PLANNING AND SMOKE
in,—You discuss " Post-War Housing," and Mr. Hamilton Kerr London in 1970," but I look in vain for any mention of one vitally portant angle of planning which all planners treat, if at all, in the most sual manner. I refer to the problem of soot and grime—which evitably includes the problem of fuel utilisation. Mr. Hamilton Kerr escribes a delightful city with trees, flowers and verdure everywhere. anners and architects draw beautiful buildings, roads, gardens, as they pear when first erected and not as they will inevitably become—black, imy, eroded and debased in a single decade of the smoky atmosphere British cities. They all forget that neither flowers, verdure nor beauty endure in grime. As long ago as i661 John Evelyn wrote an address o the King complaining of the evils of " Smoake " and described how uring the siege of Newcastle (1644), when but little coal reached London, chards in the Strand gave plentiful fruit in the clear air, although reviously barren for years.
In these days of science there is a solution to our hand in District eating. The adoption of this system for all new-planned areas will ing an economy of 5o per cent. in fuel and give us the clear skies which ill allow our plants to flourish. We are reckless of our own well-being, ut I venture to prophesy that with clean air half our hospitals too will come superfluous. Any plan which fails to consider this will be ndemned by posterity, for if we do not adopt the reform continental anners will demonstrate our error. The whole large city of Moscow, e of the cleanest cities in the world, is heated and powered by nine entral plants. Smoky chimneys are absent.
Grime ancl.soot make dignified life possible only to those with ample cans who enjoy the service of less fortunate mortals. The servant oblem brings home to many formerly insulated from domestic tasks ow serious and how soul-destroying is the never ending battle with une. We must free ourselves from this incubus, we must save our ies from this poison, we must save the beauty of our new cities. We ust economise our national heritage of fuel. Planners worth the me must consider the smoke nuisance.—Yours, &c., G. W. STEAD. "Drumadoon," Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire.
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