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Page:Old Towns and New Needs.djvu/74

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THE TOWN EXTENSION PLAN

shall be developed. Such plan may define the direction, position, and width of roads. The scheme which accompanies the plan may provide for the making of any of these roads that are urgently required for the public need. Any by-laws or other statutory enactments may be varied by the town planning scheme so far as may be necessary to its proper execution, with a view to securing proper sanitary conditions, amenity and convenience. The scheme may make restrictions on the number of buildings which may be erected on each acre of ground and the height and character of these, and may prescribe the space about buildings. Finally, land may be purchased for open spaces or other purposes in connection with the Town Planning scheme. If these powers are considered carefully, it will be found that there is little of what I have been sketching as the ideal development of a growing town, which cannot be secured under one or other of these headings. One of the special functions of the Act is to empower the local authority to make agreements with the owners of land on any subject bearing upon its development. The local authority is put in a favourable position for making such agreements, because it has not only power to restrict within certain limits the use to which the owner may put his land, but it has the power very greatly to facilitate development by the suitable laying out of roads, by prohibiting objectionable buildings on adjacent property, and by modifying many existing restrictive by-laws which have been made to suit other conditions of development.

I am glad to know that in Manchester already considerable progress has been made with these negotiations, that