Streets and Slums: A Study in Local Municipal Geography (With Maps) (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Brown, Frederick J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1332523749 ISBN 13: 9781332523740

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from Streets and Slums: A Study in Local Municipal Geography (With Maps)

Returning to the more regularly laid out portions of New York and Baltimore, the New York up-town block of square feet is, of course, three and one-third times as large as the Baltimore block of square feet. Perhaps the New York block may be rather too large, probably the Baltimore block is too small, and certainly the depth of our blocks, 150 feet, is very badly chosen. On the same map, Map No. 1, is shown a block, D, which strikes a good average between the extremes of too large and too small. It is a block situated not in any distant city, but in that part of Baltimore, so to speak, which lies in Baltimore County, that is to say in Canton, just beyond the city limits. About sixty years ago the land of the Canton Company was laid out by Caspar Weaver, Surveyor, - so Mr. Martenet, our former City Surveyor, informs me - ou a plan which seems on the whole a judicious one, and which is rather interesting by reason of the ingenuity shown in the selection of measurements. The blocks are each 458 feet by 204, the avenues are 70'feet wide and the streets 60 feet, so that ten blocks going north and south, and twenty blocks going east and west, make exactly one mile. The proportion of street area in a city laid out on this plan would be 33 per cent. And of blocks 67 per cent. It seems rather strange that so good a system as this, existing - ou paper at least - at our very doors, should have been completely ignored, and that we should still have adhered to the old 150-feet to - an-alley plan, as laid down on Poppleton's Plat.

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Excerpt from Streets and Slums: A Study in Local Municipal Geography (With Maps) Just as the growth and development of countries are determined to a great extent by their physical geography, the growth and development of cities depend largely upon what may be called their municipal regularity, the width and directions of the streets, and their distance apart. Some cities, we all know, are laid out more regularly than others, most of our American cities aiming at great uniformity, one series of parallel streets being crossed at right angles by another series of parallel streets. While such regularity, or the absence of it, is a thing immediately obvious to the most careless observer, there is another respect in which cities differ from each other which is important, but not so obvious, indeed is very generally lost sight of, and only a few people who have studied the maps, and have done some measuring and figuring, know anything about it. And that is the wastefulness or economy of space with which a city is laid out, the shape and size of the blocks, the proportion which the area of the streets bears to the area of blocks. Some cities are laid out very extravagantly. Washington is a familiar instance. There is no city in the world laid out on such an extravagant scale. The streets and avenues are so many and so wide, that the proportion of the total area of the city which they cover is much greater than in any other city. It is so expensively planned that under normal conditions the owners of real estate would probably be simply ruined by the cost of maintaining such a city, so great is the area of streets to be kept paved, cleaned, lighted and policed, to say nothing of the parks and reservations to be kept in order. But the general government has come to the rescue of the tax-payers, and bears half the expense of running the city. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This

Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1332523749
• ISBN 13: 9781332523740
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 27