Page:Old Towns and New Needs.djvu/87

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60
THE TOWN EXTENSION PLAN

facilities of access. Not only is this the case, but owing to the fact that the area of the circle increases much more rapidly than the diameter (in proportion to the square of the diameter in fact), as a town grows a constantly diminishing addition has to be made to its diameter to enable it to provide for a given increase of its population. Let me just put this in the form of figures for you, taking the increase of population that we have been already dealing with, and assuming that the whole of the dwellings under the present arrangement are built at 34 to the acre, which mercifully is not true. The present area of the borough of Manchester is 21,643 acres, but the area actually built upon is only 10,081 acres, that is 15¾ square miles, equivalent to a circle having a diameter of 4½ miles or a radius of 2¼ miles. I find that in Manchester supposing only half the circumference of the town is available for growth for one reason or another, 10 years development at the rate of 100 acres for dwellings per year, which we saw to be the required amount under scheme No. 1 of congested development, would increase this radius to 2½ miles. Under scheme No. 2 if, for the same ten years, we needed 227 acres per year, the radius would be increased to 2¾ miles. That is, the extreme distance to be travelled in one case would only be ¼ mile further after ten years of wholesome development, and the average distance would show considerably less increase. (Figs. 8 and 9.)

There is only one other aspect of this great question that I can touch upon to-night. We have been considering almost exclusively the practical utility and the economic