Carrying out the city plan

by Flavel Shurtleff

So far there is nothing new in the legislation, but the next provisions are unique. The report was to be presented to the mayor and council not later than December 30, 1911, and

They shall cause the recommendations of the commissions to be submitted to the people at the next general or special election. If a majority of the voters shall favor the adoption of said plan so reported it shall be adopted and shall be the plan to be followed by the city executive departments in the growth, evolution, and development of the city of Seattle until modified or amended at some subsequent election.

After a most thoroughgoing study by an expert, the commission presented an excellent plan and went out of existence September 30, 1911. There was no provision in the legislation for educating the people sufficiently to enable them to cast an intelligent vote. The Seattle experiment is interesting in being the first attempt to make the whole electorate directly responsible for the direction of the city’s growth. It is in accordance with the democratic ideas of legislation which have come out of the west. The people were not ready for so big a program and defeated the project at the polls in the spring of 1912.

No one of these commissions has had a history long enough to be judged by its accomplishments. The Hartford commission, which is the oldest, has fulfilled one of its duties by the publication of a preliminary report embodying the recommendations of the advisory architects for a plan of the city. Its chief activity outside of this has been along lines similar to these employed by the Baltimore topographical survey commission. Detroit’s commission, after working without adequate appropriation for two years, has started the preparation of a plan. The Newark commission under expert advice has prepared two reports; one preliminary in character reviewing the general problem and making some recommendations in regard to the improvement of street lines and grades and street car operations; the other, a special study of a most congested point in Newark at the junction of Broad and Market streets. Other commissions have outlined plans of activity.

2. THE FUNCTIONS OF A CITY PLANNING COMMISSION

The effectiveness of any city planning commission is bound to be dependent on the attitude of other existing administrative agencies which have as a part of their function the planning and execution of public improvements. This attitude does not spring merely from self-interest of the older agencies. If, for instance, the street commission or the bureau of survey is doing its work of planning a street system well and seeing that parts of it get constructed at the proper time, there would seem to be little in this line for a planning commission. The same may be said of the park commission, the school board, and others. The city, in other words, may have administrative agencies which are covering practically the entire field of municipal effort in planning the streets, the parks, the public buildings, and other works.

The legislation under which city plan commissions are established recognizes the difficulty in the creation of a new administrative body whose powers may overlap those of existing agencies. This is evidenced particularly in the provision covering membership and scope of powers. Co-operation with existing administrative agencies and with law making bodies is aimed at in Hartford, in St. Louis, and in Salem, Massachusetts, by having both the administrative and legislative side of the government represented on the commission. In each of these cities the mayor is ex-officio chairman of the city plan commission. In Hartford seven of the nine city plan commissioners are members of the city administration. Besides the mayor, the official members are the city engineer, president of the street commissioners, president of the park commissioners, the superintendent of parks, and a member from both branches of the city council. In St. Louis seven of the fifteen members are from official life, the mayor, the president of the board of public improvement, the street commissioner, the park commissioner, the building commissioner, the president of the city council, and the speaker of the house of delegates. In Salem, Massachusetts, the city government is represented in the commission by the mayor, the president of the board of aldermen, and the president of the common council. Detroit’s commissioner of public works, commissioner of parks and boulevards, and city engineer are ex-officio members of the plan commission, but without power to vote.

Further to avoid conflict with existing agencies, commissions are given very limited powers which make them hardly more than advisory bodies. That of Baltimore, for instance, has merely the duty of investigating all plans proposed for the extension of highways and the establishment of a civic center and other public improvements in connection therewith, and reporting the results of its investigations to the city council. Several commissions are charged with the constructive duty of preparing a systematic plan, and in connection therewith are given more or less control over private platting in order to compel conformity with the plan. The Detroit commission has an additional power similar to that given to a municipal art commission. Section 6 provides:

No work of art shall be removed, relegated or altered in any way, nor shall any property be acquired for park or boulevard purposes, nor playground, nor shall any property be condemned for the widening or extension of any park, boulevard or public playground unless the project has been submitted to and approved by the city plan commission; nor shall any gift to the city of a monumental character be accepted until the sketch, plan and location of the same has been approved by the city commission.

First Function: To Secure Correlation of Efforts. But assuming existing agencies which plan adequately for each class of the physical elements of a city and which carry out satisfactorily these several plans, there is still needed a permanent body, non-partisan in character, whose primary function shall be to harmonize the plans of existing agencies and to bring forward for execution those plans which are most demanded. This new agency should be the constant guardian of the city plan to which every question of planning policy should be referred, just as questions of financial policy are now referred to a finance commission in several cities of the United States.