IS mm 8061 12 W IVd 'A'N 'asilDBJ^g SJ33{B^ •soja PJOT^BO j 1P15 CITY VALUES AN ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL STATUS AND POSSIBILITIES OF AMERICAN CITY LIFE BY C. LINN SEILER. / - \ AN ABSTRACT OF A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE RE- QUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY f its ex- istence dependent on the complexion of public opinion at any given time. Heredity, while not falling by the wayside, is receiving less attention — as a hypothesis of cause and effect — in proportion to environment. In environment we see conditions that we ourselves make to a large extent. It is a remediable and changeable status, so to speak, of social and economic life, the results of which we can measure with greater accuracy every year. To eliminate a mal- adjustment, therefore, means a new viewpoint toward environ- ment, a more forceful public opinion as to its importance, and a new valuation of economic and social processes carefully tabulated. A glance at the most obvious of the various city maladjustments will reveal certain specific and interesting aspects. First, a relation between them all in regard to the fundamental causes; second, social costs resulting from any one can be traced in any other. Each very definitely results in the waste of social energy, not only in the case of the individual, but as well of the family and the community at large. In order to visualize social costs, however, it is necessary to specify certain maladjustments that are emphatic. They are as follows : 1. Congestion. 2. Disease. 3. Vice. 4. Break-up in home life. 5. Exclusion in recreation. 6. High rents. 20 CITY MALADJUSTMENTS It is to be emphasized, in the analysis of the above, that three tests shall always be applied. First: that maladjustments are the result of very definite economic and social causes; second: that social costs are inevitable; and third: that maladjustments are remediable by community co-operation. No economic analy- sis is effective with the old moral or political viewpoint. Human rights and values must at all times be stressed. Our maladjust- ments will never be eradicated until society turns from its pres- ent faith in machinery to the practical efficiency of keen, inde- fatigable, and universal social co-operation. Taking up briefly the maladjustments referred to, let us apply the tests in order to prove their validity. First, as to causes being social and economic, rather than hereditary and natural. The causes of congestion and disease are now known intimately. He who runs may read, in volumes upon volumes of investigations and reports, the truthfulness of which is not discredited. In all cases it is seen that both maladjustments are direct results of certain conditions that we allow or create — conditions that exist because of the way we live or do business. Of late years the vice question has received greater attention from the hands of experts, and through the information gleaned by several conscientious com- missions, we know the reasons for this particular phase of our social life. 1 Again, the first test is valid: the causes are either industrial or social. As to the break-up in home life, the average citizen is not on such sure ground. But a review of the usual conditions in our cities with regard to living accommodations and those agencies that counteract home influences gives a real clue to the fundamental causes. Night work, saloons, club life, noise, dirt, and continual sickness and poverty — all play their part. Exclusion in recreation can be traced directly to differences in social sets, lack of neighborliness, and lack of community interest in normal city functioning. High rents are the result of improper regulation of land holding and transfer, as well as of inadequate communication and distribution of food-products and goods. In all these maladjustments there can be seen the outcome of careless municipal guardianship and community indifference to social and economic waste. Too much time spent on reforming 1 See Reports of Chicago and Minneapolis Vice Commissions. 21 CITY VALUES the political machine and too little spent on renovating the physical and economic bases of city environment is responsible, at least for their continued existence. The costs are also patent if our eyes are but open in the right directions. Exploitation is a term covering a multitude of social sins, among which we find a high mortality rate, decreased vi- tality, and a decided lowering of moral tone. Class distinctions are intensified, and unequal economic opportunity accentuated. The very rich and the very poor live side by side in the same physi- cal environment, though in reality separated by a great social gulf. Stunted minds and bodies result from poor living conditions and disease. Our human derelicts are products of both disease and vice. While our juvenile delinquency and wasteful methods of relief hark back to the break-up in home life. The costs in our maladjustments are more than mere industrial costs; more than the lowering of manual and mental efficiency for work. They represent real obstacles to racial progress and urban development. City maladjustments of to-day are the conditions that represent the real sources of danger to American democracy. We have for many years been striving to eliminate "political diseases." Some think we have utterly failed to effect any kind of a cure. Others aver that we are making rapid progress. Be that as it may, we have dismally failed to see the cancerous growth of a disease-breeding and inexcusable social environment that re- sults in a ridiculous waste of human life and energy. The Ameri- can business man refuses to allow industrial waste in his own plant, and eradicates the tendency toward it by adopting scientific methods of management and by utilizing the by-products of the industry. But society, especially in our cities, allows waste in unguarded machinery, maimed and diseased workers, and a poor quality of product. City maladjustments represent the adultera- tion of the human product that society is forced to accept. With maladjustments in existence, there can be no such thing as equal opportunity for all. "The City Beautiful" is a paradox, with congestion and disease still at hand. "The City Efficient" is only a dream, with high rents and vice. In short, city maladjust- ments are the diseases that must be diagnosed by the economist, in the same way that tuberculosis is diagnosed by the physician. 