ii
On the political side—that is, in relation to its human service—the reactions of the Road are exceedingly important, and they are not always as clearly noticed as they might be. There is a whole group of historical social phenomena which could be connected under the one heading of the “attraction” of the Road, meaning by the word “attraction” the way in which the Road compels communication to follow it once it is established. This attraction produces a quantity of effects countering or crossing general economic tendencies, and it acts in countless ways.
One interesting aspect of this is the draining of population down on to the Road. When a map is drawn up showing the density of population we see upon it separate areas of density, sometimes far apart, and between them areas marked by lesser density or even void. But if one should make an accurate population map of any one moment, plotting down every individual upon it, you would not get this effect of isolated dense districts; you would not get the effect of an archipelago, but of a network; for upon the communications between these districts would be marked a dense chain of units in progress from the one to the other: and one would at once grasp how permanent lesser nuclei arise between the two terminal towns. This aspect of the Road suggests a far more important one. The Road—in the sense of a means of communication—in proportion to its excellence differentiates human society
(a) Into areas of density and void;
(b) Into the urban political habit and the agricultural political habit.
This is a very important reaction of the Road, which must be allowed for in every historical and contemporary problem.
Granted an urban centre, with its special opportunities for inter-communication between human beings, for experiment and for what may be called “the cross-fertilization of knowledge,” the growth of such a centre is, of course, dependent upon many things: its economic basis, either as a market or as the capital of a productive area, or, more commonly, as both; the physical surroundings which may, as in the case of Genoa or Venice for instance, strictly limit that growth, etc. But among the causes affecting it, and chief among them, is the Road: the degree of excellence in communication.
The growth of a town is a direct function of this, the most conspicuous example, of course, in the whole of history being the immense growth of London following on the supplementing of the old roads by the railway.
In direct connection with this you have a mass of subsidiary effects, all of the highest importance to the State. The Road having caused the growth of the city, after a certain point a high differentiation arises between urban and rural life. The differentiation may become so great that you arrive at a clash of fundamental interests in which one of the two is defeated. You certainly have had that in modern England during the last two generations. The towns became so much the more important part of English life that the agricultural life was entirely sacrificed to them—and the Road was the ultimate cause. Again, you get the curious development of what may be called “reserve” towns: towns like Brighton and Blackpool, which are the playgrounds of the greater cities at a distance; the large urban centre breeds, as it were, a lesser one after its own pattern. You have got in modern times that further curious reaction due to growing excellence of communications—that is, due to the growth of the Road—the pulse of the great modern city. Crowds of human beings pour out of Victoria or Liverpool Street into London and pour back from London in the evening. The station of St. Lazare in Paris is, in Europe, the most striking visual evidence of this strange modern development, great floods of human beings cascading into the city at the opening day and ebbing back at its close.
At bottom, like so many other human arrangements, this “pulse” is a negation of its own principles—a sub-conscious effect which a fully thought-out plan could have avoided. There is no true economic basis for it, or, at any rate, not for the most of it.
There will always be advantages, of course, in the central point, and always some tendency in men to seek that central point in order to enjoy those advantages. Ten men may desire to seek daily the central point which has only habitation-room for one, and that will lead to the “pulse” of which I speak. But the necessity for seeking it daily is already very largely an artificial necessity and is becoming more and more artificial every day. The same work can be done perfectly well at a distance as is now done in centres, and in a roundabout way that truth is impressing itself through an economic effect. The rents become so high in the crowded centre that whole groups of activities which do not really need a central position tend to disperse themselves to the outer boundaries. The printing trade, in those branches which are not hurried (the printing of books, for instance), is a good example of this.
When men debate the probable future of our great cities they often omit one very likely development, which is the creation of a number of suburban centres which, if the material side of our civilization declines, will become independent towns and the probable decay of the central nucleus out of which they all grow. It is a speculation worth examining.