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Show ! NATURAL GROWTH TOO SLOW Modern CltieB Not Satisfied Unless They Expand in Size by Leap and Bound9. 'j A metropolis erows up in two ways, j At flrst it expands legitimately, adding ! furlong to furlong in gruwih. Then it I , leaps forward and sies a large area , ; overnight by ac t of legislature or parliament, par-liament, sweeping into its net a score j of villages and settlements. Tbeu It ; pro, eels to coiisi.iiidHlK ils position, as j General lofire might say, by tilling up I tlie intervening spaces. In European cities they have an inner ring, which ( : Is Ihe old city, and an outer ring. which may be anything. New York. , j Chi. ago, l)oton and Seattle have . their inner rins which are the legitimate legiti-mate city, and the outer ring which came by the gctbig-qulck method. New York succumbed to the promoter's promot-er's fever in ISMS. In that year the city absorbed large areas of virgin soil and a chain of independent villages, some of them nearly a old as Manhattan itself1. it-self1. Prom the sound to the Atlantic they stretch across the backbone of Lung itland and the lower harbor of Scaten loland, where the local tradition, tradi-tion, in spite of municipal fen lea" and promised tunnels, has remained at its scro ntest. Such frenzied expansion is the reason rea-son why the traveler in the nearer su burls of a great city will often come across a city line which is no longer the city line. As you near the old city line from the heart of population popu-lation (he solid blocks of apartments and Hats thin out. There follow stretches of waste land, market gardens, gar-dens, cemeteries. It is across this .one between the .old and new city lines that the transit railways throw their surface lines and elevated ''extensions." ''exten-sions." and close behind them are the builders, criss-crossing the raw acres ith their long lines .of "frame" and brick. Harper's Magazine. |