22 CITY MALADJUSTMENTS And the removal of causes making for social costs must follow the same line as in the elimination of yellow fever — by the destruction of the material that allows for breeding. "The City Efficient" has no maladjustments, economic and political. With a keen and wholesome [community concern that guarantees efficient action when the facts are known, political maladjustments disappear into thin air: those of an economic and social nature gradually lose their force, and in a short time cease to exist as unwholesome features of city life. 23 V. CITY BUILDING THE history of urban civilization has seen several epochs in which city values were computed in different terms. City environment has always been the direct result of the reactions springing from a particular epoch. The particular significance of the present one may be termed " the awakening of the city consciousness to the social and economic conditions that make city life one of social efficiency." Though we are still engaged in shortening the ballot and trying to tinker with our municipal machinery so that it will work more smoothly, yet a keener emphasis is beginning to be manifested in our attitude to- ward social environment, and a larger interest is being taken in the citizen as a "city dweller." We need, therefore, a brand new out- look upon city life for the creation of a comprehensive program for the permanent solution of city problems. In other words, we must "re-valuate" our city existence; we must decide what is necessary to our pleasure and welfare; and we must be ready to discard without qualms any and all conditions that produce pain and misery. And not only is it essential thoroughly to prick the public consciousness, but to goad it along normal, racial, and dynamic lines. A dynamic city heredity is a necessary asset. Progress must be built on the idea of future social insurance as well as temporary relief. Many of our constitutional traditions will have to undergo modification, if not absolute dissolution. A score of our habitual points of view and conventions will neces- sarily give way before a more social attitude. "City building" means more than "the city beautiful" or "the clean city." It is a concept that allows for the widest latitude in opinions and methods. In the past methods have largely been tested from the standpoint of monetary costs. And monetary costs are naturally the most important when the political attitude toward the city is paramount. Discard the political element, and monetary costs become less emphatic. Social and economic 24 CITY BUILDING costs are matters of more vital interest, and the question of method gives way, as a slogan, to that of efficient and quick results. "City building" may thus be compared to a business-like com- putation of city possibilities for the most efficient type of city dweller, and for the ultimate standardization of a dynamic racial type. Since our comprehensive program for city building is of interest to all of the different groups within urban limits, it would be well to divide the plan into several parts for purposes of social con- venience in discussion. The following list, though not given in order of importance, will suffice to show the various aspects of city life that demand our immediate attention, i . City dwelling. 2. City health. 3. City communication. 4. City recreation. 5. City industries. 6. City architecture. To those who find this nomenclature novel, a word of explanation may be given here. City communication is definitely concerned with the physical basis of city life: its avenues of transfer and means of distribution — or, in other words, its streets, waterways, etc. City dwelling and city industries are concerned with "the city superstructure": the economic and social basis of shelter, home life, and labor. City health and city recreation have to do with the physical and mental uplift of racial standards: they pro- duce a distinct city morality. City architecture is related to all the others, directly and vitally. The city architect is more than a designer of houses and factories. His work covers landscape gar- dening, improvement of waste places, the renovation of the worn- out, and the conserving of all sorts and kinds of city material. He is as much interested in streets and river banks as in gardens and libraries. And so we find our various parts are not disjointed fragments, but rather contiguous and overlapping pieces of a finely conceived mosaic of social and economic progress. What, then, shall be our policy for the new city — "the city efficient"? Primarily, we want and must have adequate and comfortable living accommodations for every family and every 25 CITY VALUES human being within the limits of the city. And to this end we should have, first: A very definite and permanent supervision and regulation of municipal housing conditions. There must be a community guarantee of a single and wholesome standard of home life, along the normal lines of health, security, quiet, and con- venience. Secondly: There must be a systematized segregation from industrial life and its attacks upon the home. Thirdly: Permanence, durability, and adaptation in the city dwelling must be essential factors in its construction. Fourth: The city dwelling must guarantee the privacy, the sanctity, and the permanence of family life. It must be standardized to meet family conditions — not individual conditions. Thus city dwelling is not only a matter of concern to the city architect, but