International studio (47.1912)

National Conference on City Planning


BUSINESS CENTRE, MONTCLAIR, N. J.

BY JOHN NOLEN, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT

r | 5 HE FOURTH NATIONAL CONFER-
ENCE ON CITY PLANNING
BY ARTHUR ALEXANDER
1 STOUGHTON
It is remarkable what headway the City Plan-
ning Movement in this country has attained in the
short space of a decade, since the commission on
the plan of Washington was created, deliberated
and reported. This marked the renaissance of this
art after the long sleep of the dark ages which sep-
arate us from the time of 1’Enfant and the few
others to whom we owe what is good in our street
systems. Three years ago its self-consciousness
was sufficient to be embodied in a first national
conference. The fourth has just been held in
Boston, at which some 250 people gathered from
the four quarters of the United States and Canada
to discuss its problems and to take counsel of ex-
perts in allied branches toward the co-ordination
of the multifold elements of this art-science.
The Conference was entertained by the city and
the City Club. Mayor Fitzgerald tendered it a
luncheon, at which representatives of cities and
civic bodies spoke, and the City Club provided a
banquet, as the closing feature, at which the
mayor, former Mayor Reyburn, of Philadelphia,
Dr. Hillis, of Brooklyn, and Hon. Frederick C.
Howe, of the People’s Institute in New York City,
made addresses. The members were treated to a
tour of forty miles or more, through the city and
parks, and along the water front, affording them
a panoramic view of the old and new city, the
harbor and Charles River Basin, with its bridges
and other improvements, the splendid Metropoli-

tan Park system, including the whole suburban
district, with its beautifully planned and main-
tained parks and parkways and the new Middle-
sex Fells development, and the magnificent north
shore drive and Revere Beach.
A visit to the School of Landscape Architecture
at Harvard was made. The inspection of its ad-
mirable instruction and work in city planning and
landscape treatment and its very extensive collec-
tion of books and documents on the subjects
proved to be illuminating and profitable, as this
school has made great progress since its recent
establishment and is leading the way in the prep-
aration of the practitioners of these specialized
branches. The rest of the three days was mainly
devoted to regular sessions and informal confer-
ences, held in the Public Library, itself an inspira-
tion to artistic and scholarly impulses.
The subjects treated were of the most practical.
There were no vaporings about the “city beautiful,’’
but thoughtful papers by city officials, engineers,
lawyers, social workers, landscape architects and
others, on how to make the city more livable, in
such titles as: the methods of campaigning for a
city plan; legislation, actual and desirable; how to
meet the cost of city planning; replanning helpful
in districts stagnant or retrograding; the possi-
bility of introducing the German “zoning” princi-
ple; practical versus ideal city planning: with inci-
dental allusion to permanent city planning com-
missions, housing, building regulations, play
grounds, congestion, details of street systems and
other minor points.
The outstanding landmarks of this conference
were the conclusions, well established by concur-

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