The growth of cities in relation to town planning / by A.K. Chalmers.

  • Chalmers, A. K. (Archibald Kerr), 1856-1942.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The growth of cities in relation to town planning / by A.K. Chalmers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    who, if not the pariahs, are at least the nomads of city life. As we hav^e seen, the movement for improv- ing the sanitation of towns set out with a per- fectly definite object. Disease is a powerful stimulus to reform, and our present systems of water supply, scavenging, and of sewage disposal, and of regulating the occupancy of houses, are some of the results. At an early period also, many authorities were tentatively feeling their way, through local provisions, towards a code of building regulations intended to prevent those uncon- trolled massings of population which had formerly marked the growth of towns. But that the results are wholly satisfactory, no one maintains. It is told by Sir Ian Hamilton, in his work on the Japanese war, that officers of the Japanese staff could distinguish between country and town regiments, even when at a distance, by the difference in their staying powers in difficult positions. For a nation which in 1890 had barely 6 per cent, of its population in “ great cities ” and had no city with a population exceeding 200,000, this is somewhat remarkable testimony to the difficulty which a race may experience in maintaining its physique when the trend of ]iational life changes and it undertakes the problem of healthy town life.