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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    of wliicli it is composed ; the results suggest administrative chaos. Education, Poor Law, hospitals, police, health, water sup]dy, cleans- ing, the maintenance of roads, transport, rating—all arc fuiu^tions of corporate life. Yet they overlap in confusion so profound that a comparison of pauperism with indus- trial dislocation, and with crime and disease, becomes almost unreliable, and even the cost of each to the community is bai-ely ascertain- able. There are some functions of administration which are best exercised within limited areas. But unless we recognise that town planning must include all the units of population which industrial pursuits have gathered together, we shall, I think, fail to give expression to that conception of civic unity which, although often but feebly expressed, lies at tlie bottom of our present-day administration. Were this spirit to obtain free expression, many of the apparent didiculties whicli lie behind all questions of differential rating would, in the end, fiinl some practical solution. It is because Part T1 of the present Bill is fitted to pave the way to this higher I’calisa- tion of civic life that its ])rovisions are, 1 think, worthy of cai'eful study.