Page:Old Towns and New Needs.djvu/91

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62
THE TOWN EXTENSION PLAN

no doubt known to many of you, showing the breadth of treatment, the careful consideration of the grouping of the buildings and their placing on the ground which must form part of the final stages of town planning, if the town is to become once more a beautiful place to dwell in; and it is as necessary for mental and spiritual health that man should live in beautiful surroundings as it is for his bodily health that he should dwell under sanitary conditions. Town Planning, then, calls for a great co-operative effort to recreate in our cities worthy dwelling places for our social life. The individual must find his reward for sometimes sacrificing his immediate interests and predilections in the far wider opportunities which a co-ordinated development would afford, and above all, might I say here, he must learn to consume his own smoke literally and metaphorically. The engineer and the surveyor must be willing to co-operate with the artist, guiding him on sound and practical lines, but giving him the freest possible hand in dealing with the forms of expression; and the architect must cease to regard each building he erects as a unit in itself, of which he may make what he likes, and must learn to consider it as a detail in the greater street picture, and must accept as his first duty the subordination of that detail to a total effect of ordered beauty which the citizens must learn to require and appreciate, that each may in this way do his share towards the creation of a beautiful city.