The Company will thus barter houses and estates. It must be plain to
any one who has observed the rise in the value of land through its
cultivation that the Company will be bound to gain on its landed
property. This can best be seen in the case of enclosed pieces of land
in town and country. Areas not built over increase in value through
surrounding cultivation. The men who carried out the extension of
Paris made a successful speculation in land which was ingenious in its
simplicity; instead of erecting new buildings in the immediate
vicinity of the last houses of the town, they bought up adjacent
pieces of land, and began to build on the outskirts of these. This
inverse order of construction raised the value of building sites with
extraordinary rapidity, and, after having completed the outer ring,
they built in the middle of the town on these highly valuable sites,
instead of continually erecting houses at the extremity.
Will the Company do its own building, or employ independent
architects? It can, and will, do both. It has, as will be shown
shortly, an immense reserve of working power, which will not be
sweated by the Company, but, transported into brighter and happier
conditions of life, will nevertheless not be expensive. Our geologists
will have looked to the provision of building materials when they
selected the sites of the towns.
What is to be the principle of construction?