File:Review of reviews and world's work (1890) (14596675520).jpg

Identifier: reviewofreviewsw40newy (find matches)
Title: Review of reviews and world's work
Year: 1890 (1890s)
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Publisher: New York Review of Reviews Corp

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lems by a study of European work, andhow much we can learn from their mistakesas well as from their many successes. Histravels extended as far as Constantinople, ofwhich he says that the most elementarykind of city planning is strikingly absentfrom its street plan, wide areas being cov- ered with a chaotic complex of undifferen-tiated wriggling alleys leading nowhere. City planning ordinarily aims at makingnew streets connect with older ones so as toafford continuous lines of travel; and, fur-ther, it seeks to make the streets wideenough to avoid congestion of traffic. This,says Professor Olmsted, Is apt to lead to amechanically standardized arrangement ofstreets and blocks, with uniform straightstreets covering the whole or most of thetown, which is more characteristic of Amer-ican cities than of any other in the world.The main defect of this standardizing proc-ess is the inevitable concentration of streettraflflc upon a limited number of thorough- 236 THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS.
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CITY PLANNING ADAPTED TO IRREGULAR TOPOGRAPHY.District building regulations enforce detached houses with gardens and prevent obstruction of view by buildings on left-hand side of lower street.) fares, and, unless this contingency is pro-vided for, there is danger of serious con-gestion and inconvenience. For more than half a century, especiallyin Germany and France, the provision of aliberal number of exceptionally broad thor-oughfares, from a hundred feet to a hundredyards or so in width, has been a systematicfeature of city extension plans. ProfessorOlmsted thus traces the evolution of theboulevard: As the common name of boulevard implies,these broad thoroughfares originated in the op-portunities which are repeatedly presented dur-ing- the expansion of fortified cities for so utihz-ing the sites of the older and outgrown militarydefenses, technically known as boulevards orbulwarks. But the utility and popularity ofthese circumferential boulevards early led to ademand for similar tho

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