also to the city administrator and city business man. Socially guaranteed dwelling arrange- ments mean greater convenience, better health, a higher type of home life, and equal opportunity for all groups along the lines of racial progress. City building is impossible until our city super- structure is well planned, adequately constructed with a view to permanent social investment, and socially regulated in the interest of all. To build a healthy city should be considered as practical an aim of any municipal administration as to build "a city beautiful." No city that is full of diseased bodies and minds, of men and wo- men ugly through infection, suffering, or overwork, is really "a city beautiful/' Nor is a city with a high mortality rate resulting from preventable, contagious, and infectious diseases, and from accidents, etc., good material for "a city efficient/' The present type of city plan is merely "whitewashing" the old city when it does not call for the elimination of preventable disease. Our program must be revitalized by an increased value placed on human life in the mass. There must be an equal valuation of the life of the child in the slums and the child in the avenue mansion. We must recognize that contagion is as dangerous to the rich man's family as to the family of the low-income wage worker. The only difference is that the former has the benefit of high- priced care and diagnosis, and thus escapes the mortality column. City health should not be a matter of groupal opportunity. It is a matter of universal concern. And so our program for the build- 26 CITY BUILDING ing of a city along the lines of community health would be some- thing as follows: First : Health must be a recognized and capitalized asset in the life of every human being, the absence of which lowers the in- dustrial and social efficiency of the community. The death of industrial workers, either through preventable diseases or acci- dents, must be considered a public disaster for which the public is directly responsible. There is as much reason, sentimentally speaking, for lowering the flag at half-mast because a broken filter means the death of a thousand people in one's city in one week, as when an ocean liner goes down with an equal number of souls. Second : City health should be guaranteed in order to insure the old-age worker. We spend millions every year on pensions to old soldiers, on the assumption that the pensioner is incapable of doing the work of the average able-bodied industrial citizen. Transfer the same money to the creating and maintaining of con- ditions that prevent premature old age, and a large part of our problem is solved. With the old-age worker as a part of the social mosaic, we make a definite advance in industrial processes, we have gotten a new ideal in work as well as a new quality of ambition. We not only lengthen the life of the worker, and, therefore, in- crease the aggregate of industrial energy, but we also add to the social fund of efficiency and happiness, and gain in racial facilities, In short, we gain in labor efficiency and lose in relief waste. Third : City health should be looked upon as a greater guarantee to the health of the luxurious (or high-income) class than our present haphazard system. Disease is the most intangible, in- sidious aspect of city life we have to deal with. It is only by forcing each and every one in the community to realize that one single case of scarlet fever commonly means a hundred cases before it can be stamped out, and that the rich and poor alike are sus- ceptible to such a disease, that we can prepare the ground for a normal point of view. To get at this phase of the question most expeditiously it is necessary to insist on an immediate and relentless campaign against every form of disease-breeding material within city limits. And, lastly, our program for city health must be related to the problem of race eugenics. It is impossible to create a perfect 27 CITY VALUES moral and physical type of human being from a race that is disease- racked. We cannot change human nature, but we can do away with the conditions that make for imbeciles, premature indigents, and criminals. We try to enforce laws against expectorating on the pavements because we fear the danger of tuberculosis. Yet we allow that which breeds hundreds of tubercular individuals in a day in all our American cities. In the same way we create and allow conditions that make for vice, and then shudder at the enormous prevalence of venereal disease. And yet enough has been shown, in the discussion of vice, to prove the existence of a weak and useless coming generation that springs from a present generation with such a high percentage of those venereally in- fected. City building, therefore, must guarantee city health. Dirty streets, poor dwellings, vicious resorts, and over-worked citizens must go. With these miserable appendages Progress limps on her way, and Democracy becomes merely a political shiboleth. Civilization demands steady progress in order to be noteworthy, and progress is always slow when vitality is low. City health means perfect vitality, community progress, and the existence of a virile democratic standard of life. City Communication City communication includes more than mechanical transporta- tion. Avenues of communication within the city should comprise all streets, all forms of transportation, and all waterways that have to do with the possible and convenient circulation of the inhabi- tants throughout its separate districts. To plan a transportation system without reference to the progressive plotting of new dis- tricts is to lose sight of the new concept of city communication in the light of true city building. Therefore, in crystallizing a pro- gram that shall be specifically devoted to convenient human and commodity circulation within urban limits, a very much larger scope and a more dynamic reach must be premised than is at present done. Adequate city communication, for instance, is