Page:Lectures on Housing.djvu/55

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SOME ASPECTS OF THE HOUSING PROBLEM
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artist. No 'invisible hand' can be relied on to produce a good arrangement of the whole from a combination of separate treatments of the parts. It is necessary that an authority of wider reach should intervene and should tackle the collective problem of beauty, of air and of light, as those other collective problems of gas and water have been already tackled. Hence has come into being, on the pattern of long previous German practice, Mr. Burns's extremely important town-planning Act. In this Act, for the first time, control over individual buildings, from the standpoint, not of individual structure, but of the structure of the town as a whole, is definitely conferred upon those town councils that are willing to accept the powers offered to them. Part II of the Act begins: "A town-planning scheme may be made in accordance with the provisions of this Part of the Act as respects any land which is in course of development, or appears likely to be used for building purposes, with the general object of securing