The wicked, the naughty, the sick, the demented, the sorrowful, the blind, the halt, the maimed, the old, the handicapped, the children are facts—facts to be faced, facts which demand thought, facts which should be reckoned with in town planning—for all, even the first-named, can be helped by being surrounded with “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, and whatsoever things are of good report”.
Every one who has been to Canada must have been struck with the evidence of faith in educational appreciation which the Canadians give in the preparation of their vast teaching centres.
“What impressed me greatly,” said Mr. Henry Vivian in his speech at the dinner given in his honour on his return from the Dominion, “was the preparation that the present people have made for the education of the future people,” and he described the planning of one University, whose buildings, sports-grounds, roads, hostels, and gardens were to cover 1300 acres. Compare that with the statement of the Secretary of a Borough Council Education Authority, who told me the other day, with congratulatory pleasure, that long negotiations had at last obtained one acre and a quarter for the building of a secondary school and a hoped-for three acres some distance off for the boys’ playground.
The town planning of the future will make, it is to be hoped, generous provision for educational requirements, and not only for the inhabitants of the immediate locality. As means of transit become both cheaper and easier, it will be recognized as a gain for young people to go out of town to study, into purer air, away from nerve-wearing noise, amid flowers and trees, and with an outlook on a wider sky, itself an elevating educational influence both by day and night.
The need of what may be called artificial town addition can only concern the elder nations, who have, scattered over their lands, splendid buildings in the centre of towns that have ceased to grow. As an example, I would quote Ely. What a glorious Cathedral! kept in dignified elderly repair, its Deans, Canons, Minors, lay-clerks, and choir, all doing their respective daily duties in leading worship; but, alas! there the population is so small (7713 souls) that the response by worshippers is necessarily inadequate—the output bears no proportion to the return. Beauty, sweetness, and light are wasted there and West Ham exists, with its 267,000 inhabitants, its vast workshops and factories, its miles of mean streets of drab-coloured “brick boxes with slate lids”—and no Cathedral, no group of kind, leisured clergy to leaven the heavy dough of mundane, cheerless toil.
If town planning could be treated nationally, it might be arranged that Government factories could be established in Ely. Army clothiers, stationery manufactories, gunpowder depôts would bring the workers in their train. A suitable expenditure of the Public Works Loans money would cause the cottages to appear; schools would then arise, shops and lesser businesses, which population always brings into existence, would be started; and the Cathedral would become a House of Prayer, not only to the few religious ones who now rejoice in the services, but for the many whose thoughts would be uplifted by the presence in their midst of the stately witness of the Law of Love, and whose lives would be benefited by the helpful thought and wise consideration of those whose profession it is to serve the people.
Pending great changes, something might perhaps be done if individual owners and builders would consider the appearance, not only of the house they are building, but of the street or road of which it forms a part. A few months ago, in the bright sunshine, I stood on a hill-top, facing a delightful wide view, on a newly developed estate, and, pencil in hand, wrote the colours and materials of four houses standing side by side. This is the list:—
No. 1 House.—Roof, grey slates; walls, white plaster with red brick; yellow-painted woodwork; red chimneys.
No. 2 House.—Roof, purpley-red tiles; walls, buff rough cast; brown-painted woodwork; yellow chimneys.
No. 3 House.—Roof, orangey-red tiles; walls, grey-coloured rough cast; white-painted woodwork; red chimneys.