not possible when individual property rights can act as an effective bar to a real solution, nor can dynamic progress in any direction be made on the old political basis, where the sacredness of property 28 CITY BUILDING rights and the violation of human rights are sanctified to the extent that they are at present. Our generalizations for a new program must contain the germs of the new economic and social viewpoint. They must be built on a social concept of city values — not on commercial, legal, or political ones. First: In connoting a wider sphere of usefulness and activity for city communication, city administrators and experts must lay out a program along lines of social and moral evolution. Every possible avenue of human circulation and material distribution is to be used dynamically and thoroughly, and in the light of socially scientific methods. Second: City communication should be the most adaptable feature of city life. By this is meant adaptation to the constant changes in the growth of population and the distribution of in- habitants in the various localities corresponding to the expansion of the city area. One of the most notable aspects of urban transportation in the United States is its reluctance to adapt itself easily and quickly to the social demands of the community. Profits have always been considered first. Possible improvements come only when the stockholder is satisfied. Both extension and improvement of service, to meet the constantly growing social demands of the community for efficient communication, is not only possible, but socially imperative. No city dweller should be forced to depend upon the motor car, the taxicab, or other private and incidental means of conveyance. There should be the same increase in the standards of efficiency in transportation that there is in business. Dynamic progress through the agency of public utilities is not possible when financial profits and social interests are mixed. The stockholder and the citizen have never yet been able to agree. It, therefore, would seem, assuming that the trans- portation system has the largest element of public interest of any of our municipal monopolies, that urban society must demand a variety of city communication that is controlled in the interest of the community — and not for profits. Third: City communication, as a program, is only haphazard and, therefore, ineffective, unless considered in relation to the entire program for city building. Transportation in the typical American city has been largely instrumental in determining not 29 CITY VALUES only the location of our dwellings, but also their size and con- struction. There is also a distinct connection between efficiently planned transportation and clean streets, congestion of traffic, disease, and crime. The price of land, as well as rents, — and in- ventions looking to changes in living conditions, — are also modified by certain phases of the transportation problem. These factors must be considered in any practical discussion. Communication is a complex problem where costs and effects are of a pluralistic rather than of a monistic nature. Improvement and extension of service must be standardized along -human lines. The matter of revenue is incidental. In other words, convenient, safe, and adequate communication is to be as much assumed as pure milk, good water, or fresh air. City Recreation A deficit in recreation is to the community what the lack of proper food is to the individual. The well-to-do city dweller has no end of opportunities for normal recreation — all of which is gotten by the waving of the dollar bill. In contrast, the low- income family is socially incapable of providing itself with means of recreation; or, what it does get is, in most cases, adulterated and in small quantities. To plan a new city, to build a beautiful, efficient community, we must provide the necessary quantity of social foods in the proper dietary proportions for perfect social assimilation. Too much education and too little recreation are as socially bad as too large a quantity of meat in proportion to other food-stuffs. City building lacks one of its most essential bases when it fails to take into account the physical, mental, and moral importance of "re-creation" — for that is what recreation means. The so-called evil — or anti-social — recreations, such as hard drink- ing, disorderly street conduct, vice, gambling, etc., are all definite examples of energies deflected into wrong anti-social directions, because proper channels for the outlet of these same energies were not provided by us as a community. It is comparatively easy to supply recreation for the child, since the child is, to a greater extent, convenient clay for social molding, and with greater potentiality in the matter of healthy reaction. Moreover, child recreation is not supposed to be based on the furnishing of a social 30 CITY BUILDING contrast to work. The adult needs recreation in proportion to the fatigue of the individual, due to long hours, unhealthy dwelling environment, and the amount of education received. Not only the reactions of health, but also the psychological reactions, must be taken into account. Social solidarity, the vitalizing of a healthy public opinion, the breaking-down of class distinctions and the various racial feuds so common in this country are all very definite and inevitable results to be gained through universal adult recreation. To be planned for in its highest and best form, it must regard the reactions of the adult as of equal importance to that of the child. It is a poor civilization that saves the child at the expense of the parent; that wrecks the adult community to acquire a more normal juvenile population. Racial progress is premised on the health of the present generation, not the possible improvement of the future. And so our program for practical recreational facilities may be summarized thus: First: The problem of recreation must be studied primarily from the