Page:Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902).djvu/64

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54
GARDEN CITIES OF TO-MORROW.

labourer with a wife and four children live? The £1,400 will by no means represent a fair standard of comfort, to say nothing of magnificence." He will live in three rooms sufficiently small in a block at least three storeys high." Contrast this with what might be done on a new area, by carefully planning a bold scheme at the outset. Streets of greater width than this new street would be laid out and constructed at a mere fraction of the cost, while a sum of £1,400, instead of providing 1 family with "three rooms sufficiently small in blocks at least three storeys high," would provide 7 families in Garden City with a comfortable six-roomed cottage each, and with a nice little garden; and, manufacturers being concurrently induced to build on the sites set apart for them, each breadwinner would be placed within easy walking distance of his work.

There is another modern need which all towns and cities should be designed to meet—a need which has arisen with the evolution of modern sanitation, and which has of recent years been accentuated by the rapid growth of invention. Subways for sewerage and surface drainage, for water, gas, telegraph and telephone wires, electric lighting wires, wires for conveying motive power, pneumatic tubes for postal purposes, have come to be regarded as economic if not essential. But if they would be a source of economy in an old city, how much more so in new ones; for on a clean sheet it will be easy to use the very best appliances for their construction, and to avail ourselves to the fullest extent of the ever-growing advantages which they possess as the number of services which they accommodate increases. Before the subways can be constructed, trenches some-