LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR] THE METROPOLITAN CITY Royal Commission. London needed defence against the policy —the undeclared, one might say underground, policy—that for decades made it a more and more uncomfortable, ineffi- cient, costly, time-wasting sprawl, shamelessly devastating the finest site a city ever inherited. It was not the " garden city enthusiasts " who gave London Metro-land, Edgware, Morden, Cockfosters and the rest of its amorphously spreading suburbs, or who are preparing similar gifts at Aldenham and many other lovely districts. Such developmental crimes result from the unbelievably stupid policy tacitly agreed to by all the authorities in flat defiance of our advice. And the L.P.T.B.
and its forerunners must rank high in the catalogue of culprits. It is amazing that Mr. Pick, with Cockfosters on his shield and Aldenham writhing under his feet, can step forward in the guise of a knight protecting the countryside against the garden city movement. Not content with defending what his own policy most menaces, he defends what no one has attacked —the principle of a Metropolitan City. Where in the Coin- mission's Report, or in the vast mass of the evidence, is there a single hint of " destroying " London? The Report raises issues that are serious enough. Let us not waste time on this shadow boxing.
In the evidence that Lord Harmsworth and I gave io the Commission we asked for a governmental check, under a national planning system, to the flow towards London of industries and businesses that could be located elsewhere— a process that in the last few decades has congested the centre of London, caused the expansion of its suburbs to a radius of twelve to fifteen miles, placed the country out of reach of the hemmed-in central millions, and at last forced on London workers of all classes the truly appalling choice of
hanging on straps for 25 per cent. of their working time or rearing their families at the top of three or four flights of
concrete steps. Now the War has come and the business evacuation has begun, it may be that events have set in train the reversal of policy that the authorities refused to consider.
But an unplanned decentralisation may not only turn London into Britain's No. t Depressed Area, which is perhaps an inevitable result of the folly of the past. It also threatens more rapid damage to Mr. Pick's new love, the countryside.
Planned redevelopment of the centre, on the basis of a much reduced density both of business and housing, coupled with the direction of industry towards compact and organic satellite towns, are necessary to save from further disaster both the Metropolitan City and the rural region around it.
Both the Majority and Minority Reports of the Commission accept that general thesis, and the Minority propose machinery that would enable effect to be given to it. When London has had time to absorb the Report, I do not think Mr. Pick will fmd many to share his illusion as to which is the knight and which the dragon.
The discussion might be cleared up a good deal if Mr. Pick would revise his very amateurish density statistics. One might infer from his letter that he thinks a city consists solely of working-class housing zones. He compares our suggested maximum of 6o persons per acre, for central re-housing areas, with various over-all densities, sometimes for built-up areas as a whole, sometimes for towns plus their rural environs. But in any city there must be many larger houses with real gardens ; there must be business premises, theatres, churches, roads, car-parks, railways ; and if the city is civilised there must be parks to rest in and grounds to play games on. Sixty persons per housing acre was not put forward as an ideal standard ; at best it is a just tolerable re-housing maximum. When you add, on modest standards, the land needed for all the other city purposes, you reach a permissible over-all maximum density of the order of twenty to twenty-five persons per acre. London County achieves its preposterous over-all average of fifty-five by such simple expedients as starving its residents of recreation space (1.88 acres per t,000 against a reasonable quota of seven acres), housing vast multitudes ir. layers at 200 and more per acre, keeping many of its offices and factories short of light and space, and insufferable stree and tube congestion.
Letchworth, Welwyn and Wythenshawe employ a maximum local housing density of the order of thirty-five to fifty person, per acre:- The over-all density of their built-up portions will probably be something like twenty. These figures would be lowered for Welwyn and Letchworth if you include in the total area the parts of their rural belts that happen to be in the estate ownership. But these belts are protected from casual building and should be regarded as rural land. The over-all density of the Metropolitan Police District (very roughly the built-up area of London) is twenty. Satellite towns of 30,000 to 50,000 use no more land per head than large cities, and spoil far less of the surrounding land, though they have no areas of dangerous and inhuman congestion. Much wasteful travel is cut out. Public services cost less per head than in the Metropolis, which spends most of its time undergoing surgical operations to its organs and arteries, increasingly at the expense of the rest of the country. As to culture, people living in functional communities, where they can know others and be known, are likely to make greater contributions per head than the millions lost in the social and political muddle of the Metropolis as it is today.
I see no relevance to the subject in Mr. Pick's attack on Mr. Lewis Mumford, whose Culture of Cities is by no means romantic, but essentially Metropolitan—a creative revolt, as it were, from within. True, Mr. Mumford was not cross- examined by the Royal Commission. I was. So was Mr. Pick. After his experiences it astonishes me that he has made no attempt to revise his calculations.—Yours, &c.,
F. J. ()swim, Hon. Secretary.
The Garden Cities and Town Planning Association, 13 Suffolk' Street, Pall Mall, London, S.W. r.
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