CITY MAKING IN WISCONSIN
CITY MAKING IN WISCONSIN What must be Done to Create Healthful, Convenient, and Beautiful Cities By JOHN NOLEN Landscape Architect, Cambridge, Mass. MUCH ATTENTION has been turned of late to the...
...To improve we must have even mora fearless criticism of unfaithful and inefficient service...
...I shall not pretend to cover it completely...
...Traitor, the term used in San Francisco, is not too severe for a dishonest public official, and we should not hesitate to so brand him...
...But the same flag that calls forth our enthusiasm and patriotic service for the nation, floats over the City Hall at Milwaukee, Madison and Oshkosh and makes the same claims for loyalty, the same demands for help...
...For my discussion I have selected therefore, three points of special importance—the City Plan, the location of Public Buildings, and the Park System...
...Here everyone is allowed to do almost as he pleases, and what he pleases to do is often astonishing...
...For, sooner or later, we must realize that large and permanent results are possible only through the regular machinery of the city government, and our democratic ideals of city life should make us unwilling to accept the benefits of public improvements without contributing our share toward the expenses that they necessarily involve...
...Because of our lack of loyalty and discrimination such an individual soon tires of public service and shifts to the more comfortable, more secure, more remunerative fields of private business...
...The street plans will probably present a commonplace, checkerboard or gridiron system, unrelieved even by a diagonal...
...Consider the difficulty, for example, of raising by private subscription five, ten, or twenty-five thousand dollars for schools, playgrounds, parks, or any other public purpose, compared with the relative ease with which the city government itself can proceed...
...Do not misunderstand me...
...We are more ready also to serve the nation...
...But these points, with the lantern slides that will be used to illustrate and enforce them, accord, it seems to me, an introduction to the whole subject, and present a somewhat well balanced impression of what city making or city development means...
...It is a common custom to run down the place in which we live, to speak of the local council with scorn, to denounce the whole city government as bad...
...To be sure there has been some justification for this view...
...City Hall, Court House, Post Office, Public Library, together with hotels, theatres, club houses, churches, etc., each in...
...It must be depended upon in the future as in the past to make experiments, to act in advance of public opinion and to supplement public action in fields that lie somewhat outside...
...In fact, the lack of proper building regulations is one of the most serious shortcomings in American municipal ordinances, and is worse in Wisconsin, I believe, than in Massachusetts and other Eastern States...
...Boulevards, if the term is used to denote wide, well paved and attractively developed drives, free from wires and poles, and framed with shade trees, properly selected, planted and maintained, will be almost nen-existing...
...The determination of the location and character of public buildings is an opportunity that every city may use to add to its convenience and beauty...
...For that we have pride, in some directions without justification...
...The City Plan really affects every phase of city making, but it relates more definitely to the location of streets and roads, the selection of thoroughfares for traffic and pleasure drives, and the subdivision of the city into sections for the various purposes of business, residence, recreation, etc...
...Especially is this true of the consideration now being given to the preparation of comprehensive city plans, well balanced and skillful schemes which take into account the complex needs of the city population...
...In the first place have they not relied too much upon voluntary and unofficial organizations instead of working with and through the official machinery of the city, the machinery which is especially designed and set in motion for the very purposes which they have at heart...
...Our feeling toward the nation is quite different...
...Three Points in City Making CITY making is a big subject...
...Some of the principles certainly are clear and unquestioned...
...Here there is little excuse for the failure that is so common...
...No call from Washington would be unheeded...
...City government in the United States, even here in Wisconsin, has not always been a subject for pride...
...For example, public buildings, being used by all of the citizens, should be centrally located and in prominent situations...
...or else an irregular, accidental arrangement, uncontrolled by skill or common sense...
...The peoples of other countries have not looked to us for models of municipal administration...
...There is a place, a permanent place, I believe, for voluntary action...
...So intently have we fastened our attention upon the dishonest and unqualified public official that we have lost sight completely of the patient, efficient, self-sacrificing mayor, alderman or engineer, who, underpaid and overworked, is a genuine public servant, looking upon a public office as a public trust...
...The second mistake is the critical, cynical and often hopeless view that we hold of public officials, of the city administration in particular...
...A third cause of our failure so far is the absence of a just pride in what is best in our cities, a discriminating appreciation of their achievements...
...MUCH ATTENTION has been turned of late to the improvement of city government and the conditions of city life...
...The special and imperative demands of traffic for broad, well-located thoroughfares, demands which it does not pay to neglect, will be found to be poorly and inadequately supplied...
...And the difficulty of effectively administering the fund is equally great...
...But if such voluntary work leads to confusion of thought, if it is relied upon after the period of experimentation is past, if it is looked upon as a substitute for public action instead of a supplement, it may often do more harm than good...
...And instead of securing the convenience, stability of values and other benefits of limiting certain sections of the city to certain purposes, they will be found jumbled together more or less in all the sections, to the detriment of all...
...But too often the reformers, philanthropists and public-spirited citizens who have inaugurated these movements, have proceeded from mistaKen points of view...
...How little attention has been given to these phases of city planning can soon be made evident by examining the maps of a number of Wisconsin cities...
...Then the various public buildings, and to a certain extent semi-public buildings, should be grouped in some organic plan, thus adding materially to the dispatch of business and making the most instead of the least of the opportunity to secure an impressive example of what true civic art may be...
...I doubt also whether we should find in the Wisconsin cities subjected to examination, much evidence of intelligent attention to the problems of housing, especially those connected with the provision of cheap, sanitary and attractive homes for people with small means...
...But, and this is the point I wish to emphasize, we need also to accord hearty and prompt approval of faithful and efficient service...
...In several directions this attention promises to be fruitful...
Vol. 1 • September 1909 • No. 35
