Modern cities : progress of the awakening for their betterment here and in Europe / by Horatio M. Pollock and William S. Morgan.

  • Horatio Milo Pollock
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Modern cities : progress of the awakening for their betterment here and in Europe / by Horatio M. Pollock and William S. Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be laid out without reference to existing struc- tures or the ownership of plots. Usually the design of the street system is restricted by va- rious natural conditions such as rivers, hills and ravines and the work of the planner is further limited by the necessity of fitting his design to a system already long in use. The spider-web system, however, is of great value as an ideal and in new towns or the newer sections of estab- lished towns much may be done to introduce approximations of the ideal that will greatly facilitate traffic. The determination of the width and char- acter of streets is a matter of the highest impor- tance. To do this successfully a planner must know something of the volume of traffic that is likely to pass through any thoroughfare. In a new town the traffic may be required to follow the street prepared for it, but in older towns the habits of the people are not easily changed. William Penn, in designing Philadelphia, made Market and Broad Streets wider than the others in order that these two thoroughfares might be- come the leading business streets of the city. The business of the city, however, did not follow the scheme as Penn anticipated. For many years some of the narrower streets were more active thoroughfares than Market Street. The streets take up a large portion of the land of a city and their construction and maintenance [34]