Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 204, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1917 — HOME TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME TOWN HELPS

CITY PLANNING FOR FRANCE Some Good to Result From Destruction of Towns by Bombardment of the German Armies. There is no great loss, according to homely philosophy, without some slight gain. Great disasters often lead to better conditions. The old fable of the phoenix rising from its ashes Is essentia Uy-true. __ France is to profit by the ruin of so many of her cities. So her people have decreed. When the German armies are driven from her soil, her maimed towns are to be rebuilt. But they will not be reconstructed along former lines. The narrow streets will not be restored. The buildings centuries old, picturesque, perhaps, but scarcely sanitary, Will not be restored. Reims and other bombarded cities are to be rebuilt according to the latest plans of experts in city planning. They are to be models on which cities untouched by German cannonades will look with envy. But that is not all. France has decided that she cannot afford In future to allow towns and cities to grow up in the old haphazard way. A law has been adopted which compels every municipality to organize a planning commisslon, which will decide on its future growth. Every improvement will have to conform to the city plan, whether it Is made in newly developed territory, or replaces a construction of long standing. Paris, having outgrown the Haussmann plans, has organized a bureau which wilt care not only for the clt-y, but for the whole metropolitan area.