physiological standpoint of the necessity of the outlet of human energy, in order to maintain an effective social metabo- lism. Opportunity for play is not to be based on an esthetic value of mere psychological momentary enjoyment. Recuperation of energy — physical, mental, and moral — must take place along recreative and conservative lines. Working energy must be built up through the expenditure of certain different kinds of human energy, or the conserving of other kinds. The blood must be sent away from the brain; new muscles are to be used; deadened nerves revitalized. Second: No distinctions must be made on account of income. It must be as certain, as it is possible, that recreation shall be en- joyed by every city dweller, irrespective of his salary (or wage), and his position in industry. This does not mean that we are to provide motor cars for all, nor that compulsory attendance at concerts and the theater be premised. It is not necessary to make recreation compulsory : the mere existence of equal and unlimited opportunities for it will result in an universal acceptance of its advantages. The point to be emphasized is — the poor man shall have as much right to use his leisure in ways that are healthy, 3* CITY VALUES pleasurable, and educative as the rich man; and to this end we must have lower-priced drama, opera, and other forms of artistic amusement. Parks, playgrounds, gymnasia, and other facilities for manual reactions must be at the command of all — for the same reason that pure water is insisted upon. We must make it as easy for the Italian family in the tenement colony to hear Caruso sing, to play tennis or golf, to study and enjoy sculpture and painting, etc., as for the millionaire on Fifth Avenue. Third: It is impossible to expect that recreation will be a means of mass enjoyment and participation unless its forms are adapted to the social and economic needs of the particular community. It is only in the realization of the fact that enjoyment must be universally appreciated that certain forms can be made practically and immediately effective. Recreation is to be looked upon, not only as a means for the improving of the health of the individual, and for providing outlays of energy along lines of pure and social enjoyment, but also as a means for very definitely creating and making permanent the social solidarity of the community. The exclusive clubs and limited playgrounds are alike anti-social. Even our public school of to-day feels the devil's touch of discrim- ination on account of some racial or income prejudice. Recrea- tion, to be permanently effective, must be democratic. Par- ticipation in it should be convenient, optional, and socially desired. And, lastly, the methods — the particular forms which the opportunities may take — should never be rigid. We have seen what rigidity in policy and methods mean in political and business life. To-day the school system in this country is under strong indictment as a failure. The reason for public sentiment is the assumption that rigidity in methods is unwise, undemocratic, and impractical — because it does not give the required results. Recreation should be adapted, not only to the changing mode of life through various generations, but also to the difference in social and economic conditions for any given period or year. No citizen ought to be forced to employ his leisure in any way set by either a few, or even the minority, in the community. The right way is to provide facilities, mechanical or otherwise, for the enjoyment of new forms of recreation whenever the latter manifest themselves. 32 CITY BUILDING City recreation must, therefore, base its program on a greater importance of leisure. Leisure should be as definite a human asset as health. In fact, health and leisure are two parts of the same subject — from the standpoint of racial evolution. Civilization is tested, from one standpoint, according to the length of period allowed the child for play and physical growth before we set him to work. A civilization that eliminates leisure from any portion of its adult opportunities is on a par with that putting its children to work before the period of childhood has been passed. Well- employed leisure is as industrially and socially important as well- employed labor. To-day we are beginning to realize the benefits of organized labor. Organised leisure is nothing more or less than socialized recreation. Individual or class recreation is as much anti-social as gambling or vice. Recreation, to be human, to be effective, to be a real part of the building of our new city, must be organized and socialized along dynamic lines of community and racial evolution. City Industries An equally definite and human stand must be taken in regard to our attitude toward city industries. There is hardly a business within the municipality to-day that does not vitally affect the lives and happiness of the citizens within the community. We have argued that the transportation service shall be socially controlled. In the same way, water, gas, electric light, milk, and food distribu- tion, ice manufacture, and slaughtering are activities that are social in their nature. The very existence of necessary inspection in order to guarantee health or promote greater convenience is in itself an admission of the social nature of the enterprise. The point is : how far shall we go in the listing of industries that shall be socially controlled, and what ought to be the policy with regard to the co-ordinating of private and public interests? First: Going on the assumption that all city industries influence city building along social and economic lines, our program for our new city must not only recognize the existence of these industries as factors in community life, but must refuse to allow private and social interests to conflict at any point. As soon as these two inter- ests conflict, the new city builder has obtained prima facie evidence 33 CITY VALUES of the existence of a social