Carrying out the city plan

by Flavel Shurtleff

That the lack of correlation is a serious problem is proved in the experience of many cities. There is no guarantee of co-operation between the several administrative departments with planning functions. There is, of course, some co-operation, but the maximum or minimum depends on nothing except the good sense and friendly feeling of bureau heads. It is not an unusual thing for the street department to spend some time and some money on resurfacing, only to have the street opened within a month by the water or sewer department for the installation of new water pipes or drains. And what is true of streets and highways can be illustrated in other departments of planning activity.

An improvement is now too seldom considered in its relation to the whole plan. Alternative schemes for a subway are discussed and determined in the interest of those whose property is affected, and the effect of either scheme on the relief of congestion or the opening of new territory to residence gets scant consideration. Street car companies and representatives of the city and property owners fasten on the city a transit system approaching a maze in intricacy and leaving focal points without connection. The transportation problem alone needs a trained agency constantly studying tendencies of retail trade, of the drift of waterfront activities, and constantly suggesting the need for new connecting links either for highways or transit lines.

However desirable in theory may be this vesting of control over physical development of the city in a new agency, there is little or no provision for it in the procedure of existing plan commissions. They are for the most part frankly advisory boards, and in some cases have no power even of suggestion unless called upon by the mayor and council. If the plan commission is to be an intelligent correlating agency, there must be provision for constant reference to it of new construction work of all municipal departments even at the risk of swamping the clerical force of the city planning commission by a mass of detail with little bearing on the city plan. And if any department proposes a serious violation of the plan for the whole city, the plan commission should have the opportunity to arrest the proposed violation long enough to get the point at issue before the public and their representatives in city council and thus fix the responsibility for whatever action is taken after careful consideration.

There are, of course, objections to this modified veto power. It tends to undo an excellent municipal reform by which has been achieved the concentration of responsibility for a public action, and it tends also to produce delay in the execution of public work. But with such a power a judicious and tactful commission would settle most differences in conference, and without it even an ideally constituted commission might be helpless. Just what form this veto shall take and how it shall affect the relations between existing administrative departments and the new agency will depend largely on local conditions, and this question with many others of organization and procedure must wait for more than a theoretical answer until existing commissions have had a longer history. Interesting in this connection is section 3 of the recent Pennsylvania act authorizing plan commissions in third class cities, which provides that all bills and ordinances must, upon introduction in the city council, be referred to the plan commission. The proposed measures may be disapproved by the plan commission but disapproval shall not operate as a veto.[164]

Second Function: To Facilitate Future Improvements. The second function of the city planning commission is to suggest changes in the way of doing things calculated to facilitate the execution of a plan. The city planning field is peculiarly one for investigation and experimentation, and the city planning agency is as necessary in it as an experiment station in the fields of forestry and agriculture.

It took but little experimenting to prove the economic value of a flexible street which may be stretched to meet future demands. The flexibility is produced sometimes by imposing a building line set back from the street line varying distances,—even the minimum distance of 10 feet on either side providing an inexpensive increase in the street’s width of 20 feet. The same result is accomplished by the city’s acquiring a greater width than is at present necessary for the use of the street and allowing a certain portion of this width on either side to be used by the owners for garden purposes, but not for buildings of any kind.

Boston’s experiments with her narrow streets in congested retail districts have brought about the use of one-way streets and the regulations against standing vehicles. Other cities have taken a census of traffic conditions along important traffic ways and, in New York City at least, there have been attempts made to direct the lines of traffic particularly at congested centers.

It is possible to have a degree of flexibility even in an area closely built up with expensive buildings, such as downtown districts of any large city, if the planning board is given the right to modify the provisions of the building code in return for concessions from property owners, and a very necessary widening of streets is made possible which otherwise would be prohibitively expensive. In cities, for instance, which have established a height limitation for buildings, even in the central business district, owners fronting on narrow streets might grant to the city land enough to give the street adequate width if their loss in floor space was compensated, not in money but by allowing them to exceed the height limitation by the addition of other stories to their buildings. A building with a 100-foot frontage and 100-foot depth, 10 stories in height, would lose in actual floor area 10,000 feet by a grant to the city of 10 feet for sidewalk purposes along its entire frontage. By adding another story 10 to 15 feet in height, 9,000 feet of this loss would be returned. To determine the feasibility of such suggestions as this would be particularly the province of the city planning board.

Parks and playgrounds now purchased or appropriated at great expense and even then but meagerly supplied in many cities, should be reserved in advance of actual need. Where the problem has best been solved, as in the small parks and playgrounds of Chicago, the commissioners are able to locate wisely new parks and playgrounds in accordance with the density of population, as shown on maps of the city, which are kept up to date. The suggestion is that this can be done with sufficient accuracy before prices rise, and that a planning board is best qualified to make such a reservation because of its intimate knowledge of the trend of industry and other factors which determine the density of population.

The plan commission should be concerned not only with the original planning of the streets but with the changes of the street system made necessary by the location of new industries, the location of new terminal stations either for steam lines or rapid-transit lines, or the appearance of any new element which will create a focal center and attract a stream of travel. There is not a city of 100,000 in the United States which ought not today to widen streets or open new ones in order to give an adequate approach to travel centers. If this widening or opening were done at the time when it could be done most economically and when a planning board would advise it, if the problem were constantly studied by such a board, cities would be saved great outlays for reconstruction and great losses through failure to reconstruct.