30 AUGUST 1935, Page 3

The City Enterprise of Leeds The comprehensive schemes of slum-clearance

and rehousing adopted by the Leeds Corporation is causing 'some uneasiness to cautious persons in that city, but it may well be that in ten years' time it will be recognised that the Corporation in thus boldly adventuring has taken the most economical as well as the most imaging- fire fire course. In providing for the present it is providing also for the future. In six years 80,000 houses are to be demolished, and substitute dwellings provided. That is unquestionably desirable. ` But Leeds does not consider 'it enough Merely to destrOY slums and provide houses ; those houses must also be habitable ten years hence in accordance with the standards of living ten years 'hence ; and they should form part of a township or .suburb which has adequate transport facilities, Central baths, sehoois, and marketi. ShoUld such desiderata be provided how, when they cal, be fitted into a general Plan from the start, or later, when there will be a clamour for theta; 'and second-best expedients have to be 'devised ? 'Leeds will no doubt make many mistakes in its bold efforts. But it is setting an example of municipal ;enterprise in getting rid of the remains of a discreditable Past, and building up a civilised city worthy to be prosperous. And its latest experiment, the grant to its transplanted tenants 'of facilities for acquiring beds and bedding .(to replace their old and probably verminous Possessions) On easy hire-purchase terms gives evidence of both humanity and imagination.

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