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Page:Old Towns and New Needs.djvu/43

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OLD TOWNS AND NEW NEEDS
21

value, and, what is more, to insult no such buildings by approaching or passing them at unsightly angles or without due regard to alignment or to view.

Before passing to the subject of open spaces, I have a few words to say on the phenomenon of road radiation. In a city well planned from the start, such as certain Roman built towns, the radiation does not penetrate within the main enceinte of the town, but is confined to the outlying quarters. The town of Winchester, will, for example, illustrate this.

In a very large town it is of course important to secure a certain possibility of progressing diagonally, otherwise the journey from place to place may unduly resemble a knight's move on the chess-board, but if I were planning anew a town of fair size, I would certainly retain a strict parallelogram formation for its central area and start the radiation at a quarter of a mile or half a mile from the focus. Moreover, it will be realised that in a town of the size of Manchester for example, the main, incoming roads carry traffic of a density which increases in ratio to their approach to the centre. Obviously, therefore, it would be theoretically desirable that every such road of ingress should on or near its entrance to the town be bifurcated so that its density of traffic should be approximately halved.

I have prepared and now submit a rather strange-looking plan which illustrates my meaning, and you will see that under favourable conditions the bifurcation might be so planned as to work in very effectively with a gridiron central formation in which the traffic difficulties might be further