defect, for which the remedy is socializa- tion of the particular enterprise. As long as there is no public protest, even from a minority, against the status or management of any enterprise within city limits, we may safely conclude that it falls into the category of private concerns that are not ready for community control. If the city is concerned in the inspection of a particular industry, it is equally concerned with the location of plants, the management of the business, and the distribution of its products. Second: It is necessary to consider the community value, not only of the products of an industry, but also of its management, prior to the matter of financial dividends. Location of factories, of business houses, and in fact of all industrial plants, should be as definitely a part of our dynamic city plan as in the case of dwell- ings. There is no logical reason why the business man should be given prior right to the opportunities of city environment over the average city dweller. If our cities are to be considered as merely industrial centers in the narrow sense, we had better remold our whole civilization. City life is primarily a life of human beings, not the life of machinery and stock dividends. The city dweller should have, collectively, the first and last word in the re-creation of his own environment — not the stockholder and corporation president. Third: City industries should be placed under the burden of proof of their own social efficiency. Poor business management, resulting in inferior product and inadequate distribution, should be socially penalize^ by forfeiture of existence or municipaliza- tion. There should be no such thing as the exploitation of the city dweller by any city industry, either in the matters of quality of product, convenience of purchase and carriage, or price. Fourth: The accepted fact that a commodity has become a social necessity should automatically result in immediate mu- nicipalization. A social necessity is not naturally, and never should be, a source of private exploitation. It ought to be an unheard-of thing to declare a dividend on the stock of an enter- prise that has become so large and important a part of the life of that particular community that its absence would be a serious obstacle to the maintaining of the normal standard of living. We 34 CITY BUILDING might as well recognize our present lack of humanitarianism in our concept of the regulation of city industries. Our political view- point, resulting in the sanctity of private property rights, results in the haphazard location of industries and acts as a menace to a normal city environment. To build our city properly, the business man must exist for the community, not the community for the busi- ness man. City Architecture The control of the physical environment of the city in advance of actual building is a policy that the American cities, almost without exception, never had. 1 As a result, city growth has been inharmonious and uncomfortable. Our communities have been exploited for the advantage of the onrushing herd of business interests who demanded every inch of room that was possible for quick dividends, at the expense of beauty, health, and conveni- ence. In Germany the city is a very permanent institution. In the United States we are apparently so afraid that it will disappear before our very eyes at any moment that there is hardly any use in taking pains over its beautification or growth. The German ideal is to have his city an artistic creation from every standpoint — industrially, from the standpoint of form and color, as a place to live in, and in the matter of normal growth. The American, at his best, is just as artistic as any other race; the chief obstacle to his being his best at all times is his reluctance to submerge his private and business self in his artistic and social self, even when his own city is concerned. First: A city should be planned for centuries — not for years. The measure of social value in city architecture should always be the social utility of the particular thing desired. Social utility is a constant test, a measure of social value that fits any epoch and any environment. There is every reason why we should plan for the distant future, looking at the city as a permanent place of abode, as a place subject to unlimited change and growth, as a physical entity that will live through many evolutions in political structure and moral standards. The best reason that can be 1 Washington, D. C, is the only exception among the large cities. It was laid out very definitely more than a hundred years ago to accommodate a million people. 35 CITY VALUES found for building merely on the needs of the present decade is that it involves only a small expenditure of money. This, to the average business mind, is a decided virtue. But, on the con- trary, the permanent planning for the unlimited future not only does not require any more initial outlay, but it also means the saving of an immense amount of money which is now wasted in temporary structure or repairs. The argument becomes more impressive if the analogy of the householder, planning a residence for a growing family, is used. Second : City architecture must concern itself, not only with the physical environment of the city, but also the artificial conditions of life. The residence district must be protected from industrial friction. The home should be guaranteed privacy, quiet, and permanence. It is perfectly possible to so locate and distribute our industries within city limits that congestion of plants can be eliminated. It is also possible for business to work under " one- story " conditions, thus insuring more light, better air, and safer and more comfortable labor conditions. The answer usually made to this suggestion, " It can't be done," is merely the old, old one of, " It is being done, and done successfully. " Third: The social regulation of city communication is part of the work of the new city architect. It is useless to