Welsh Journals

CAN WE TOWN-PLAN THE VALLEYS ? WELSH towns and the urban centres about the mines and quarries have, in common with all the other indus- trial towns of the United Kingdom, suffered from an expansion which has been allowed to take place without foresight, planning or guidance. It is true that, for the latter part of the period of expansion, there have been building by-laws which have restrained some of the worst evils in the overcrowding of buildings, and have provided for a certain standard of sanita- tion but at best these building by-laws were framed under very limited powers to combat serious evils, many of which were really outside the scope of the Act which authorized them. As a result, the by-laws have in many cases been framed with a view to securing, indirectly, advantages which the Act did not empower the Local Authorities to secure, directly. This method of stretch- ing a regulation which there is power to make, to secure some other advantage which was not contemplated, when the power was conferred, usually leads to the develop- ment of new evils, or at least to the securing of a minimum of advantage at a maximum of expense. This is notably the case in the matter of streets. Many Local Authorities have adopted by-laws enforcing a width for all streets which is unnecessary in many cases for traffic purposes, with a view to securing in this indirect way an additional amount of open space between rows of houses, a result which can be much more satis- factorily and economically obtained by fixing a minimum distance between the houses by means of a building line. In other similar ways the by-laws were framed to combat a particular, congested type of development; and now that people BY RAYMOND UNWIN are coming to realize that this type of development is in itself both undesirable and uneconomical, and that a much more open type is in every way better, it is found that these old by-laws do not at all satis- factorily apply to the new conditions. So far the difficulty in Wales is shared by the rest of the United Kingdom but Wales suffers from the additional disad- vantage that these by-laws were framed primarily to apply to a country, where the sites of the towns are generally level or gently undulating, and that they are specially inappropriate to Wales, where steep hills and narrow, deep valleys abound. There are limited areas, both in England and Scotland, where somewhat similar conditions are to be found, but they are so general in Wales as to be considered characteristic and to justify the intro- duction of special methods of housing and town-planning. Fortunately the Housing and Town Planning Act has been so framed as to give an opportunity to each district to adopt the type of development and the regulations best suited to the character of the country, and to the conditions of its population. There has, of recent years, been consider- able development of Welsh national feeling. In town-planning there is offered a field where such patriotism may find valu- able scope. Why should the develop- ment of Welsh towns and villages be any longer hampered by by-laws invented to meet other conditions, and adapted to a country of quite different characteristics ? The Welsh are a people of rural traditions and pursuits. They inhabit a country of the greatest natural beauty, and they are by nature appreciative of the poetry of life and of their national tra- ditions. Most of their towns are not of