http://urbanplanning.library.cornell.edu/DOCS/howard.htm
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/WhctKKXGzTBfSkwfccrJQRnbXpFDfRKVPGcxDmxcRQjjFqjSKmjmLfGvHPDBsWkhpkBhvwG
1898 | London
Mixed Media
Ebenezer Howard
The town magnet, it will be seen, offers, as compared with the country magnet, the advantages of high wages, opportunities for employment, tempting prospects of advancement—but these are largely counterbalanced by high rents and prices. Its social opportunities and its places of amusement are very alluring, but excessive hours of toil, distance from work, and the “isolation of crowds” tend greatly to reduce the value of these good things. The well-lit streets are a great attraction, especially in winter, but the sunlight is being more and more shut out, while the air is so vitiated that the fine public buildings, like the sparrows, rapidly become covered with soot, and the very statues are in despair. Palatial edifices and fearful slums are the strange, complementary features of modern cities.
The country magnet declares herself to be the source of all beauty and wealth, but the town magnet mockingly reminds her that she is very dull for lack of society and very sparing of her gifts for lack of capital. There are in the country beautiful vistas, lordly parks, violet-scented woods, fresh air, sounds of rippling water—but too often one sees those threatening words, “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”
