Welsh Journals

slightly higher price per acre for the acres which have been built upon but owing to the want of real economy in crowding houses, due to the amount of land which has to be taken up in extra street surfaces in each acre, the return is a diminishing one. Both owners and their agents, in grasping at high prices for individual acres, have entirely forgotten that it was in their power to secure a building incre- ment of, say, £ 100 on each of three acres instead of the £ 200 which they may have obtained on one acre; and they have lost in this way probably at the very least £ 100 of building increment for every acre of land that they have allowed to be over- crowded with houses; for the curious thing about reducing the number of houses placed upon an acre of land is, that, while it benefits the land owner by giving him building increment on more land, it benefits the occupant by giving him cheaper land. It is astonishing how the price of land per yard super of available ground to the occupier falls as the number of houses to the acre is reduced; and this only illustrates, in another way, that the only cheap way to secure open space is to secure it as garden ground, and the most expen- sive way of securing open space is to secure it in the form of wide streets. It is largely to these two great mistakes- the shortsightedness of the land owner, and the unfortunate attempt to force upon hilly country a type of development only adapted to level land, and not even very suitable then-that we owe the fact that among the ugliest of modem towns we must place those of Wales, which, owing to the splendid opportunities of their sites, might have been at once the most beautiful to look at and the most desirable to live in, of any in the Kingdom. I dwell on this, not to reproach Wales because it has not been wiser than other parts of the Kingdom, but to urge that now that power has been given to rectify these evils through the Town Planning Act, no time should be lost in putting these powers into force. There are difficulties, no doubt, some perhaps inseparable from the first commencement of town-planning activities, and others due to local circumstances. The large areas liable to building development in many of the districts, particularly near the col- lieries, will make it necessary for com- paratively small urban communities to undertake town-planning schemes cover- ing many thousands of acres, if they are to protect themselves properly; and this involves a work which must seem to these District Councils out of proportion to their power. But let them make a beginning. Once town-planning becomes general, so that everybody knows what to expect, much of the elaborate procedure that has at present to be adopted to protect individual owners from injustice would cease to be required, In regard to modifi- cations in the Procedure Regulations which have been already foreshadowed by the Local Government Board, and in amendments to the Town Planning Act, which its more general adoption, as well as the experience of its working, will render possible in the near future, the tendency will be in the direction of simplifying the earlier stage, and at the same time ren- dering it more effective. It may, for example, prove possible to give power to secure the protection of the land by means of a preliminary plan and scheme.dealing with the simpler and more obvious points, so that overcrowding could be stopped and the building up of highways, which will require future widening, could be pre- vented without delay. Once these were secured, then more time might, without harm to anybody, be given