FACTS AS FOUNDATIONS
Snt,—Miss Denby does not contest the main point I made in my little wrangle with Clough Williams-Ellis: that the vast majority of people would like houses with gardens. It is really important to be clear about this point, because very important consequences follow from it as to the size and arrangement of cities. Her letter really raises another point, more difficult to argue briefly and without dia- grams: that of the minimum size of dwelling-plot that is acceptable. She treats the twelve-to-the-acre standard, which was widely applied in suburban housing schemes, though not firmly statutory, as if it were an indefensible fetish. Actually it was a well-considered standard, just providing for good light-angles, for reasonable privacy from public paths and neighbours' windows, and for the minimum average garden-space required. It is simply not true that local authorities and tenants have generally revolted against it ; nor that it is considered too open or spacious a standard. Vast numbers of the houses provided by builders, and financed through building- societies, were well above this space-standard. Nor is it true that there has been a wholesale desertion of the open suburbs for the city centres. The truth underlying some of Miss Denby's observations is that the time and money cost of the suburban journey has, in some of our larger cities, reached the limit for the workers who are poorest and work the longest hours. Hence, and hence alone, the tendency to resume the discarded systems of rehousing slum-dwellers in tene- ments or terraced bye-law streets.
The anomaly of the twelve-houses-per-acre density standard was that it only applied to two-storey dwellings in new development. Clearly there must be a maximum-density standard: otherwise land- owners and hard-pressed authorities would be forced to compete with each other to get as many dwellings as possible per acre. I have suggested elsewhere a standard which provides for health, privacy, garden space, &c., but does not, as this one did, load the dice in favour of tenements. Under some planning schemes, where, for example. only 15 two-storey dWellings per acre are allowed, it is permissible to build 3o or 37 flats. Would it not be more scientific to prescribe under planning schemes that the floor area per residential acre should not exceed some specified figure, say, 52,000 square feet? Given a carefully worked-out standard on these lines, which would bar over- exploitation of land anywhere, the form of dwellings could be left in the main to local administration and local tastes or demands.
z6 Guessers Road, Welwyn Garden City, Herts. F. J. OSBORN.
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