Design of the Complete Town

(1) In considering the design of a town or city we must always remember that the town must be sited in a healthy position, free from dust, fogs, its layout must not encourage winds through urban spaces, and it must not pollute its own atmosphere. It must provide proper standards of space and sunlight to its buildings and open spaces, and it must be pos­sible to move about the town easily and without danger to life. Its parts must be so arranged that it is a convenient place for dwelling, working and playing.

(2) Connected with these and many other technical prob­lems is the problem of economy. The problem must be thor­oughly examined which does not suggest that the cheapest scheme may be the best.

(3) The town must work properly but it should also give pleasure to those who look at it. When we say that a town should be beautiful, we do not mean that it should have some fine parks and noble buildings, we mean that the whole of the environment, down to the most insignificant detail, should be beautiful.

(4) If we examine a typical urban scene we see all kinds of objects like buildings, lamp posts, pavings, posters and trees. It is all of them, together with all the other kinds of objects that are found in the town, that are called the raw materials of a town design. Each of them down to the least important should be aesthetically satisfying.

(5) The town designer must think of his raw materials in terms of time. Not the time it takes to walk about them, although that is an important consideration, but their place in historical time, their effect on tradition, their immediate effect as contemporary objects, and their effect in future time.

(6) All new development takes place in an existing envi­ronment. That environment has taken centuries to form and the design must respect any features that have visual signifi­cance. It is more than vandalism to fall a tree that has taken years to grow, or to demolish a building of fine architectural qualities.

(7) Designing in terms of past time does not imply the imitation of the existing environment but respect of the form, colour, texture, and general qualities of the existing development. That which is being constructed is for immediate use which is not to suggest that there must be an attempt to ignore the past and be " modern".

(8) Future time must also be thought of in terms of the estimated life of the objects. Objects like buildings and lamp posts grow old and become out-of-date, and the designer must select those materials that are adequate for their life, no more and no less.

(9) Until comparatively recent times the growth of cit­ies has been without purpose in any sense. Cities must grow, for growth is a law of life. But this natural overgrowth should have aroused action to restore balance. Mere size, as such, is no index of greatness.

(10) All overgrowth means overcrowding, which is loss of space, one of the vital needs of cities. The lesson that has to be learned is that natural growth, and all the other forms of growth, have to be made subject to will and intelligence, or the city must be harmed. This is a certain lesson of history.

(11) It is now generally becoming accepted that we need to redress the balance of population between one town and another, and between towns and the countryside. Very large towns should not be allowed to absorb more of the countryside and the groups of town should be prevented from turning into amorphous built-up areas.