Second, there are many public buildings which must be located in different parts of the city rather than at a single center. These include the fire engine houses, police stations, elementary schools, and branch libraries. They must necessarily be scattered, but this does not mean that planning is superfluous. Very often in the past these buildings have been located at inconvenient points because political influence rather than the public interest has determined the choice of a location. When a prominent politician has land to sell at a fancy price the city is usually a good customer. There is no good reason why police and fire stations should not, as a rule, be housed under the same roof. There is no good reason why the school, the playground, and the branch library should not be placed upon the same plot of ground, yet rarely are these three places of instruction and recreation within sight of one another. Haphazard location and slipshod construction have resulted in large amounts of needless expense in the case of public buildings.
3. Those which need special locations.
Third, there are certain public buildings which have to be placed in special locations. Public baths, for example, go to the water’s edge, wherever it is. The hospital should be situated outside the zone of heavy traffic and continuous noise. The city prison, the poorhouse, the garbage disposal plant, and the other waifs among public buildings—nobody wants their company. They are not welcome in any neighborhood, yet they must be placed somewhere. Timely planning would help to solve this problem by securing convenient and spacious tracts of land before the city grows so large that all the available sites are occupied, but most of our cities give no thought to such questions until the problem becomes very urgent.
The private citizen and the “City Beautiful”.
Regulating Private Property.—No matter what the city authorities may do in the way of planning streets properly, and expending great care upon public buildings, the outward attractiveness of a community depends to a large extent upon the good taste and civic pride of its individual inhabitants. Within reasonable bounds a man can erect anything he pleases upon his own land. He may build something which is a notable adornment or, on the other hand, something which is an architectural eyesore to the whole neighborhood. He may keep his grounds and dwelling in perfect order, everything spick and span. Or he may let them go into ramshackle, the house unpainted, the lawn grown up in weeds, and signs of neglect apparent everywhere. Each section of the city is as its people make it. It is absurd for men and women to clamor for fine parks, monumental public buildings, and brilliantly-lighted streets if they do not obey the precept that civic pride, like charity, ought to begin at home.
The billboard nuisance.
One of the worst offenders against civic beauty and good taste is the flaming billboard which stares from every vacant lot into the faces of the passers-by. For the most part billboards serve no very useful purpose. The advertising which they carry ought to be given to the newspapers, which reach a far wider circle of people and are actively engaged in promoting the best interests of the community. These billboards often mar what would otherwise be an attractive avenue or landscape.[[86]] The cities of Continental Europe virtually prohibit them altogether. It is not possible to do that in the United States because of constitutional restrictions which protect private property; but billboards can be restricted by law and some American cities have adopted the policy of so restricting them.[[87]] It is also possible to levy taxes upon them and thus to make billboard advertising less profitable.
The Municipal Utilities.—In addition to streets, parks, and public buildings every city maintains various other physical utilities. These include, in some cases, bridges, docks, markets, ferries, and so on. More important, however, are the so-called utilities, the water supply and the sewerage system. Both of these are intimately connected with the public health and can better be dealt with when we come to that general topic. Some cities own and operate their lighting plants, and in a few cases their street railways. But lighting and transportation are still, for the most part, in private hands and they present problems of such importance that they need a chapter to themselves (see pp. [474-481]).
Beginning of the police system.
Police Protection.—The practice of maintaining in cities a body of professional, uniformed policemen who give their full time to the work of preserving law and order is less than a hundred years old. Until well into the nineteenth century the work of protecting life and property was performed by untrained constables and watchmen (in England and America), or by squads of soldiers (in most of the larger cities of Continental Europe).[[88]] London, in 1829, was the first city to install a regular police force, and this action met with great popular opposition. It was regarded as a step in the direction of tyranny.[[89]] But regular policemen proved to be so much better, as guardians of law and order, than the untrained constable in citizen’s clothes, that other cities followed the example of London and eventually the system was established in the United States, the first city to adopt the new plan being New York. Although New York was at that time a city of over 300,000 population the work of policing was largely performed by elective constables and by citizen watchmen until 1844.