[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—As I disagree with Mr. Bossom's major proposal, though not with some of his minor suggestions, I will deal with the two aspects in that order. I put aside the statistics of slumdom and the estimated cost of the L.C.C. plan, merely remarking that I do not believe anyone knows exactly how many slums there are, how many people, how many can or must live where they do, or how long it would take. It is a matter for careful survey.
To roof the railway cuts may be possible as an engineering feat, but there is a host of objections. New York, we are told, carries sixty-storey buildings—but is founded on a rock. London rests on clay. New York is on an island, London stands in the midst of a vast green field with a river cutting it in half.
" The first step is to buy the _railway air rights," says Mr. Bossom. If we are talking of rights, I submit that the light and air rights of the frontages on the railways have to be considered. The proposal assumes that the railway cuttings are permanent, eternal. Has Mr. Brisiorn con- sidered the possibility that London's great termini may have to be removed outward to the periphery; and the radial' tracks removed entirely and replaced by radial boulevards leading to a circular railway, connecting a score of main lines ?
"No other solution is immediately practicable," says Mr.
Bossom. If I believed this I would not trouble you with this comment. For thirty years the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association has advocated the decentralization of great urban agglomerations by the setting up of Satellite Towns, newly built, or developed from existing nuclei, to which industries and their personnel should move. There are two garden cities north of London, and if the powers that be had studied the question more closely, there could well have been ten by now. In fact, there are ten ribbons, but, not towns, spread out in these thirty years 1 While this alternative is all but neglected, I, for one, will not agree to Mr. Bossom's fantastic proposal, which I suppose will next be inflicted on Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham . and Glasgow. The part of his article that finds me friendly is that he proposes to deal with London as a whole. That is right. The Borough Councils and the L.C.C. are at logger- . heads already, and a super-authority is needed. The London Region must be created and given the task of housing and rehousing the people, and spreading it out in orderly fashion industrially. Secondly, the method of doing this as one • operation is sound. But Mr. Bossom omits to include the _ element of town planning, without which nothing useful can be done. Thirdly, the decanting principle is sound. It is done at Bristol and elsewhere. There are permanent hostels that are temporary dwellings for those who must move. London might well have half a dozen such. My space is exhausted and this is all I can say,—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. LOFTUS HARE,
Editor, Garden Cities and Town Planning.
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