establish a scientific system of
distribution to take the place of a chaos, a just system of land tenure
for one representing the selfishness which we hope is passing away;
to found pensions with liberty for our aged poor, now imprisoned in
workhouses; to banish despair and awaken hope in the breasts of those
who have fallen; to silence the harsh voice of anger, and to awaken the
soft notes of brotherliness and goodwill; to place in strong hands
implements of peace and construction, so that implements of war and
destruction may drop uselessly down. Here is a task which may well
unite a vast army of workers to utilise that power, the present waste
of which is the source of half our poverty, disease, and suffering.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Clifford’s “History of Private Bill Legislation” (Butterworth,
1883), Introduction, p. 88.
[28] See, for instance, the opening chapter of “The Heart of
Midlothian” (Sir Walter Scott).
[29] The chief reason for this is that agricultural land as compared
with city land is of vastly larger quantity.