provide good homes and well-located plants, without at the same time affording efficient communication. Every avenue of transit and transfer should be quickly and permanently utilized. Communication should act as the great influencing factor in the location of population and the distribution of products. It should be the servant of the community, not the business of a few people. Fourth: Our new type of city architecture will emphasize the importance of leisure as an asset. The American city, except in a few cases, does not allow for normal street life. There is little inducement to making use of our parks, since the avenues of ap- proach are dirty, narrow, or ugly, or because they are so situated that our inadequate transit facilities make them inaccessible except to a very limited minority. As a natural result, we live in our homes, where our leisure takes exclusive and class lines. Our amusements and pleasures become questions of limited group interests. American home life makes it possible to "shut out 36 CITY BUILDING the rabble/' to be aristocratic in our leisure, to make easy the establishment of a "Blue Book" and a "Four Hundred." Until we take the stand that our city streets and parks shall create defin- ite and equal opportunities for leisure, our plan for a new city of comfort, pleasure, and happiness is by so much ineffective. Poor city architecture and temporary planning give us only the type of citizen that we have at present: a citizen that feels keenly the many needless frictions of city life, and who reacts under them in ways that are detrimental to the community as well as to himself. Our social defects are to a large extent of an institutional nature, and one of the greatest in American life of to-day is the lack of proper relation between the human community and its physical environment. Efficient city architecture will thus have to be based on the readjustment of relationships, and the elimination of social frictions that come from architectural defects. 37 VI. THE NEW CITY IDEAL AND VIEWPOINT IT IS now possible, perhaps, to visualize clearly the new view- point toward urban activity and city environment. To transfer the emphasis from one place to another shifts the center of gravity, so to speak, and modifies direction and velocity. The present American city of to-day is unequally ballasted. The center of gravity is misplaced, and progress is uneven and slow. The crew are engaged in endless discussion and strife over the size of the anchor or the particular number of strands in the new main-sheet; and the passengers run about helplessly in the confusion, endeavoring to help the crew, getting in each other's way, and often being knocked down in the factional scuffles. Orders come from everywhere, and every one disclaims responsi- bility for obedience. Meanwhile the boat plows sluggishly through the calm sea, rocking from side to side and leaving a tremendous wake behind that looks like the proverbial "cow-path." No one stops to think of scientifically looking for the difficulty, of going below the water-line to find the trouble. The rigging is supposed to be the key to good or bad results: if only the proper arrange- ment of ropes can be effected, the ship will leap ahead on a straight and even keel. The American citizen is definitely a product of his own environ- ment as well as his own racial heredity. He is descended from pioneer ancestors, some of Puritan or Friendly stock, some of Dutch or Huguenot — but all of whom had to work and fight for the comforts and means of life. Their business was to make existence possible for themselves and their families. Their standard of living was a God-fearing, Indian-killing, brute stand- ard. But three centuries of material progress, of discovery, of invention and improvement, have changed the forces that used to act as pressures. Labor-saving machinery and greater efficiency, on the one hand, and the security of national isolation, on the other, have ameliorated the intensity of the bread-winning struggle. 38 THE NEW CITY IDEAL AND VIEWPOINT We no longer have to fight in order to live. But traditions and habits are strong. Actions still take place automatically — the result of a mold of mind that is generations old. We no longer have to work the way we did — but we think we have. We look at our material work through a microscope, and it looms up, tre- mendous and all-important. It is the old Genie of the Bottle — all-pervading and tyrannical. In contrast, we gaze at our few pleasures through the telescope. The effect is to throw the objects looked at out of all proportion to their normal relations with the surroundings. We try to get a bird's-eye view of recreative life, for we are reluctant to spare too much time from our work. The American prides himself on long office hours, no idle class or aristocracy, and his ability to see a foreign country in a week. On the other hand, we exhibit an extreme reluctance to the acceptance of anything that savors of paternalism or bureaucracy. We orate and write about "strong republican government/' and then make it as difficult as possible for any kind of governmental machinery to work to the limit of its social efficiency by refusing to supply the necessary social co-operation. A philosopher once remarked : " The anarchist is the man who does not want govern- ment for any one; the socialist is the man who wants government for every one; the individualist is the man who wants government for every one — but himself." The American business man is still intensely individualistic. Our laws on private property illustrate this trait to a nicety. Business is an individual matter, not to be touched by "sovereign" government, though business is loud in its appeals for help from this same government when it is " up against" any problem that it cannot solve itself. Recognition of the labor union and the recall of judges are equally damned, because the business man sees in these two "theories" the subversion of his time-honored right to special privilege — or, in other words, the right to run his own concern in his own individual way, regardless of social costs. Is it any wonder that the "masses" are beginning to stir — to feel the pain of constant, long-endured pressures that are the result of man-made, environmental frictions? Is it sur- prising, that with the two viewpoints, there is a political and social schism that causes discontent, crime, rebellion, and the break- down in religious and ethical standards ? 