Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1916 — Home Town Helps [ARTICLE]

Home Town Helps

WOULD TEACH CITY PLANNING Architect Thinks It Should Be a Part of the Curriculum of the Country's Public Schools. Frederic L. Ackerman, a member of the committee on town planning la the American Institute of Architects, advocates the teaching of city planning in the public schools. It is his idea that only by educating succeeding generations of the public though the medium of the public school may we acquire correct standards for remaking our present ditles and for building new ones, and he brought it out in a recent address on "The Architectural Side of City Planning.” Mr. Ackerman’B theory is more concerned with education than with architecture. His main theme is that tbo architectural side of city planning is dependent upon proper methods of educating future citizens up to high standards of architectural beauty. Architecture depends so utterly upon the physical conditions of an environment, he says, that, unless these condition* be reasonable, architecture can do nothing. The reasonableness of a set of conditions depends, according to Mr. Ackerman, upon the people living under them. He refuses to limit his definition of the term, city planning. It is. not merely a series of legislative acts imposing a set of conditions to which a people’s life must be worked Into conformity, says Mr. Ackerman, nor Is it merely the carrying out of certain theories developed by city planners, engineers and students of social and economic conditions, or of the ideals of an architect. It is not merely providing for adequate transportation, proper sanitation, better housing or more beautiful surroundings; it is all of these, with more added to the list. City planning, in brief, Is provision for a more adequate physical expression of the composite ideals of groups of people thrown together by social and economic forces. Mr. Ackerman’s method for teaching city planning to the school child would begin with making it clear to the child that there are things for him to consider in our towns and cities which are vital to his comfort and well being, and which, incidentally, have to do with architecture and art. The idea is to instill In the child's mind a keen Interest in the various phases of his physical environment and its possible improvement.