Proceedings of the American Society for Municipal Improvements Convention held at ST. Louis, MO. OCTOBER 12, 13, 14, 15, 1920
VALPARAISO, INDIANA
CHARLES CARROLL
BROWN SECRETARY

SUGGESTIONS FROM FRENCH PRACTICE IN MUNICIPAL IMPROVEMENTS
By George B. Ford, Director of City Planning Department of the Technical Advisory Corporation, New York City

I wish you would take a trip to-day thru northern France. It is one of the most inspiring things you could do. The French are coming back. We knew they would, but their achievement in the face of the most appalling destruction the world has ever seen is astounding.
An area as big as Massachusetts, Rhode Island and part of Connecticut was laid waste, but already two-thirds of it is back under cultivation. More buildings were destroyed than in the whole of Greater New York and yet not only is almost everything repairable back in use but complete reconstruction is well underway. Three-quarters of the factories are again in operation.
Enough miles of railroad were destroyed to reach from New York to San Francisco, but almost all is not only back in use but is handling much more freight than before the war. 1800 bridges were destroyed. Almost all are rebuilt and better and more modern than before the war. They are profiting by the destruction of several hundred miles of canals to prepare them to take 600-ton barges instead of 300 tons. Whole mountain-sides are being blasted away to repair the destroyed tunnels, and great arched concrete retaining embankments are being constructed.
In their haste to get back on their feet are they just putting back what was there before the war ? Far from it, they are profiting by the occasion to correct the mistakes of the past and to start fresh.
Chauny was a knee-high town blown up systematically by the Germans because it was an important industrial city ; a menace to German trade. La Renaissance des Cites held a competition for plans for its improvement. The remarkable prize plan has been officially adopted by the city. It creates a large factory-district between the railroad and the canal with workingmen's model home communities within easy walking distance.
Soissons, always under fire during the war, is profiting by the destruction to replace some of her tortuous streets by broad traffic arteries. Arras, Verdun, Cambrai, etc., are doing the same.
Lille, the great industrial center of northern France is tearing down her choking walls and changing her terminal passenger-station into a modern thru station and now she is holding a great competition for the planning of all of the contributing area.
Rheims is the first city in France to have its comprehensive city plan adopted by the French Government. In these plans I have

provided for large industrial districts along the railroads and the canals radiating from the center of the city and alternating with workingmen's living districts also radiating. An ample playground was attached to every school by appropriating the centers of deep blocks. Parks and connecting boulevards were distributed around the outskirts. Community-center buildings and public markets were located within easy reach. Public and semi-public buildings were given an adequate setting. Many of these ideas and others that we have come to think of as necessities in America were new to them but they are open-minded and want to do the right thing. The city engineers are often the quickest to grasp the new possibilities and the most zealous to push them.
Marseilles and Limoges are wiping out large slum areas and making them into the show quarters of the city.
Lyons, the silk city, has built a great bridge and a big public hospital during the war and is now working on a sewer system and 10,000 workingmen's homes.
Paris has just held a great competition for a comprehensive city plan for all of the surrounding territory. As a member of the jury, I was most struck by the vision with which the judges approached their problem.
What is there in this record that interests us? First and foremost the great fact that France, the first of all countries in the world, voted on March 14, 1919, a compulsory city-planning law by which every city over 10,000 inhabitants must make a comprehensive plan for its improvement and every devastated town and village no matter how small - and there are 2,600 of them - must make a plan for better sanitation, circulation, open spaces, housing, etc., before any permit for any reconstruction can be given.
Already over a thousand towns have their plans and already the State has approved several hundred of them. One and all they are profiting by the occasion to correct the mistakes of the past and to modernize their towns without losing their character, altho I had much ado to persuade some of them not to adopt our nightmare American gridiron plan, which so rubber stamps our towns.
Then they have excellent expropriation laws. It was just five days before the armistice that they adopted a most useful excess-condemnation law; but for years their laws have permitted them to lay out streets on the map in the bed of which the owner can build only at his own risk and the city assesses benefits and awards damages only when it is ready to expropriate.
Furthermore, for many years they have been widening streets all over France by the same process that has been used in widening Chestnut and Walnut streets in Philadelphia, that is by striking a building line a given number of feet back from the old street line and then requiring every property owner on rebuilding to set back to the new line. Fully one-third of the streets of old Paris are being widened to-day by this means. As benefits are assessed at

the same time damages are awarded, the city, in the long run, secures the widening for a very small outlay.
In 1902, France passed an excellent permissive health-law giving cities the right to appoint health boards and to adopt sanitary codes for which the Government furnished a model form. The famous war-damage act, by which the Government pays all war-damage in full, also provides that all devastated towns and villages must be made more sanitary and that the government will pay a large part of the cost. The result is that water-and sewer-systems are appearing all over northern France.
On workingmen's housing the French Government has been loaning money for many years at two percent interest amortizable in not over 25 years. They loan it to a city bureau or to a housing company on condition that they do not charge over 400 to 936 francs rent, depending on the location and the size of the suite and in no case more than 4 3/4 percent of the cost of land and building. The government lends from 60 to 80 percent of the total cost and private capital invested in the balance must not pay over four percent. The tenant pays from 2 1/4 to 3 1/2 percent per annum where he rents and 1/5 down and from 2 to 2 1/2 percent per annum where he buys. Taxes on new housing are remitted for 12 years. Special inducements are given to the needy, to large families, and for the purchase of small farms.
A new bill now before the French parliament provides that the Government shall give outright one-half of the cost of land and buildings with a view to the erection of 500,000 workingmen's homes in the next ten years.
The French have always been famous for their roads, mostly macadam with a very thin top crust. They have stood the inevitable neglect of the war remarkably well. Everywhere in the devastated region they are being rebuilt. They rarely use our tar binders and our oils but they are beginning to use our concrete roads. In Paris, everywhere except on the hills, they are using wood blocks.
Their canals and railroads in the devastated regions have come back with astounding rapidity, but their great contribution is their light narrow-gauge railways that ramify all over the country. These use light rails and virtually no grading. They proved of inestimable value during the war.
here were no community centers in France before the war, but today there are at least four national societies organizing them thruout the devastated regions. The idea is taking hold rapidly, often starting as a workingmen's club. They serve as an excellent counteractive for the saloon.
Beauty and charm has always characterized the French towns and villages. They are apt to place that which is offensive to the sight before that which is offensive to the sense of smell or of hearing. They insist that their towns shall be attractive, often invoking the police power to that end. The interesting part of it is that it costs little, if any, more than it would if they didn't insist. They appreciate the fact that attractiveness in their surroundings is an economic asset. It pays.
Finally, to realize their plans the French have developed vastly of late the principle of "co-operation." Over 1,000 reconstruction co-operative societies have been founded in the devastated regions, several villages often combining in one. Each society, aside from encouragement from the Government, profits by all of the savings entailed in having only one architect and one contractor for the whole group, who buy in quantity and ship in quantity, who can organize large shops, burn their own brick and lime and standardize everything that goes into the buildings.
However, the great outstanding contribution of France is the fact that she now realizes that her towns and villages must plan ahead and private property rights must be controlled for the public good. The war has borne in upon her that mistakes of the past must be corrected. She realizes that she owes it to the citizens of the future to plan for them healthy, convenient, comfortable, charming places to live and work in.