39 CITY VALUES The individual viewpoint is essentially political. Moreover, it is selfish and therefore anti-social. It thus becomes ineffec- tive for large aggregations — in short, for city life. The results show a warped and stunted social and economic development, as well as a progress that is absurdly slow. We try to excuse our- selves with the argument, "We can't change conditions too quickly, it might be bad for business/' Or, " It must be a gradual process of evolution"; or, again, "Yes, I know they are doing it successfully in Europe, but it won't work here. The American public will not stand for such a radical change." These are the familiar salves to our political and individualistic consciences. In the mean time we are suffering losses — social, moral, and monetary — that retard progress and make life inconvenient and incomplete. We are top-heavy with business. We have loaded the decks with structural iron, stocks, and sweatshops. It is not evenly distributed, nor securely battened down. Victor Hugo, in one of his most impressive novels, describes with horrible vividness the experience of a loose cannon, rolling about the deck of a storm-tossed vessel, strewing the dead in its richotting path, and all but completely wrecking the ship. To-day, our American cities allow the irresponsible and unregulated conduct of their business concerns to result in losses that all in the community must pay. When the losses are too keenly felt, a shift is attempted to a new kind of government, or a new method of keeping books is tried, or a new set of officials is promptly elected to prevent future calamities. But we do not look below the water-line. The primary causes remain undiscovered, and the reform is entirely superficial. What we need is a brand-new way of looking at city life before we attempt to renovate what we have now. To build an elevated line when the subway has been invented is a static and superficial attempt at progress. To spend years in the construction of a bridge that is inadequate for the increased traffic when completed is a waste of good engineering skill and economic foresight — to say nothing of money. To consider only the present generation's needs is to invite corruption and lack of responsibility. "Quick investment" is always at a premium under such conditions. There is no longer any fear of the sudden end of the world. This 40 THE NEW CITY IDEAL AND VIEWPOINT '-'"**'* J *: ;/ point was settled about eighteen hundred years ago. Why not provide, then, for the next century as well as this? The basic reason for our political corruption — especially in the cities — is this "grab-quick" attitude of mind that we all possess. Until we make our standards of work, life, and progress dynamic ones, until we value human existence in terms of racial progress instead of industrial units, until our concept of life is pluralistic — city de- velopment will be slow, costly, unhappy, and inefficient. A new balance sheet must be struck off with some new economic items substituted for the old monetary ones. New values must be created by new demands. Leisure, health, convenience, security, and a higher type of morality must be predicated as definite and necessary city assets. City advertising in the future will tell of the then obviously accepted advantages of education, amusement, health, and convenience — instead of proclaiming the now highly thought of superiority in location for sweatshops, banks, textile mills, and slaughter-houses. It should be a universally accepted axiom of city life that public and private interests shall never come into conflict. And they never will when community concern is as common and broad as citizenship. In fact, real citizenship must mean a direct part in the social control of public activities in city life. Expansion, change, or innovation ought never to be guided by individuals, or for individual interests. Efficient urban life will come to mean the daily enjoyment of every privilege and guarantee to human comfort and security that is possible in any given epoch. This will mean literally a dynamic existence, where there is constant change in ideals and reactions, and therefore a corresponding change in ways of supplying the demands set up by the ideals. Individualism will still be a part of life. But it will be socially controlled, and as such will represent the great motive force in the single man or small group that leads the way through the centuries as the inevitable pioneer in the arts or sciences. And so our new city will be built along brand-new lines: lines of beauty, comfort, and convenience. It will then seem ridiculous to us, this present city plan of ours. We will wonder how we got along at all. But the rebuilding is possible only where community interest is potential, vivid, and constant; where social rights are 4i CITY VALUES emphasized; where private privilege extends only to the point where others may suffer; and where primary, pluralistic causes are discovered for our maladjustments, and where our programs are based on racial rather than particular needs and desires. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. May 25, 1912 42 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. No. 642-3405 Renewals may be made 4 days prior to date due. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. n — ~ LD21A-30m-10,'73 (R3728sl0)476— A-30 General Library University of California Berkeley 3: /0 4 13 HT 151 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY