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Scientific Approach to Housing Problems SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO HOUSING PROBLEMS HERE can be no mistaking the extent to which Tdissatisfaction is rapidly growing at the Govern­ ment’s failure to take and announce its fundamental decisions in regard to the planning and development of the land and the location of industry in Britain. Mr. Dalton, speaking in the House of Commons on CONTENTS June 7, stated that the Government accepts the main Page ideas of the Barlow Report, but we still await Scientific Approach to Housing Problems . 725 information as to the measures by which effect is to be given to the general policy of planning. The Examinations Examined. By T. Raymont 728 preparation of detailed housing programmes is already British Electric Power Station Practice. By C. W. a matter of urgency, but is as yet impossible because Marshall ........ 729 neither planning authorities nor private developers Languages, Natural and A rtificial. By Major J. Marshall. 729 know what are to be their respective powers. Again, housing policy is intimately related with industrial Elementary Physical Chemistry .... 730 location policy, for local authorities cannot proceed Chemical Analysis. By G. R. D. 730 with housing plans if they are uncertain where the The Laws of Nature. By Prof. Herbert Dingle . 731 people are to be working. What perhaps has brought home generally the Soil Sterilization. By W. J. C. L. 736 danger of piecemeal planning is the Minister of Obituary : Health’s admission that the first 300,000 permanent Mr. J. R. Norman. By Dr. C. Forster-Cooper, F.R.S. 738 houses are to be built on sites chosen without reference to any sort of national policy for planning the use of N ew s and Views ....... 739 land. More than half these sites were bought by Letters to the Editors : authorities whose choice was dictated by local Evolution of Modern Man (Homo sapiens).— Sir interests and circumscribed by private rights, and Mr. Arthur Keith, F.R.S. ..... 742 Willink appeared to be quite unconcerned that the Vaporization of Lactic Acid as an Aerial Bactericide. remainder should be purchased by authorities still —J. E. Lovelock, O. M. Lidwell and W. F. without guidance as to whether public interest is to be Raymond ....... 743 the effective determinant in the use of land, let alone Role of Manganese in the Biological Synthesis of whether, from the national point of view, the par­ Ascorbic Acid.—M. N. Rudra. 743 ticular sites those authorities have in mind ought to Dried Potato Products and Nutritional Encephalo- be used for housing. This is the negation of national malacia in Chicks.— R. H. Common and W . Bolton ........ 744 planning, and has rightly received forthright con­ f>-Cresol and CEstrone in U rine.— N . R. Campbell demnation in one of the latest interim reports from and D r. D. H. Hey ..... 745 the Central Committee on Post-War Reconstruction A Search for Endemic Areas of Trichinosis in Great of the Conservative and Unionist Party Organization. Britain.— E. L. Taylor ..... 745 This report, “Foundation for Housing”, prepared Flocculation in Solutions and Suspensions.— Dr. E. by the Conservative Sub-Committee on Housing, with Mardles ....... 746 Sir Harold Bellman, J. D. Trustram Eve and K. M. Singlet Terms in the Spectrum of Molecular Nitro­ Marr-Johnson as its technical advisers, insists that gen.— Dr. A. G . Gaydon and Dr. R. E. W o rle y . 747 the first step in framing a housing policy must be to The Black Redstart.— Prof. F. Wood Jones, F.R.S. 747 determine where the houses shall be built. This Radiochemistry of Aqueous Solutions. By Dr. Joseph depends first and foremost on the location of industry; W eiss ......... 748 but while housing is a non-controversial issue in party politics to-day, many fail to realize, as this Freedom from Want of Food .... 750 report points out, that without planning on national Food Production in India ..... 750 lines a successful housing policy is impracticable. Biology of the Prawn Leander . .751 The sub-committee “views with grave apprehension the results which are likely to accrue if housing policy is pressed ahead without preliminary decisions on questions of location of industry and in advance of a Editorial and Publishing Offices MACMILLAN & CO., LTD., solution of the problem of compensation and better­ ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON, W.C.2. ment. Activities of different Government De­ Telephone Number: Whitehall 8831 partments, valuable as they may be, are no substitute Telegrams : Phusis Lesquare London for a single comprehensive policy on the issues of Advertisements should be addressed to location of industry and the protection of agricultural T. G. Scott & Son, Ltd., Talbot House, 9 Arundel Street, London, W.C.2 land. We cannot therefore press too strongly for the Telephone : Temple Bar 1942 The annual subscription rate Is £4 10 0, payable in advance,Inland or Abroad. formulation without delay of national policy on these All rights reserved. Registered as a Newspaper at the General Post Office fundamental points.” 726 NATURE June 17, 1944, v o l . 153 Iu this attitude the Committee should be assured the countryside, with ensuing aggravation of all the of wide support. It has been repeatedly urged in evils which must inevitably result. these columns that failures and faults in our inter­ Nothing that has yet been said on behalf of the war legislation have been due to the absence of a Government has dispelled a widespread suspicion sufficiently national and positive policy in such that official allegiance to national planning is little matters as the geographical distribution of industry, more than the enforced acknowledgment of a principle the protection of agriculture, the co-ordination of which it would be political folly to disregard, but transport and the control of the growth of our cities. which it has proved inconvenient to translate into The warning in this report that, in the absence of an practice. Similarly, the belief is hardening that the early announcement of the Government’s planning reason for the delay is due not to the admitted policy, the train of housing is in danger of being difficulty of reaching an agreed decision on the com­ diverted on to the wrong track, needs the more pensation and betterment proposals of the Uthwatt emphasis in view of the approval with which the Committee, but to unwillingness to do so. In its pre-fabricated houses have been welcomed, in spite memoranda to local authorities last November, the of the warning that they are a temporary Ministry of Town and Country Planning gave a lead, expedient. but the plan for Plymouth recently published shows A particular recommendation of the report is that, how weak are the Ministry’s suggestions for avoiding as a first step to a forecast of the future distribution coastal ribbon development in the present uncertainty of the industrial population, an immediate study and absence of legal powers. should be made by the central authority of the This plan for Plymouth is in some respects more location and extent of war factories throughout Great far-reaching than the County of London Plan pre­ Britain, of the transport facilities which are available pared for the London County Council by J. H. in each case and of the provision, temporary or per­ Forshaw and Prof. Abercrombie. More than a key manent, for the accommodation of labour. That to the future of Plymouth itself, it aims at preserving recommendation is in keeping with the recent report of the diverse features of the neighbouring area, one of the Welsh Reconstruction Advisory Council*, which the most beautiful regions of England, and for this indicates that the Council regards the conduct of a purpose Prof. Abercrombie and Mr. J. Paton Watson’s continuous survey of current developments in indus­ proposals assume the support of the neighbouring try, agriculture and the public services as an import­ rural and county councils. They visualize the meta­ ant part of its task, and emphasizes the desirability of morphosis of the city from an area clogged and untidy the regional offices of the Ministry of Production and into one decentralized into planned communities, 011 the Supply Ministries keeping the Council informed the basis of a stable population, with the central mass of important changes in the location of new plants, lightened, and a series of suburban satellites. in production programmes at particular existing In spite of the wide appeal of this attempt, not plants and in projects for the post-war use of war merely to remodel Plymouth but also to improve for factories. A like emphasis on organic evolution, the the nation the amenities of an entire region, these continual reaction to changing environment based on features of the plan are not the m ost important at full technical knowledge, not merely of raw materials the moment. Here once again is conclusive demon­ and processes, but also of markets, and the par­ stration that housing by itself is not enough. Still ticipation of scientific and technical workers, not as more important is the demonstration that with proper the tools but as the guides of the politician and planning and with the aid of the Government by financier, characterizes the presidential address of pooling nationally the differing values of land, much of Dr. F. J. North to the South Wales Institute of the cost of the scheme can be offset, and any small cash Engineers. loss would be more than balanced by gains in other None the less, the Conservative Sub-Committee ways. Again, here is a convincing demonstration of insists on its main point, that only by creating the national value—if not necessity—of co-operation effective machinery for the attainment of the three on a regional basis in planning reconstruction.
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