Carrying out the city plan

by Flavel Shurtleff

INTRODUCTION

The reason for preparing this book is the astonishing variation in the practical efficiency of methods actually employed and prescribed by law or legal custom in different parts of the United States in acquiring land for public purposes, in distributing the cost of public improvements, and in other proceedings essential to the proper shaping of our growing cities to the needs of their inhabitants. Mere variation in method would be of little more than academic interest in itself, but variations that result in obstructing the path of progress in one community and clearing it in another are of large practical importance. The extent and significance of these practical variations have impressed themselves more and more strongly on the writer in the course of an extended practice as a landscape architect, especially in connection with the design and execution of such municipal improvements as parks, playgrounds, public squares, parkways, streets, the placing of public buildings and the improvement of their grounds. Even more notable than the variation in method and in relative efficiency has been the close preoccupation of public officials, especially in the city law departments, with the constantly recurring problem of finding the way of least resistance for navigating a specific improvement through the maze of obstacles imposed by the existing local legal situation, accompanied by an almost fatalistic acceptance of these obstacles as a permanent condition. There has been evident in most cities a very limited acquaintance with conditions and methods to be found elsewhere, and a general lack of strong constructive effort for the improvement of the local conditions and methods on the basis of general experience. Of late years, however, there has been a growing tendency to break away from this indifference and to face these problems in a larger spirit.

Feeling the importance of stimulating and assisting such constructive local effort by calling attention to the more important of the variations in actual use, and lacking both the time and the legal training to himself prepare a proper presentation of the subject, the writer of this preface urged the Russell Sage Foundation, some three years ago, to provide the funds for making a systematic survey of the field and for publishing its results. The response was cordial and effective and enabled Mr. Flavel Shurtleff of the Boston Bar to devote a large part of his time for two years to the undertaking.

Mr. Shurtleff has done the real work of the book from beginning to end and is responsible for its accuracy from a legal point of view. The writer of this preface has been compelled to limit his collaboration to a general guidance in the gathering and selection of material and its arrangement for presentation, and to a somewhat careful and detailed revision of the manuscript and proofs for the purpose of making the impressions conveyed by the book conform in a common sense way with the observations and conclusions to which he has been led in dealing with actual problems of municipal improvement in many different cities.

There has been no attempt to compile a comprehensive treatise on city planning; and some subjects properly within the title of this volume have not, for many reasons, been examined with as great a detail as their importance may seem to justify. This is particularly true of the subject of building regulations.

Since city building is primarily a question of the acquisition of land by the municipality, or else of the power to regulate its use by others, the search for precedents in codes, reports, and legal text books has been concerned with three well defined subjects: the acquisition of land, the power to tax, and the police power. In respect to these there has been no attempt to compile a complete digest, but only to present the more significant variations revealed by a fairly systematic and intelligent search. The practice of municipal departments has been much more difficult to discover. The examination of state codes and the results obtained from a questionnaire sent to most of the larger cities in the United States made it possible to determine upon a limited number of states as typical of the rest, and by selecting the most promising cities in each state, to make up a list of cities for study on the ground. The data obtained in one city by consultation with city officials and otherwise often led to the addition of a new city to the list. The following cities were visited for a few days each: New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (Oregon), Seattle, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. An opportunity to make a more intensive study in one city presented itself in connection with an investigation conducted by the city planning committee of the Boston Chamber of Commerce into the methods employed in extending the street systems in the metropolitan district of Boston, and the information thus secured has been made use of in this report.

The material for the book was gathered between January, 1910, and January, 1912, a time of extraordinary activity in city planning legislation. Some of the text became obsolete before the book was completed and some of the conclusions have been made a basis of legislation during the past year (1913). Thus, Ohio has written into its constitution the power of excess condemnation of land[1] and the right to assess the cost of improvements on territory especially benefited.[2] Massachusetts, New York, and Wisconsin have amended their constitutions to incorporate the principle of excess condemnation.[3] The Pennsylvania law of 1907, allowing excess condemnation, has been tested and the supreme court has declared it to be unconstitutional.[4] Plan commissions have been made mandatory in Massachusetts and have been authorized in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and some cities of Connecticut.[5]

This activity in the gradual and experimental reshaping of legal mechanism will doubtless continue until it shall have been forged into an instrument of much higher average efficiency than at present for the accomplishment of the social purposes of city planning. It is as a help toward the successful working out of this process that the present book is offered.

Frederick Law Olmsted.

Brookline, Mass.,
30th April, 1914.