The sanitary arrangements of garden cities should he carefully planned and carried out, and the details should be simple and at the same time the construction should be solid and as in expensive as possible.
A garden city is principally a place of resi dence and it should have as few stores as pos sible, only those of the most necessary charac ter being provided. A school may be the only building of a public character. However, in those garden cities of a larger size and which are located in more or less isolated places, the suburban character is lost and they become small cities, and should accordingly he provided with a greater number and variety of stores and public buildings. The city may have its own civic organization, with schools, a library, churches, theatres and the like, and be a com plete civic unit.
Garden cities have met with greater success in England than elsewhere up to the present time, although a greater number and variety of them are now in process of formation in Germany. The principal English garden cities are Port Sunlight, near Liverpool, Bourneville, near Bir mingham, and Letchworth, near London, while the leading German garden city is Hellerau, near Dresden. The numerous workingmen's colonies in Germany that first began to he founded about 1863 arc earlier prototypes of the present garden cities, but on a less comprehen sive scale and with less open ground.
Garden cities are organized on several dif ferent plans. Port Sunlight is operated by a soap factory, the rents being based on a basis of depreciation and taxes only, without taking into account the value of the land and the cap ital invested. The factory considers this in the nature of profit sharing with its employees, who, with their families, constitute the sole tenancy. The extent of Port Sunlight is 450 acres.
At Bourneville the situation is different. Although half of the tenants are employees of the concern under whose patronage the city is operated, any one is eligIble to become a resi dent. The rents are higher but the city is an individual entity administered by an independ ent corporation. There are some 5,000 inhab itants in Bourneville, occupying 925 houses. The city covers 612 acres of land, and one tenth of the land, in addition occupied by roads and gardens, is reserved for parks and recreation grounds. In no case is the building
allowed to cover more than one-fourth of the plot belonging-to it, and the number of houses is usually from 7 to 10 per acre.
The large amount of ground left open per mits of vegetable gardens, the produce of which materially reduces the cost of living of the householders. Under ordinary conditions land yields a return of about $25 per acre, hut that portion utilized in Bourneville For raising produce returns a valuation of some $150 per acre, in addition to housing an average of 30 persons per acre in the occupied portions of the city.
HeHera% which is about three miles from Dresden and covers 325 acres, has a population of about 1,000, and the land is held by a corpo ration which limits its dividends to 4 per cent. The village is occupied by the employees of a single concern, the Deutsche Werkstaten fir Handtverkkunst, the chief owner of which— Karl Schmidt — is the leading spirit of the Hel lerati improvement. The building is largely carried on by the Co-operative Building Asso ciation of Hellerau, which secures its capital at low rates from the governmental insurance funds. These enormous funds are thus utilized in a twofold manner — the principal for improv ing housing conditions ,and the income for the amelioration of the beneficiaries.
The garden city of Letchworth, some 35 miles from London, is a modern city of 7,500 inhabitants, with 49 industries. It is an inde pendent entity, and is operated by a group of persons that has limited its possible dividends to 5 per cent, thu,s ensuring the best of condi tions for the residents. The maximum number of houses permitted to the acre is 12, and two thirds of the six square miles of the city are reserved for parks and similar uses.
Another interesting example will be found in Forest Hills Gardens, Long Island, New York, a town-planning enterprise in which cer tain trust funds have been invested and which is conducted wholly on commercial lines in the expectation that a fair profit will be earned from the investment. As a real estate propo sition it may not differ much from other first class Long Island developments. It is not a garden city for workingmen, however, but is intended for persons of ampler means.